360 hd-dvd player is now $129.99

Since it lacks lossless audio and there are $199 options out there, this is a good thing. I'd actually say that's a really good price. I'd written it off, but now I might reconsider.
 
^ That doesn't shock me as you get what you pay for in this case. Still, it's pretty easily the cheapest HD-DVD drive around now. My main gripe is that there's no way to get lossless audio from it, but at $129...it's still a decent deal. I guess recent patches have at least enabled Dolby True-HD.
 
Stereophile said:
Food for thought:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2228134,00.asp
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It's great that they tested de-interlacing of 1080i material, unfortunately I can't think of a single HD DVD that actually has 1080i content. Perhaps one nature show, but not any of the movies. So the fact that it scores poorly in deinterlacing is irrelevant since almost everything is 1080p, except for a few 720p porn titles. Sure, there are issues with poorly flagged DVD playback but I haven't heard of anyone purchasing the add-on to play normal dvds.

The article you linked even states that, so I'm not sure why it's food for thought in the HD DVD drive discussion:

The same goes for HD DVDs—it fails miserably at the HQV tests, but those are judging noise reduction and deinterlacing. Most HD DVD movies are going to be progressive and not very noisy at all, so they look pretty darn good on the 360.
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You won't find an HD disc that has noise that needs to be reduced. In fact a lot of AV people are up in arms about discs that have excessive noise reduction during processing of the master.
 
Got this at 179.00 for my htpc with the 9 hddvds. I finally got mine ms dvds last week which they ran out of a few i picked which sucked.
 
Now that you mention it, I STILL don't have my 5 free from Microsoft, and they were ordered some 3 months ago.

Thanks for the reminder :)



ServerKing said:
Got this at 179.00 for my htpc with the 9 hddvds. I finally got mine ms dvds last week which they ran out of a few i picked which sucked.
Click to expand...
 
MrGuvernment said:
and you can tell the diff between lossless and non audio.......
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Absolutely. It's not the same jump from SDTV to HDTV, but it's pretty clear if you play 'em back to back. Try it with a Blu-Ray movie on the PS3. Set it to Dolby 5.1 and then set it to PCM 5.1. If you can't tell the difference, you might as well just put it to mono. The main difference is in the surround channels. Everything sounds a lot louder and clearer. Background activity is loud and clear like it's coming from the center channel. No longer do movies sound like 1 main channel and a 4 supporting channels.
DolbyHD to PCM 5.1's a different story. It's comparable.
 
IcedEmotion said:
so I'm not sure why it's food for thought in the HD DVD drive discussion:
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You're not sure why an article about DVD/HD-DVD playback is relevant to the thread ?

The same goes for HD DVDs—it fails miserably at the HQV tests, but those are judging noise reduction and deinterlacing. Most HD DVD movies are going to be progressive and not very noisy at all, so they look pretty darn good on the 360.
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Still, I saw some of the same issues with video during menus and other mixed-mode content on DVDs, so I'm not giving Microsoft a passing grade here.
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Basically Domingo already summed it up. You get what you pay for. If you're not really into HT and don't care about lossy audio, it's decent. However if you do care about these things, you might be better off paying a bit extra and getting a stand alone HD-DVD player that won't have these issues.
 
Stereophile said:
You're not sure why an article about DVD/HD-DVD playback is relevant to the thread ?



Basically Domingo already summed it up. You get what you pay for. If you're not really into HT and don't care about lossy audio, it's decent. However if you do care about these things, you might be better off paying a bit extra and getting a stand alone HD-DVD player that won't have these issues.
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Did you read the article you quoted? It said the HD DVD drive scored 0 on 1080i source material and noise reduction. HD DVDs are not 1080i source material. On 1080p sources, which is basically every HD DVD, the drive is fine.

The HQV disc is ok to grade standard definition playback in which the drive sucks, but unless you can find me a list of 1080i HD DVDs the 0/100 HD HQV score is useless. It tests a condition that the majority of HD DVD watchers will never come across.

The SD score is less of a worry like I said, because nobody buys the HD addon to watch SD DVDs. I'm assuming they can already use the built in player or any other plain DVD player to do that. Yes it may be used for that purpose, but it isn't the reason they buy the addon.
 
TechLarry said:
Now that you mention it, I STILL don't have my 5 free from Microsoft, and they were ordered some 3 months ago.

Thanks for the reminder :)
Click to expand...

don't worry... I just recieved mine last week and put my order in for them in at the end of July
 
IcedEmotion said:
Did you read the article you quoted?
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Have I given you reason to think otherwise ? Trust me, I can interpret the results of the test.

FWIW playing regular DVDs on the HD-DVD will give the same DVD quality as using the X360 internal drive. It uses the same circuitry. I think you can get stand alone players for as low as $200 now. I guess it depends on what equipment you're using. Some may not mind or notice its compromises.
 
TechLarry said:
Now that you mention it, I STILL don't have my 5 free from Microsoft, and they were ordered some 3 months ago.

Thanks for the reminder :)
Click to expand...

My order was in June, received in Sept. Call up to check on status.
 
MS should just sell the HD DVD add on for $99 and conquer the HD format market once and for all.......
 
I don't really think there's enough of a demand for HD videos for anyone to dominate anything yet.
An upconverting DVD player can make standard DVD's look about 75% as good as HD content. Sure, people in this forum might think it's funny, but you'd be shocked how many people think DVD's are already "HD" as it is. To him, 480p and 1080p aren't that different...especially when he only has a 720p TV at best. Joe average doesn't have a surround set-up, so I doubt he'll notice the difference between lossless 7.1 surround and standard stereo.
For audio/videophiles there's a clear difference, but for the average Joe, there's no motivation to move toward either format and there won't be for quite some time.
If anything, I actually think Michael Bay's "conspiracy theory" about MS wanting both formats to fail and digital downloads to reign supreme might be somewhat true. They won't have the high fidelity of either format, but 99.9% of the population won't know or care.
 
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