Do you have HD TV service through cable or sat? If yes then HD-DVD is slightly better quality than that. If you have never seen an HD broadcast at all then it will be a huge jump.

I just purchased and watched The Da Vinci Code on DVD which is reviewed to have great pic quality for a standard def disc and it felt like I was watching a movie made 15 years ago because of the lower resolution. I've gotten myself so used to HD between TV and now the HD-DVD player that I'm always a bit disappointed when I try to watch a standard DVD.

There isn't enough bandwith over an optical output to transmit TrueHD.

I think you are incorrect. In the avs forum I read that many were still finding the TrueHD tracks from the 360 to be the best sounds. They were described as only being lossy once, while the others were twice lossy. Maybe that is all crap, but the stand alone player with multichannel out or HDMI is the best sound you can get. 95% of people will love the sound over optical on the 360 though.

Man the video on King Kong was awesome.

I'm gonna 100% disagree with that second sentence.

No matter what track you select, the addon is still converting the audio down to standard dolby digital at 640 kbps, which is what is on standard dvd.

In which direction? I don't think I've heard anyone say it looks worse. I have heard people say that it looks much better but I haven't really noticed too much of a difference in picture quality. I have a 37" LCD which cannot do 1080p though so I'm not taking full advantage of what HD-DVD offers. I'm sure for somone with a larger screen and 1080p support the difference would be much greater.

Slightly? I disagree also. Although a cable HD channel is very good I wouldn't say its ONLY a slight improvement.

Again, I'm just going by my own experiences. If I were to turn on an episode of a show like CSI Miami (which is an awful show but looks freakin amazing in HD) and compare it to the picture quality I get from HD-DVDs, I really can't see much of a difference. I've yet to see a HD-DVD running at 1080p though. I set both my 360 and cable box to 720p since that's the native resolution of my TV.

Thanks for the response. Currently, I have nothing in HD except for Madden 2007 on the 360.

If you have an Xbox 360 HD DVD player, you’ll be prompted for an auto update the next time you watch an HD DVD movie. This update has no new features in it, but contains title specific movie playback improvements and few fixes to some localized text (and I’d imagine a few more lines of code )

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2...to-update.aspx

has anyone tried using the $40 off $200 CC coupon for an in store pick-up of an online item?

A *lot* of people at avs forum have. I told my manager about the coupon last week. He ordered online and presented the coupon at the store when he picked up his item. No problems.

I am so tempted to pick one of these up. Future Shop has them for $200 Canadian, with the remote, the King Kong HD-DVD, and the King Kong 360 game. I might get my wife to pick me up one for Christmas instead. Decisions decisions.

So from what I have been reading, the audio isn't perfect since it doesn't do DTS, but TrueHD is great audio, and the video is amazing, but it doesn't upscale regular DVDs over component, only VGA. Am I missing anything? I want to make an informed decision before I sink the money into it.

Is the 360 or the HD Add on (whatever is needed for upscaling, I don't own a 360 yet) support discs other than region 1, or is it region coded? What about PAL/NTSC? Does it convert? I'm tempted to buy a 360+the HD Addon because my DVD player broke, but I own a few hundred PAL discs that aren't region 1.

HD-DVD discs aren't region coded. That's not something that's being done.

I should have my add on next week. Took advantage of the Amazon HD 10% coupon as well. And a GC I had laying around the house for $25 at AMAzon.

So for $260 I wound up with
XBOX HD DVD Add On (bought online, shipped Satuday, should arrive Thurs)
King Kong(comes bundles with dvd drive)
V for Vendetta
Serenity
Batman Begins
Full Metal Jacket

YOu can't beat that with a stick.

I like this idea as an add-on but just think it's too "clunky". would hope for microsoft to restyle the console and have the HD-DVD as built in instead of add-on. and Hdmi outputs too. package that for $499 with all the trimmings,then i'm sold...

I'm sure this dream will come true sooner than later.

You and me both... I'm not planning on getting a 360 until next year. So if they announce a redesign, I'm there!

Is the HDMI issue only software related? Of course you'd have to buy a new cable but can they 'enable it' via an update?

Also, why has MS been staunchly opposed to using HDMI? Do they pay a fee to use it?

I remember hearing Major Nelson have a guest on who said most tv's unless you bought one this year don't have HDMI. So they claimed it wasn't necessary for the 360 to have an HDMI port.

Cool! I'm an online retailer!

That would be nice, but I decided not to sit around and wait for a redesign/price drop. That could take a while, and I'm going to enjoy watching HD DVDs in the meantime. As far as it being "clunky," that would matter to me if it was a portable device, but to just set the HD-DVD drive on top works for me. It's not like I'm watching that instead of the HD-DVD on the screen...

Has anyone been able to directly compare the HD-DVD add on connected via component cables to an Upconvert DVD player run through HDMI? My brother is telling me there is a difference, but nothing too substantial. Just wondering if anyone else has been able to compare.

Gotya. After re-reading the above I realized we were on the same page anyway. Optical cannot transmit full Dolby TrueHD (it can't do the bit rate over optical). However, it does actually produce audio if you select that track, and it may sound the best to the user of all the available audio tracks. It is just at 640 kbps and would sound even better with a standalone player. With DTS in prior years, you often heard nothing on the DTS track if you didn't have the right equipment.