I'd heard this for a while from many people, was a bit miffed at the idea of dropping $500 to $1000 for either HD DVD or Blue Ray disc players, so when the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive was released a couple weeks ago I finally caved. I figured for $196 I'd give it a shot.

The difference is AMAZING. It really is night and day. Audio too. And I haven't even used a title with TrueHD yet. (Though I'm told the 360 does not support it properly?) At any rate, it really is awesome. I was blown away by the picture quality. I'm wondering if many of those expressing the "no difference" or "not enough difference" opinions are using very small TV sets? I was able to discern the difference much more on my 42" LCD than my 27" CRT HDTV, though certainly, I saw an improvement in both.

I'm not wild about the cost of HD DVD discs, the ridiculous copy protection DRM issues, but the technology itself is incredible. There's no doubt in my mind HD DVD will trump Blue Ray and a few years down the road (5, perhaps?) it will be the de-facto standard just as DVD is now. I recall spending $350 or so on a first generation Samsung DVD when no one even knew what they were. This stuff always begins slow, the hardware is always clunky and obtuse, lots of issues, but it will only get better.

Just some random thoughts for anyone "sitting on the fence". Quit sitting. This stuff is incredible.

Found this topic by clicking on the wrong forum. I'm all about having better quality if the price is right (i'm poor), so it's a good thing I have never seen HD DVD or Blue Ray in action or I might do unrational things with what little money I have. Hopefully I win the lottery soon or get a great Christmas gift.

Everyone who has been sitting on the fence and makes the choice to jump in says the same thing. There is a huge difference. I mainly use the A1, but the 360 add-on is great. If you have a 360 already and a HDTV, the add-on is a no brainer. Another plus is Microsoft will always have updates for this thing to make sure it handles all discs.

I stilll don't see a HUGE difference on my 55" RPTV (Mits). It looks better, but not HUGE. This is with the 360 attachment also. I think my TV just handles everything pretty well.

If I recall, rear projection doesn't look as well as other forms? I can only think anecdotally there as I've never owned one, but the ones I've seen at Worst Buy and other big box stores look pretty bad compared to the LCD's and Plasma's...

I've got to think that if you can't tell a phenomenal difference between standard definition DVD (480p) and HD DVD, you have very poor eyesight, poor equipment, or something configured wrong.

Then again everyone has a different set of eyes, too. I'd imagine you could set 10 people down in front of a given setup and get 10 different opinions about the perceived quality (or lack of it).

Actually, RP CRT looks the best out of all of them, and I have a 55" Mits RP CRT. The difference is palpable and clear. The best HD DVDs have absolutely no peer, cable HD can't touch them.

The trick is CRT RPTV's need the most work to get them looking great, but once that work is done they usually best all the others (DLP, LCD, plasma). That has been the long standing opinion of my calibration guy (avical.com) as well. Although he has said great things about some of the Samsung DLP's.

That is true, CRTs take the most coaxing, but give (in general) the best results. Did your avical guy say anything about the latest Mits DLPs?

That's what has me keeping my ISF calibrated 65" Mitsubishi CRT RPTV. While I'd love to get a larger 70"+ set that accepts a 1080p signal, it would cost me an arm and 3 legs to *maybe* match the PQ I have now.

I think I'll get a few more years out of this one...

I only have a few HD-DVDs via the 360 upgrade (and I wont have full a 1080p display till Feb or so). So Ill say not all HD-DVDs are equal. Some are as low as about 20% better than a DVD but when done right, they can be jaw dropping. So it depends on the movie.

My brother-in-law recently bought a JVC HDTV (model HD-52G887). I'd say they qualify as "average consumers". They've got no HD source for the TV. They simply wanted a big screen TV and HDTVs were what was available.

This weekend I brought over my HD-A1 to show what a true HD signal would look like. I played pieces from various discs. Mostly King Kong, but some from Corpse Bride, Unforgiven, Training Day, and Blazing Saddles.

Anyway, they were amazed by the PQ. When I told them that some people couldn't see a big difference and some couldn't see any difference over DVD, they were suprised to say the least. We watched Superman Returns (upconverted to 1080i through the HD-A1) because they had that rented from Blockbuster. In their words: "No comparison". They could easily tell it was NOT HD DVD. I'd say viewing distance was 8 or 9 feet.

I told them if I was going to buy into HD DVD at this point that I'd go the Xbox 360+add on route, but there is "no way in hell" they'd pay $400 for a game system (never mind the $150 for the HD DVD add on). Their target price point was less than $200 with $150 being more like what they were able to swallow.

He had seen the PS3 in a store somewhere and thought it looked great with very "realistic" graphics. But since $400 was way to much for a game system, you can imagine how the PS3 struck them. Of course, I could not recommend Blu-ray in good conscience.

They own a PS2 (had it for about 4-5 years) and have about 20 PS2 games. They bought that because it was $150.

I thought it was interesting that they could easily see the difference-- IMO, you'd have to be blind or in denial not to.

BTW, King Kong is absolutely amazing looking. Detail everywhere. Can't say enough good things about the PQ on it.

Oh, and remember those pictures I posted in this thread? That is exactly the difference you'll see if you compare SD DVD vs. HD DVD of King Kong. I did that test while I was there. SD DVD just can't hold a candle to HD DVD.

It depends also on what title you're watching. Some only exhibit a minor improvement over the SD-DVD. But so far, the only HD-DVD to show almost zero improvement is Universal's Spartacus.

Yeah, and the TV matters too I would assume. I guess I have to do more 1-1 comparison. I just started to watch Nacho Libre....looked nice, but the movie was horrible, next is the Bone Collector from blockbuster.com

I don't think any HD DVD titles look worse than dvd. I know many think Fifth Element looks worse on BD than the Superbit dvd. Terminator on BD looks identical to the upconverted dvd, imo.

Just to be fair, people say 5th Element has more resolution on BD. But the master used had more film crap in it, like dirt and maybe some mastering issues. So they prefer the pristine UE edition (2nd version Superbit) in spite of the resolution of the BD.

Most of the press/people who are saying "HD doesn't make a difference" are people disappointed with Sony's Blu-ray blunders of 2006, yet not willing to get behind the HD DVD format for whatever reason.

I don't think we ever talked about that brand, but we haven't discussed new displays since early in the year.

I didn't spend a lot of time with the Fith Element BD, but I also thought there was more reoslution visible. I only previewed the scenes I typically view post-calibration, and I don't recall too much debris. I'll definitely be on the lookout for it when I watch the whole disc.

I bought the 360 HD-DVD drive last week, and watched King Kong via Samsung 30" Slimfit HDTV(yes, I had to swap to find a suitable screen). I was blown away by the amount of detail, especially on the ocean scenes.
Also, my roommate happened to be walking by while I was watching the movie. He didn't know I had bought the HD-DVD drive, and his first remark was "holy crap that can't be a regular DVD".
Aside from that, it's the little things I like, such as transparent menu overlays during the movie, as opposed to having to exit the movie to make changes. I've only watched Kong so far(loading up Goodfellas now), so I don't know if that goes for all HD-DVD's, but it's a nice feature.

The menu is a huge plus. A small detail but very useful. One of those things that you don't notice how much you like it until you're watching a DVD and the movie stops while fiddling with the menu.

I do wish the player could remember "No menu sounds" and let that be the default.

I like my menu quiet as well. But once you load a movie, the accessibility of the menu is very nice.
One good/bad thing: being able to access the extras very easily from the main menu, while playing the movie. My main reaction is 'holy crap, there's no way I'll be able to watch all of those.' On a 2disk dvd, at least I've got to swap disks so it seems a little less overwhelming.
I have a 60" RPTV, and the best HDDVDs I've seen look incredible. Even the 'worst' ones still look noticeably better. Some of our HD cable looks very good, it's a toss up between certain HDTV programs and certain HDDVDs, but the issue with HDTV, is that there's very little content I'm interested in watching.
Aeon Flux, though I had to turn my brain off to watch it, was eyepopping.
The few titles I've upconverted so far have been better, but not 'oh wow!' better, with one exception: the SDVD of Pitch Black looked HD. [netflix did not have the HDDVD].

I don't own a HD or Blu-ray DVD player yet, but out of the countless HD-DVD and Blu-ray dvd reviews that I have read, it seems like a lot of them are getting fair to negative reviews of the video/audio quality. What's the purpose of this system, if the majority of movies, especially older ones, aren't much better than the regular DVD versions? Of course, the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DVD of a recent action movie such as Tomb Raider is going to be good, just like any other recent action movie released on regular DVD.

That is just untrue. I did a side-by-side comparison of the HD DVD and the Criterion DVD of Spartacus in my review, and I found that the HD DVD had more stable colors and no artifacting, whereas the Criterion disc had plenty of easily noticeable mosquito noise. On the whole, it wasn't much of an improvement, but an artifact free image is still more than almost zero.

Keep in mind that these "fair to negative" comments are usually in comparison to other High-Def content, not to the comparable DVD edition of the same movie. HD and SD need to be judged on entirely different scales.

Note that the XBOX 360 HD DVD add-on has some known issues with not providing the best possible sound... An upcoming software upgrade should solve this...

So it will only get BETTER!