PGR series is not sim racer.

Awesome. I'll stop by after work today and give it a shot. Thanks, Decker.

True, but the demo of PGR4 felt a little SIMish to me. I guess I've adapted to Burnout.

True, it's more of an awkward in-between of arcade and sim.

It's like playing Ridge Racer with Gran Turismo controls.

I would say PGR4 is more sim-oriented than PGR3. Plus, PGR4 has broken out the Arcade and Career modes more than in PGR3. The career mode seems less dependent on Kudos to finish challenges. Your motivation to get Kudos is to buy more stuff.

The "Arcade" Branding seems odd to me, because since it doesn't have a hard drive you won't be able to really use it as an XBLA machine. I know it comes with a few Arcade games, but how would you add more in the future, besides buying a hard drive or more memory cards?

deleting games as you are done playing them. They are a quick download if you want to replay titles.

Okay, I have a question regarding using the 360 as a dvd player.

I hooked up my HD add-on the other day & HD discs look great. I then popped in a standard dvd to see what it would look like. Please note that I am running my Xbox thru component cables as my HDTV does not have HDMI.

The first thing I noticed was the black screen changed to a much lighter black screen. It did this when it was done loading the standard dvd and started to run it (the black screen you get and then the copyright message ). It looks almost green it is illuminated so much.

I checked some HD-dvds and the black stays black. No illumination. I put the standard dvd in the Xbox itself and it did the exact same thing. I then put a game in and the black stayed black.

What would be causing this? I hooked my trusty old Denon back up and the screen stayed black. No illumination. I thought maybe it was a setting or something but I tried it in the same inputs on the TV as the 360 was using.

I was looking forward to just having one dvd/hd player and not having a couple of players hooked up.

I found the hidden/confusing setting for the better sound on the HD 360 player (choose DTS instead of just DD5.1 even though there are no DTS HD discs right now). So am I missing a setting for picture?

It seems like it is doing this when it is adjusting the picture from 1080i down to 480p. Anyone else come across this or checked this? It's not a huge deal but it lightens up the blacks so much that it can really affect the picture quality.

Sorry I can't help you, but this is the main reason why i am still holding off on the add-on. I don't have a 360 with HDMI, and my TV doesn't accept 1080p via component, so I would be watching discs in 720p, the same as my upconverting player.

Plus i don't want to start an expensive addiction to buying more movies...

That is odd... but you do know that even the HD-DVD player won't upconvert regular DVDs over component, right? You might as well use the regular 360 slot if that comes out better, for whatever odd reason.

That's the thing, it does this with any standard dvd whether it is in the 360 slot or in the HD add-on player. It seems like it is doing this when it adjusts in going from 1080i to 480p. Like I said, HD-dvds and games look fantastic and don't do this.

I also understand that no player upconverts over component.

No hassles at all picking it up today. The only question was whether they had any sets in stock. I got the last one, probably because they had already sold out of the HD DVD drives.

Here is a couple shots I took from my HD-DVD add on. I played the SD and HD sides of the disc in the HD player. Black Level in the 360 display settings is set to Extended. TV is a 65" Mits RPTV. Colors look basically the same too me.

SD - 480p


HD - 1080i

I noticed the difference in black levels too. I thought it was just that HD-DVD makes regular DVD look bad. In other words, I thought regular DVD always had brighter blacks, but I never noticed it until I got used to watching HD-DVDs.

I thought so too until I hooked my old dvd player back up and found that was not the case.

Don't get me wrong...the black in HD is far superior to the black on my original dvd player. But the heavily lit black on the 360 for standard dvd is just too bright too not ask about.

Bummer. I've been bragging about how much better blacks are on the HD-DVD player based on how bad they are when I play regular DVDs in the HD-DVD drive.

Is it bad on both the 360 drive and the HD-DVD drive? I started using the HD-DVD drive when I watch any DVD so it's been a while since I played a movie on the 360 itself.

Taken from xbox.com

I had no idea about that. I'm going to have to look into those settings myself.

My TV's calibrated just fine and everything in 480p (from my stand alone dvd player) and everything in HD from my 360 looks great. But stuff in 480p from my 360 (like BC Xbox games or SD dvds) look all washed out with horrible black/white levels, and I know it's not my TV.

I tried this and there was absolutely no change of black levels in 480p material between the different settings. But it's not too big a deal since I don't play too many BC games or watch too many SDdvds on my 360 anyways.

Woah! Thanks edstein! I knew I wasn't going crazy.

So there are two different settings for black levels using the component cable? Thanks kinda strange. It seems like one would affect the other whether you are sending an HD signal or just 480p.

The second part is what interests me of course since the 360 & the HD player look fine when delivering an HD picture. Where do you find this black level setting that is used only with 480i or 480p?

It's in the the normal 360 display settings area. Same place where you set the resolution output and the aspect ratio.

This is a new feature that was added in the spring dashboard update.

So are there two settings or just one? If there is just one black setting, how will changing that not affect the HD/game playback? The paragraph you quoted made it sound like their were two different setting...one for HD/games & one for 480i/480p standard dvds.

Like I said, games & HD-dvds look fan and the black level is perfect. I don't want to harm that by changing it just to get standard dvds better.

Haven't downloaded it yet, but it looks like it might be a decent party game.

It is such a travesty that Scene It doesn't have multiplayer through Live.

Far as I know, there is only one black setting and it only effects DVD playback, upconverted or not. Games and HD material are unaffected.