Get the xbox 360 HD dvd player or the basic game console? Wait until the new HD, Blue ray hybrids that play both formats come down in price say in a year or just get a upconverting dvd player like the Oppo Opdv971h ?

welcome to my world....lol

I turned my den into a home theater just for movie nights with the family but after comparing HD to standard DVD I'm stuck trying to make the same choice right now. I tried a Panasonic S52 and was not really impressed. If I could get HD PPV on demand over DirecTV I'd be set!

I'd say if you have a big screen (over 70") than the difference is pretty noticeable. I have the 360 with HD player and after watching about 8 movies on it I can definitely see the lower res on dvds when I watch those now. Granted, its not a huge difference (probably like 50% more enjoyable to watch, not double). If you have an xbox 360 already, and have the cash to spend on new hd dvds, then the microsoft player is the cheapest way to go and is not a waste. But if you don't have a 360 yet or if you want to wait and see which format will win then yes, wait a year or so.

Personally I would stick with an oppo now for the sole factor that there are so few movies available on HD-DVD.

I enjoy watching my movies with my xbox 360 HD player. It scales to fit my screen but my playstation 3 blue ray doesn't. I am using the vga cable to watch them with on the xbox.
I'm tending to think that hd and blueray will both be around for a while. Some movies will go only on blueray and some will just stay on hd.
The hd are about the same price as the widescreen dvd's and blueray tends to run 5 to 10 dollars higher.
To me the 200 dollars i spent for the player was worth it. IMO. CS

I bought the HD add on, and it's nice, but honestly, I'm not so sure it's worth the money.

Does it look better? Definately. You WILL see the difference, and it's very nice.

Is there a wealth of movies available on the format? Hell no.

HD-DVD has no support, and there's maybe 20 movies worth owning on it, and considering the premium price, that's really not worth it. I own Batman Begins, V for Vendetta, The Searchers and Superman: The Movie on HD and they all look great, but did that justify the purchase price? Not at all.

Blu-Ray is clearly winning, and it's only going to get worse for HD. The fact of the matter is the only movies you can't get on Blu-Ray are Universals, and even then, their best stuff is classic Spielburg movies, and Spielburg doesn't want them released during the format war!

So, since Jurassic Park, Jaws and the like aren't going to be seen any time soon, you've really got no reason to take the hit and pay 200 bucks for a player that's not going anywhere fast.

Stick to upconverted DVD, you'll never know the difference.

Not worth the money? It's a 200 dollar HD DVD drive... none the less you can use it in a pc with windows vista... if you plug the drive into a windows vista ultimate box, it gets recognized right away... not worth the money he says... it will be a little while until we see high definition dvd's (hddvd or blueray) come down in price

if you use the vga cables on your 360,
the thing does some pretty nice upconversion.
however, id wait out the hd format war and see
who wins before i go and drop some cash on either.
but, the hd dvd player is nice...
so, whatever floats your boat.

EDIT:
yeah, once you think about it,
the war between bluray and hd
will never end
so get one of the hybrids that
does it all.
they are expensive right now though.

so has anyone watched HD DVD's on the evo? and can possibly post screens?

That looks like geek poetry!

I have an elite with the hd-dvd player and maybe 16 movies for it and it is a very nice to have... and considering buying it now gets you 5 free hd dvd's and saw best buy had it for $150 last week if I didnt already have had it I would have picked it up agian.. lol


thinking about buying a friend one too so I can barrow his movies...


IT is a huge diffrence


Buy it

Well the war between VHS and Beta ended... and the lower quality format won... so there is an end in sight. But I would go with wait till the wining format is crowned champion... who wants to fork out hundreds of dollars on something that then becomes redundant within a year or so?

Those who enjoy watching one Hell of an awesome 175" picture in true 1080p

Those who remember Sony's not so great track record with media formats. I mean seriously, betamax, gone, minidiscs, gone, the only format that is still being used that sony had anything to do with is cd's.

And don't forget, Heroes season 1 only on dvd and hd dvd

Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation announced today that they will exclusively support the next-generation HD DVD format on a worldwide basis.

So get that HD dvd add on for $169.24 at walmart with an included copy of King Kong and 5 free HD dvd's (thats 6) via mail.... not so bad and 1080p is nice

Btw Hot Fuzz might have the best picture I have seen thus far on HD

Actually they announced it yesterday.

And it's a 18 month exclusive agreement.

And they were supposedly paid 150 million to do it.

There was a mail in offer for 5 Blu Ray dvds with the PS3 I bought last month for $529 too back when Paramount and Dream Works were exclusively Blu Ray which I'm sure they will be again in 18 months when Sony pays them $150 million to switch back for 18 months and back and forth it will go until the next format comes out.

Oh and the current deal doesn't include any Spielberg movies as he told Microsoft to shove their $150 million he prefers Bluray as does Lucas

Fud , fud, get your fud.

360s play .wmv files without modification or the add on hd dvd player

Worth the money. No question. It's a USB drive, not only useful on your XBOX360.

I have a PS3 also and a couple of upconverting DVD players. They all get screen time.

Upconverted DVDs are great, and it will be good enough for most of my collection to stay on DVD.

But the special movies, like 5th element, Pirates, T2; I will get in HD.

youre all missing the weak link, the 360 itself! you have to add the price of the 360 to that ticket, and their incredibly high failure rate... yeah no thanks. and that effin power brick?! what an eyesore... its about the size of the LL ballast!

So the Xbox power supply won't fit in your parents basement?

The 360 and the HD DVD drive is still cheaper than all but the cheapest Blu-Ray drive. Expect sub $100 HD-DVD Toshiba HD-A2 player this holiday season, even though it is 1080i and all that. The discs available seem to be toe-to-toe, but when players drop into Walmart shopper price territory, you can expect a clear winner by the numbers.

No, actually im 30... but now that you mention it, I doubt it would... My biggest beef with the 360 is the horrible heatpipe system... look it up... if youve ever built a PC you would realise how insufficient it is. That and the fact that MS wont really fess up to this poor design, and fix it. Instead they offer an extended warranty so that you can spend half your time waiting for the replacement in the mail for another year. I really dont care, its just bad business.

As far as the HD-DVD, they are having to bribe movie houses for temporary exclusives, Blockbuster is discontinuing stocking them, as a recordable media they have less capacity, they are inferior... its pretty obvious. I say if youre already invested in a 360, why not pay extra for the drive, but if you were starting from scratch, the PS3 would be a better value, or just wait till the regular players for either format come down in price.

I knew id piss off a fanboy

Stop trolling please.

I wasnt... it was just like I wrote that post and then afterwards I thought, oh jeez... i forgot about XBOX fanboys... thats all... just thought it was funny

[/quote]As far as the HD-DVD, they are having to bribe movie houses for temporary exclusives[/quote]

HD-DVD is not the only one doing some bribing. Sony has been caught as well. It's slimey, yeah, but apparently the way it works.

[/quote]as a recordable media they have less capacity, they are inferior... its pretty obvious. I say if youre already invested in a 360, why not pay extra for the drive, but if you were starting from scratch, the PS3 would be a better value, or just wait till the regular players for either format come down in price.
[/quote]

BetaMax had higher resolution, market penetration and brand recognition, but still lost. Mostly because Sony has very little flexibility when they do something. Just because a media has less capacity, why does it necessarily become inferior? If Blu-Ray has double the capacity of HD-DVD, and costs three times as much, it will not be as popular, and will be inferior to the market. And as far as storage goes, the HD-VMD would probably offer the best bang for the buck, with 20-50Gb of storage, and will probably be use able with current burners with a firmware upgrade. Should also work in current DVD players.

There are a lot of factors in this game, to be calling something "inferior." Don't let Sony sell you on a marketing catchphrase so early.

Beta lost because Sony wouldnt let porn be released on its format. I doubt they will make the same mistake again.... even if they did, who would want to see most of those people in HD anyways? yuck! As far as the media capacity, I was talking about bluray vs hddvd... and as far as capacity, you cannot argue that one, why would you want the option with less capacity unless youre factoring in the video game/fanboy aspect?? And this thread isnt about that particular aspect... im trying to stick to the topic. So I dont see why its hard to comprehend that one format is better than the other, regardless of devotion to a certain company. Personally I dont care who makes what, they are both made by coalitions of many large CE companies, so its not really Sony vs. MS... they are just the big players. Besides, as a movie format, the whole HDMI thing still needs to be resolved, there are other technologies out there with the bandwidth capable of 7.1 audio, and more, but audio and video on the same cable is just asking for problems, as with the lip sync problem, but now theyre having to add yet another feature to Recievers to make up for the simple fact that the audio has a shorter run than the video.... its just a crappy standardization, trying to make better video and audio more end user friendly... make it even easier than composite... too bad most still cant figure that out. And HDCP is a whole other ridiculous situation.
its funny I was just talking value, which was kind of what this thread was about, is the add on drive for the 360 worth it, I said that if you already have a 360, its obviously worth it, but I was saying you also have to factor in the price of the 360 which brings it up to where the PS3 and some of the standalone high def players... so buying the whole MS package from scratch may not be a good idea base on the fact that it is likely to cook itself.