DJ_Longfellow

Interesting, I did not know that.....

jessebo

I Picked up my drive for the 360. the setup was easy. I just finished watching the fast and the furious, tokyo drift, and the picture was great. obviously, it's not a top of the line player, but for the average consumer it'll do.

dcprules

Did anyone have an update for the HD-DVD player today? I just got Batman Begins and after I put it in it required me to update the HD-DVD player. I'm not sure what it did.

Also, does the 360 drive read Dolby HD audio discs? I played with Batman Begins earlier today and it sounded louder, but I didn't watch enough of it (only ten minutes) to notice any sound differences aside from it being louder.

jessebo

my xbox updated today when I put in tokyo drift, but I'm not sure if it updated the hdplayer or the xbox itself.

manji

Yup, HD-DVD update today...Major Nelson mentioned it on his site.
Small update, no new functionality...just some bugfixes.

prayformojo

Good deal, I was wondering why I was prompted for the autoupdate.

SuperBatMan

Just got back from Best Buy in exchanging my 360( 3 rings of death, again), and also picked up Terminator 3 and Bourne Supremacy on HD-DVD. Also finally got to watch Batman Begins HD-DVD for the first time, and BIG thumbs up on it.

shaggy

I got the HD-DVD drive today. After installing the software, I was prompted to do an update which I did. I then watched a few parts of King Kong, I was blown away by the quality of the picture but I did notice a few slight pauses/glitches. A few hours later I went back and put the king kong disc in, and was told there was an update for this game, which I thought was weird considering its not a game, I did the update the glitches are now gone. So the update seemed to fix the problem. Can they actually do anything to improve the playback of a particular disc?

For those of you on the fence, I only have 480p/1080i HDTV and it looks incredible. You can't beat the price either. Microsoft gave a break to Canadians, usually stuff is priced much higher than the actual exchange rate in Canada. But the HD-DVD is only 199.99 with the free movie, a better DVD player is still this much in Canada. The only negative is that I have over 500 DVDs that just don't look as good anymore.

Does anyone know the reason why HD-DVD players don't up convert regular DVDs using component.

PornoStar

I finally got around to hooking mine up a few days ago and I am really impressed so far. Given I have only watched 5 movies so far but I havent had a suingle problem yet. There is a noticable difference in sound but I expected as much as I am playing it on a much weaker system than my A1 is hooked up to and it doesnt have the quality audio parts that the A1 has.

Bottom line is I think the people on AVS are out of thier freaking minds. I have never seen such a bunch of anal electronics people in my life and its the main reason why I visit there very infrequently. This is a 200 dollar add-on device for a video game. If you expected a top of the line HD-DVD player then you just expected something that just wasnt going to happen. IMO this will never fully replace a dedicated HD-DVD player and I would never use this as my main player hooked up to my main system. For me this is my bedroom player that allows me to watch HD-DVD movies on my 2nd HDTV and while i am in bed.

For what this device is, it performs very well. The picture is awsome, the sound is good and the price is unbeatable. Once people get thier expectations in line then there wont be as many people complaining period, well of course there will still be people complaining on AVS as they is what they do best.

For me the XBox360 HD-DVD add-on is a sparkling success. It has given me a 2nd HDplayer for my bedroom for next to nothing cost wise. What more could I possibly ask for.

PS..

cbtaber

FYI: My Wal-Mart broke the street date on the Superman Returns HD-DVD, plus it was mispriced at $19.92 so I had to pick it up. HOWEVER, as I was watching it this evening, the player locked up during the sequence where Superman and Lois go flying. I tried to skip ahead and it wouldn't let me. SO that chapter and the next chapter are unwatchable.

I will return the disc after Tuesday and exchange it for another to see if it is the disc or the player. But I'm betting it's the player, I'm not sure if it is a Dual Layer 40GB disc, but if it is, I wonder if this is why it locked up. The Xbox downloaded an update when I put in the disc also, so I wonder if there's a known issue that Microsoft is trying to fix before people start experiencing problems.

I will post this as a thread as well.

Mr. Cinema

The video quality on this unit is excellent. I've read on AVS that Microsoft is aware of the lower volume problem and are working on a fix via an update. I should be receiving another optical cable today from monoprice, so I'm eager to get this update. New releases have been a little hit and miss concerning playback glitches on my A1, which is going on 8 months of use. The add-on is my backup, at least until I break down and get the A2/XA2.

I think the update that was just added is a minor one.

dcprules

So far I am loving the HD-DVD add on and the picture quality is great and the sound (on the movie) is pretty good as well.

I have one major question that I can't for the life of me figure out. I haven't really watched any special features on any of my HD-DVDs yet, but today I started watching some supplements from Batman Begins and the audio is driving me nuts. It is only coming through the left and right front channels, but nothing from the center channel. Does the XBOX change something in the audio conversion? WHenever I watch supplements and bonus features on my standard Sony DVD player, it automatically converts it into the right audio format but the XBOX HD DVD player just sounds off when not played in DD or DTS. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Mr. Cinema

Looks like Microsoft is working on a fix on the add-on that will allow it to re-encode the advanced audio tracks and output them to DTS 1.5mbps, exactly like the A1.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5&page=1&pp=30

NitroJMS

Mine's been locking up for some reason on Warner titles and when I try to reboot the 360, the 3 red lights of death pop on and won't go away. Could this be an overheat issue?

Ralph Jenkins

Quick question... I just picked up a Core system (no hard drive) and don't have Xbox live.... Would I be able to use this add-on?

flashburn

Possibly...check out this thread..
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=717200

Mr. Cinema

You should. The update disc it comes with will allow you to use it. Xbox Live silver is free. I have the paid Gold membership, but I'm sure silver allows you to receive updates. They added another small update for the drive a few days ago.

A lack of a hard drive may prevent the updates, I don't know.

im_ryandick

do any of you have your HD DVD player drive open very slowly, as opposed to the system?

i hope it's not just mine.

DJ_Longfellow

I think it's a LITTLE slower, not much...I guess I have to compare.

SuperBatMan

It's slower.

Patman

Just wanted to say that I am now also in the HD DVD ranks with a new XBOX 360 in tow, plus their HD DVD drive. King Kong's video quality is amazing.

Mr. Cornell

I received mine from Amazon.com today. Second try at ordering it, this time I got it. King Kong does indeed look breathtaking. I just wish I had a 60" HDTV instead of a 24" widescreen computer monitor. Ah well, at least I'm able to watch it at the native 1080p resolution.

Patman

It's funny because I have a 4-year old 56" 4x3 RPTV, but for 16x9 material, it works out to be about equivalent to 51" 16x9 set, and on standard DVDs, I'm content to sit about 9 feet away, but with HD DVD I want to sit closer to the screen! It's that dramatic, the difference in video quality.

slop101

I have a pretty good regular dvd player, a JVC (though it's a few years old), but this 360 HD add-on makes even regular dvds look a lot better than my JVC, which is no slouch. But I still have to hold on to it, as it's an all-region player. But I will now have to play all my R1s on the 360 add-on - it's that good.

It goes like this:

dvds on the JVC

BuddyRevell

I felt the same way at first. I popped in the free King Kong and was like "ok this looks good but what's the big deal?". It wasn't until I compared the DVD version of Batman Begins and the HD version on the same exact frame. I couldn't believe how much more detail there was on the HD version. When I first watched the DVD of Begins I remember thinking this was a really good looking transfer. Now it looks like crap to me. I could tell all this on a 30".

Next year I'll be upgrading to 40".