Canyou play HD-DVDs without HDMI
 

I have an HDTV, A Phillips 30inch Widescreen TubeTV.( I dont know the model, but it is from 3 years ago)
It does not have any HDMI connection ports. Seems the best is component.

I have an HD cable box and it transmits beautifully.
I have been told that you can not connect an HDDVD Player without HDMI or DVI.

Is this correct?

Also I hear the Xbox360 HDDVD player connects through a usb port. Is this an alternative? Will the quality suffer?

You can connect via component...Just wont upconvert. Not really sure what the quality is with the add on for the 360 is because its just starting to come out and there hasnt been any reviews yet.

So it will play HDDVDsin HD, but will not upconvert SDVDs?

Thats's correct.

OK, Thanks, I can live with that until I get an LCDTV.

HD DVDs look great over Component. That's how I'm connected right now.

The USB just transfers from the data from drive to the main 360 system which does the processing. It will output over component but only at 1080i I believe. If you want 1080p you will need the VGA cables.

Do G2 players still have component connections or are they only found on G1?

Component is still there.

So, do you still get 1080i over component with ALL HD-DVD players? I will probably just got the 360 one, but I was a bit confused also.

Yes.

It will depend entirely on the player. But likelyhood is that it will be 1080i over component only for most players. This is also true for most TV inputs. Shouldn't be much of a big deal (except for the Xbox), all of the TVs that don't have HDMI/DVI are 1080i or 720p TVs, which are both supported over component.

(ok, CRT projectors could be component only and 1080p, very small group and they likely compensate with a scaler, anyway)