If you know you want a 360 anyway then DEFINITELY get the 360 Elite and the HD DVD add-on.

Yes, the Elite comes with the HDMI cable which is nice. Plus it has a nice 120 GB hard drive for storing lots of downloaded content off of the Marketplace (assuming you live in the US)

The HD-DVD add-on is a great deal. Its $199 and comes with King Kong ($30) and the Xbox Remote ($40). The quality is fantastic. My only issue is that mine seems to make a bit of noise.

Plus the 360 is an awesome gaming unit. I've been gaming since I was a young mutt (I'm 26 now) and the 360 is probably the most fun experience I've had.

And I have a PS3 too



(p.s. i'm talking in Canadian prices...)

You can pay $150 if you have the Xbox 360, and I know some people who can convert it into an HD-DVD drive. I have seen this done, and it works perfectly.

Did they rattle right away or only after you shook them for a while?

What? You can buy the HD-DVD drive for $150 and convert it to a HD-DVD drive? Again, what?

Right Away, but I might have done some damage on my own. Seriously I tried 5 sets and they were all the same.

Almost all the HD discs I've bought have a thick little insert touting new releases... that's probably what you're hearing. I have actually yet to have a loose disc with an HD release. *knock on wood*.

The little sqaure paper that says to update your firmware and the inserts sound alot different than loose discs. Personally, at best buy I shook 5 HD Planet Earths. 4 of them had loose discs and sounded disctinctly different from that 5th one. The 1 BD PE I picked up too had a loose disc. Its probably the way the 4 discs are packed into one HD/BD case.

I had a loose disc in mine

You're lucky... I received floaters in both Eternal Sunshine (HD DVD) and Planet Earth (BD) in the same shipment from Amazon recently. I had to bump ES up to the top of my viewing list, thankfully no problems in playback.

Sounds like all my Planet Earth discs are loose. I really don't want to hassle with returning this to Warner.

Man I have my fingers crossed on this one not coming in scratched to shit....

I had one loose disc in planet earth. I'll watch that cd tonight to see if it plays alright.

My spindle section (holding the center 2 discs) was also loose and made the real racket... i'm guessing that's what you heard at best buy. The center discs were secured to the spindle section though and it snapped right back in, so just a loose spindle shouldn't result in any damage.

I also would hate to have to go through a return process with WB so I hope disc 1 plays okay.

cd??

yes. my discs are compact. Okay?

You could hear multiple discs rattling around in my set. I sent it back today for replacement.

I had loose discs too, the hubs on this set suck! Any sorta of pressure on the inner case seems to knock my front disc off.

My front disc was off but the loose spindle was what was making all the racket.

I put my disc one in last night and it played through with no problems. No need to return for me.

The spindle snaps back on easily.

But yes, this packaging does seem suspect at this time.

my fourth disc was scratched in a few places. It was the only one that fell out of it's holder. I guess that will be the first disc I watch to make sure nothing is messed up.

My first disc was loose as well, and the spindle was not in the middle as it should be. Thankfully everything seems to work!

Same here. My first disc got scratched up pretty bad, but it's playing fine so far. Terrible packaging; something along the lines of the Smallville season set would've been much better.

I guess I lucked out, as I didn't have any floaters in my set - the discs were actually very firmly in place, they would've stayed put even if I shook the case around a lot.

But still, the packaging does seem kinda cheap (though it's nice that it's so thin), which is another area that the SD-dvds beat out the HDs. A friend got the SD-dvds, and the packaging is very nice, with a very attractive fold-out digi-pack that has artwork and episode listings. The HD versions gets beat out in every area (packaging, price, alomst 5 hours of extras) except for audio and video quality.

You would think that they would give this new struggling format a better chance by at least providing decent extras and packaging, but nope. No wonder these new formats aren't catching on...

I just got my copy of Planet Earth on HD DVD Thursday from Amazon, and disc 4 was a floater. It looks like the disc didn't get scratched, so I'm not concerned it will present a problem when I watch it.

I had a couple loose discs. I have Blu-ray though, which has a scratch resistant coating. It must have worked, because the discs were still pristine!

I've watched the first disc so far. The time lapse of the flowers and forests with the moving camera was jaw dropping. Next up is the caves episode, which I can't wait to see. I'm really looking forward to the cave diving footage. As a scuba diver, one of my future goals is to be cave certified.