HD DVD for XBox 360
At a time when everyone is scrambling to get a Playstation 3 or a Nintendo Wii, I was on the hunt for an HD DVD player for the Xbox 360. I finally found one at my local Hastings (there were two on the shelf, actually), and so I immediately picked one up...along with U-571 and Swordfish (really, the only good titles they had in the limited selection). Fortunately, the player came with a copy of King Kong as well. The titles were cheaper than I'd expected/heard (only $19.99) and all came with the dual layer format that offers HD DVD and normal 480i/p SD DVD compatibility (edit: hum...this may be misleading, as the HD DVD isn't recognized in a couple DVD players I've tried it in so far...now I'm trying to figure out what that included 480p content even means.).

Well, I got the player connected. It was pretty simple, and just involved unplugging my vision camera from the back USB port, and plugging the drive into it as well as power, after installing a DVD in the original XBox for drivers. The vision camera then plugs into one of two additional USB ports on the drive. I have a 1080p TV, but not one that can accept it over the component cables (technically, it CAN accept 1080p over component as well as the VGA interface, but only up to 30Hz...360 only outputs 1080p/60Hz.../sigh), and they don't have an HDMI plug for the 360 (yet). Popped in King Kong, and waited. The movie spun up pretty quick and the intro HD DVD logo played. Looked pretty crystal clear (even at only 1080i...grin...only). I wish the VGA connector for the Xbox 360 worked on this TV (it doesn't...again, due to only 1080p/30Hz). It would be very cool if Microsoft had the ability to release a dash update to the 360 that would allow 1080p/30Hz over the component cables (or VGA). To my knowledge, 1080p/60Hz is only supported on my HP MD5880n over HDMI. I don't remember how good this movie looked in 480p, but some of the opening scenes in the old time New York (or wherever they were) were phenomenal. Color was fantastic and brilliantly crisp. Sharp edges defined objects and detail was impressive. Fast skipped to more of the action scenes and King Kong about 1 hour into this massive 3 hour long movie. Even the dark scenes look pretty damn good on this (maybe thanks to my HP display). Forgot how gory this movie is in the bug valley scene. I'll have to see if playing the HD DVD in the standard DVD mode on the 360 looks noticably worse or if I'm just justifying the purchase...grin. Something tells me it probably isn't worth the extra $199 for the player and premium of the HD DVD movie format, but going forward, it will be nice. Maybe...it is pretty damn clear and bright. Great...now I have to start replacing all my DVD's with HD DVD's.

Update 10/21/06: I'm getting 1080i out of my 360 with the HD DVD player. King Kong looks fantastic, however, I'm less impressed with Swordfish and a couple other titles I've watched so far. At this point, my HTPC with DVI output in 1080p (software upscaler), and even my hacked original Xbox running XBMC (upscaling to 1080i) looks pretty damn close to as good. You should see Ice Age (DVD) upsampled in a good software player at 1080p on this TV. It is pretty freaky and makes you question why you would even need HD DVD...

Update 12/3/06: I downloaded drivers for the PC to make it recognize the HD DVD player, after finding this page that talked about using the drive on a PC, and I can browse the file structures and everything on my HTPC. The program that evaluates your computer to see if it can play back HD DVD shows that my video card is not HDCP compliant, so the software players refuse to run on it, and even my 2.8GHz P4 is below requirements for playback (Holy crap!). So far, I haven't found a player that works (at least nothing I can down load and try out). Both WinDVD and PowerDVD seem to say that they have plug-ins that will work, but most seem to agree that you can only get them with bundled Hardware at this point. Sounds like they should have something out by the middle of December. Sure wish I could get a player so I could compare true 1080p output from my HTPC over DVI with my XBox 360 1080i over component.

Update 12/13/06: I have finally decided that HD DVD looks decidedly better than it's DVD compliment (even at only 1080i...dang Microsoft...please hurry and fix the dashboard to work with my 1080p TV over component). I was mostly comparing HD DVD to titles like Star Wars Episode II and III, which are actually quite spectacular for 480p. The color saturations and full digital production from start to finish really shine in that movie. So, I'm convinced that 480p content CAN look good, but for the most part it is grainy. Even HD DVD is only going to be as good as its source material. For example, I own both the DVD and HD DVD version of We Were Soldiers. For the most part, both look pretty poor from a video quality stand point. The film is grainy and not exactly brilliant. Still it is clearly better on HD DVD, scene for scene. I was disappointed by the quality, but I attribute that to the source. I'm interested in seeing how Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow looks on HD DVD. I think it will look good. I also got HDScapes Saltwater Aquariums HD. It has a dual sided disk, one for DVD content players and one side for HD DVD. This is nice, because I can compare the exact same source material in 480p DVD vs. 1080i (for now...hurry, Microsoft...new dash code or even better, an HDMI cable). I'm not impressed with the quality of the video in either format, for starters, and I think the disk is going to be returned to Amazon. But I can attest that the HD DVD is far better than the poor quality of the DVD content.

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- posted by Jeff @ 4:53 PM | 0 comments