My Xbox HD-DVD Drive Arrived

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-hddvd-drive.jpg

Woo-hoo! I've been waiting for this product to be released for quite some time now, so I was excited that it came so quickly. I'm about to race upstairs and hook it up - post any questions if you have them and I'll do my best to answer them.

[Chris Gohlke]

Be interested in getting your thoughts. I've been on edge of buying a 360 and the HD drive out of frustration on trying to get a Wii.

[Vincent Ferrari]

DROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[humayunl]

I have a question.... do you also plan to get a PS3 (or a BRD player) or did you make your decision are have decided to go with HD-DVD instead of BRD?

I am asking because i'm sitting on the fence but getting impatient!

[Jason Dunn]

I have a question.... do you also plan to get a PS3 (or a BRD player) or did you make your decision are have decided to go with HD-DVD instead of BRD?

Nah, I've decided to go HD-DVD. I believe Blueray will fail in the long run, and HD-DVD will be the standard. But I don't expect to be buying lots of HD-DVDs...they're still too expensive for my taste. But maybe once I plug this in and see the difference I'll change my mind... ;-)

[humayunl]

Nah, I've decided to go HD-DVD. I believe Blueray will fail in the long run, and HD-DVD will be the standard. But I don't expect to be buying lots of HD-DVDs...they're still too expensive for my taste. But maybe once I plug this in and see the difference I'll change my mind... ;-)

Deep down inside I agree.... but I don't know why I am still waiting for the PS3 (and especially why, i bought two BRD movies yesterday in anticipation of the PS3) hehe.

Actually, i got a great deal. Tower recods (in downtown chicago) is closing and I got BRD movies for 8 bucks each.

[Jason Dunn]

Deep down inside I agree.... but I don't know why I am still waiting for the PS3 (and especially why, i bought two BRD movies yesterday in anticipation of the PS3) hehe.

Fight the hype! The PS3 isn't all that impressive. ;-)

Actually, i got a great deal. Tower recods (in downtown chicago) is closing and I got BRD movies for 8 bucks each.

I think in about 36 months, there will be a lot of "fire sale" on BluRay movies. ;-)

[Felix Torres]

Does it upscale regular DVD's to 720p at all?

Yes, if you use the VGA cable.
It will upscale to the native resolution of most every HD display out there.

[Darius Wey]

Nice! I've spoken to a couple of people who already have the Xbox 360 HD DVD and they think it's fantastic. Personally, I'm waiting for a price drop, though I definitely plan on picking one up.

[jeffd]

<- isnt getting 360 till it supports 1680x1050... damn freaking behind the curve companies. ^^

[Felix Torres]

Anybody interested in seeing how HD-DVD looks might want to d/l a few of these:
http://www.drfoster.f2s.com/trailers_hd-dvd.shtml

They'll play on the Xbox quite nicely off USB mass-storage.
The best-looking are the usual suspects; Riddick, Serenity, King King.

Wish they had a 1080p version of the trailer for 300.
It is scary enough at 720 off XBL...

[Phronetix]

I'm confused about some of the technical issues regarding release of movies in the HD-DVD format.

What resolution were these movies filmed in? I was under the impression most studios still used analog to record video. So, how does one get a high def digital file from the analog? Is it simply a matter of making the pixels smaller relative to the analog picture? And if a movie is released in standard format, from where does the HD version get made?

Dennis, who looked but couldn't find HDdigitalmediathoughts.com ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

What resolution were these movies filmed in? I was under the impression most studios still used analog to record video. So, how does one get a high def digital file from the analog?

I'm no expert, but film, real film, is very high resolution - kind of like how 35mm film is about 12 megapixels, but people shooting medium format 4 x 6 still have more resolution than most cameras...somewhere on the order of 35 megapixels I think. Analog doesn't mean low resolution, though it's a common misconception. I have no clue what full sized film is in resolution, but there's also a lot of digital cameras out now where the directors film in HD. If you look at films in a theatre, they're higher resolution than a DVD, that's for sure. Way more detail, and on a screen 100x bigger than most TV sets.

And if a movie is released in standard format, from where does the HD version get made?

When a movie is filmed and is transferred to DVD, it's definitely a down-sample. So I think even old movies can look good in HD-DVD. I'm looking forward to seeing some HD-DVD movies from older movies, just to see how good they can be.

I'm very vague on this whole issue because I just don't know enough technical details. :-)

[Kicks]

I have the HD-DVD addon as well and I love it so far. The "menu's" seem a tad slow sometimes, but the picture quality is quite nice and that's running at the 720p vga equivalent res with the vga cable. I can't wait until Disney starts to support HD-DVD (no official time frame yet due to aggressive apple/disney blu-ray support).

I have not yet tried to hookup my hd-dvd addon to my laptop in vista or xp yet :)