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MS Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player: Who's getting it?
- Thread starter hgplayer1
- Start date
Alcibiades
Member
warning about Best Buy: they inflate the prices big time on HD DVDs, especially COMBO & new movies...Meier said:
for example, Superman Returns may be $34.99 at Best Buy, while it's $29.99 at Target & Circuit City...
in the future (when there isn't gift cards and you are using cash), amazon.com has the best prices easily...
Sgt. Killjoy
Member
chinmonster said:
i thought miami vice being grainy was part of the look of the movie. i dunno.
chinmonster
Member
I did too, but not nearly as much as on the HD-DVD. It's not just graininess either, the whole movie just doesn't look very "HD." Like I said, I still like how it looks, it's just not what I really expect from HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.LuCkymoON said:
With or without graininess, it's still a bitchin' film. The HD-DVD extras are really nice, as a matter of fact, I'm about to go watch Michael Mann's epic commentary.
I believe Miami Vice was shot with 1080p digital cameras, so most of the grain or softness/artifacts was likely intentional or added in post poduction.
If that's the case, it's also unusual that it would look much different projected theatrically, as everything was lifted from the same 1080p source.
It's still on my 'to watch' list.
If that's the case, it's also unusual that it would look much different projected theatrically, as everything was lifted from the same 1080p source.
It's still on my 'to watch' list.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
For Miami Vice, (and Collateral) Mann wanted realistic night exteriors, using pretty much just available light, and getting good exposure all the way to the horizon. Unfortunately, if you shoot in near-darkness and want to maintain focus, the price is grain. And, as grainy as the dark scenes in these two movies are, they would be much grainier on film.
Warm Machine
Member
At Christmas at my house my brother and I ended up with a total of 4 360 HD-DVD players!
I bought him one, his friend bought him one, my fiancee bought me one, and my brother bought me one!
As excited as I am I'm horrified by the idea of getting behind my TV and wiring stuff up and I think my HD 36" CRT isn't going to display a massive difference above DVD. It it were an LCD or Plasma I'm sure it would look night and day though. I have King Kong, Pitch Black, Polar Express, and Serenity to try out though.
I bought him one, his friend bought him one, my fiancee bought me one, and my brother bought me one!
As excited as I am I'm horrified by the idea of getting behind my TV and wiring stuff up and I think my HD 36" CRT isn't going to display a massive difference above DVD. It it were an LCD or Plasma I'm sure it would look night and day though. I have King Kong, Pitch Black, Polar Express, and Serenity to try out though.
soul creator
Member
Warm Machine said:
why would you have to get behind your TV for the 360 dvd player?
WHOAguitarninja
Member
Look up about 4 posts.dante786 said:
Craig Majaski
Member
I understand that the Xbox HD-DVD drive is region free for the HD DVDs. But is it also region free for regular DVDs?
The Main Event
Member
I can't decide whether I should get a stand-alone HD-DVD player (Toshiba's newest HD-A2) or get myself a 360 along with the HD-DVD add-on. Yes, it would cost me a lot more, but at the same time there's a couple of 360 games I'm looking forward to, along with some really great promos for the console running till the end of the year.
But the lack of HDMI really bothers me, and that's what refraining myself from jumping on the bandwagon. Guess I'll wait for a while to decide what's the best option.
But the lack of HDMI really bothers me, and that's what refraining myself from jumping on the bandwagon. Guess I'll wait for a while to decide what's the best option.
The Main Event said:
why does the lack of HDMI bother you?
1. your set wont display 1080p anyway (edit: sorry for some reason I confused you with the guy that said he had a 36" CRT. so will your set display 1080p?)
2. do you have an AV reciever that does HD sound?
those are the only two reasons you would really need HDMI.
Craig Majaski said:
no
The Main Event, HDMI is a non-issue for image quality. I'm just about to redo my lounge and hide/channel all my cabling. I'm pretty sure I'll go component only, even for the next five years I doubt there will be a big reason to go HDMI.
The only thing I can think of is audio (360 HDDVD player is a bit flat sounding), but apparantly MS are implementing DTS 1.5Mb/s so it should sound as good as the Toshibas when they use optical/coax out.
Warm Machine
Member
soul creator said:
Because the cabinet is full of components already and so is the powerbar stuff is plugged into. As well my wireless adapter in the back of the 360 needs to come out and be placed on the back of the HD-DVD player other wise I go in through the front controller ports.
I did do a hack job and hooked it up the ugly way just to get it running. Sad thing and lucky thing is that one of the two HD-DVD drives failed on me after about an hour. Just simply stopped running and the power light went out but I could still eject the disc!?! I unpacked the second one and got it working and then swapped the old drive back on the new cables and it didn't work so that drive itself somehow stopped working.
Anyway the new drive seems fine and got all the way through a viewing of Pitch Black. Before watching Pitch Black I did an A to B comparison of Polar Express, DVD to HD-DVD and the results were pretty shocking even on my TV. The detail is much better as was the contrast and color difference. The text in the World Book Encycopedia the boy uses at the start of the film could be read perfectly on the HD version and had difficulty being made out on the DVD version. The text is also unfinished, seems to loop or repeat and ends mid paragraph.
pizzapizza64
Member
Do chains like Blockbuster or Movie Gallery rent HD-DVDs yet? My favorite rental joint (Hastings - a fairly small chain entertainment supercenter place) only sells them.
I want to buy the player with some store credit that I have, but I don't want to have to buy every movie that I watch on it.
Thanks for any helppp.
I want to buy the player with some store credit that I have, but I don't want to have to buy every movie that I watch on it.
Thanks for any helppp.
VictimOfGrief
Banned
yeah all of what... 10 movies they have?Sean said:
seriously, anyone's best bet and getting HD DVD movies at this point is Amazon.
period.
pizzapizza64
Member
Yeah, I was just looking Netflix. It seems like my best bet. I'm weird with movies, though, I don't watch them all of the time. I'll watch a movie a day for about a week, then not watch one for over a month. It all depends on my school work (I'm in grad school and I'm teaching). Still, $5.99 a month seems very fair.
I wish that there was a company that rented high def movies and video games. I'd be willing to do $20 a month for that.
I wish that there was a company that rented high def movies and video games. I'd be willing to do $20 a month for that.
soul creator
Member
Warm Machine said:
you know what, I didn't even think about the power cord, my bad :lol
soul creator
Member
bearcatjosh said:
http://www.gameznflix.com/
they have a crappy website, but it's cheap and they have a distribution center near me, so I've been pretty satisfied. I haven't tried renting any movies though.
DenogginizerOS
BenjaminBirdie's Thomas Jefferson
VictimOfGrief said:
They have them all. Try checking next time so you don't sound like an uninformed ignoramous.
pizzapizza64
Member
soul creator said:
Where is the distribution center? Hopefully on the east coast?
After signing up for Netflix and getting far too addicted to watching HD films (and being of the mind that this format war will never end, but become a two format environment like gaming is three), I went out and got the HD-DVD add-on since I had a 10% off coupon at Best Buy. Picked up Traffic, Out of Sight, 12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Goodfellas (cancelled my BD pre-order of it), Casino, Batman Begins, and Casablanca, and put Deer Hunter/Manchurian Candidate in my queue at Netflix.
Audio/Video quality seems to be what I've come to expect of HD stuff, so I'm generally happy with the discs, but the player itself seems pretty clunky coming from the BD player in the PS3. There are the issues I'm encountering, can someone tell me if the standalone HD-DVD players act any differently (ie, if I should just accept that I got an HD-DVD player for 1/3rd the standalone price so I just deal with little annoyances).
-the player is really laggy when using menus
-In some movies like King Kong I was even getting some audio skipping every time I picked a new chapter or unpaused the film as it sorta lagged to get going.
-King Kong has this stupid pause bar when you pause it which makes taking pics a pain. Other HD-DVDs I tried didn't have this...
-no way to check bitrate on the fly
-can't eject from remote? When I hit eject it just opens the X360 tray, not the HD-DVD tray. Is there no way to back out to the dashboard besides walking up and hitting eject?
-I hate that the overlays like "play" stick around after unpausing or skipping chapters. Is there some way to turn this off?
-The discs seem to have these longass stupid HD-DVD startup videos, and I can't skip to menu (in the universal ones I can't even hit "next" and skip it)
-regarding the overall laggy/slow feeling of the player, when watching Batman Begins with the PiP enabled, when I tried to skip ahead a few chapters at one time (pressed next 3/4 times) and it got stuck and couldn't load up the chapter and was frozen so I had to reset it.
So yeah, is this due to the format itself or just the player?
Oh and does Netflix not carry the dual-combo discs? I wanted to rent Jet Li's Fearless but it said the HD-DVD release date was unknown even though it's out...
As an aside I get jaggies (wtf!) in 1080i (on a 1080i native set) when the Universal logo starts up. >_<
And just for curiosity's sake after a only day of owning an HD-DVD player I'm already at
HD-DVD: 9 discs
Blu-ray: 12 discs
Audio/Video quality seems to be what I've come to expect of HD stuff, so I'm generally happy with the discs, but the player itself seems pretty clunky coming from the BD player in the PS3. There are the issues I'm encountering, can someone tell me if the standalone HD-DVD players act any differently (ie, if I should just accept that I got an HD-DVD player for 1/3rd the standalone price so I just deal with little annoyances).
-the player is really laggy when using menus
-In some movies like King Kong I was even getting some audio skipping every time I picked a new chapter or unpaused the film as it sorta lagged to get going.
-King Kong has this stupid pause bar when you pause it which makes taking pics a pain. Other HD-DVDs I tried didn't have this...
-no way to check bitrate on the fly
-can't eject from remote? When I hit eject it just opens the X360 tray, not the HD-DVD tray. Is there no way to back out to the dashboard besides walking up and hitting eject?
-I hate that the overlays like "play" stick around after unpausing or skipping chapters. Is there some way to turn this off?
-The discs seem to have these longass stupid HD-DVD startup videos, and I can't skip to menu (in the universal ones I can't even hit "next" and skip it)
-regarding the overall laggy/slow feeling of the player, when watching Batman Begins with the PiP enabled, when I tried to skip ahead a few chapters at one time (pressed next 3/4 times) and it got stuck and couldn't load up the chapter and was frozen so I had to reset it.
So yeah, is this due to the format itself or just the player?
Oh and does Netflix not carry the dual-combo discs? I wanted to rent Jet Li's Fearless but it said the HD-DVD release date was unknown even though it's out...
As an aside I get jaggies (wtf!) in 1080i (on a 1080i native set) when the Universal logo starts up. >_<
And just for curiosity's sake after a only day of owning an HD-DVD player I'm already at
HD-DVD: 9 discs
Blu-ray: 12 discs
Alcibiades
Member
Bebpo said:
-In some movies like King Kong I was even getting some audio skipping every time I picked a new chapter or unpaused the film as it sorta lagged to get going.[/quote]
how laggy is it? Warner's in-movie menus are kinda slow, but it shouldn't be that bad... Do you have the latest update for the player?
I think that's the movie, don't know why Universal would do that with this disc, but maybe they just started to do it recently
I don't think there is a way to do it at least on the 360 add-on
maybe someone else can help you here
Using a Toshiba player, I just hit "next" and it gets me right to the movie on the Warner discs; Don't know why it would be different with the 360 add-on
this might be bug issues with the add-on, haven't actually tried something like this on a player though...
soul creator
Member
Bebpo said:
can't you just use the Xbox guide to do that?
Z_Y
Member
Forgive me if this is a stupid question...but do any of you who have the HD-DVD drive also have the Live Vision camera? How does that work with the one USB port in the back? I know this is a silly reason for being apprehensive about picking up the HD-DVD drive but I really don't want to have to constantly use one of the front USB ports for one of these devices. Are there any issues with using a USB hub so that both devices can use the USB port on the back?
edit: Thanks for the answers, guys!
edit: Thanks for the answers, guys!
soul creator
Member
Z_Y said:
the HD-DVD drive itself has 2 USB ports built in and a also a space for the wireless adapter to clip on to. So you actually gain an extra port by buying it I think.
ChrisJames
Member
Z_Y said:
The HD-DVD drive has a couple USB ports in the back of it to make up for that.
edit: yeah, a little late on that one
I just watched The Last Samurai and Casablanca last night and am very impressed with the image quality. I also watched Casino recently and wasn't as impressed, but it still looked good, just not amazing. I would highly recommend Batman Begins, Jet Li's Fearless, and The Mummy too.
Chief McIntosh
Member
I have a couple questions regarding the HD-DVD player...but first, I will tell you my connections and setup.
TV: Samsung 46" DLP 720p (HL-S4676S)
connection: VGA
XBOX output: 720p
some of my SD-DVDs that are widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio (The Thing & Dune) are showing with black bars on the sides and the top, so the image is extremely small and is not using the entire TV.
my impression is that it is playing these are playing in 480p, which creates the bars on the side of my tv, and then the fact that they are widescreen creates the bars on the top and bottom. NOW, based on my understanding of everything, the 360 HD-DVD should be scaling these things to fill the ENTIRE screen, save the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen due to the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I have tested many other widescreen SD-DVD's that are not having this problem...
any thoughts?
TV: Samsung 46" DLP 720p (HL-S4676S)
connection: VGA
XBOX output: 720p
some of my SD-DVDs that are widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio (The Thing & Dune) are showing with black bars on the sides and the top, so the image is extremely small and is not using the entire TV.
my impression is that it is playing these are playing in 480p, which creates the bars on the side of my tv, and then the fact that they are widescreen creates the bars on the top and bottom. NOW, based on my understanding of everything, the 360 HD-DVD should be scaling these things to fill the ENTIRE screen, save the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen due to the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I have tested many other widescreen SD-DVD's that are not having this problem...
any thoughts?
plagiarize
Banned
that was a problem with non anamorphic dvds. the later release of the thing on dvd would have best fit your screen with just thin black bars top and bottom. it's not a mistake that hd-dvd and blu-ray are making given that dvd got around to fixing it after a few years.Chief McIntosh said:
ChrisJames
Member
Chief McIntosh said:
Make sure that your TV is set to stretch mode. My TV has a "view mode" button that will change the display mode. Try changing that while you are watching the DVD.
Aruarian Reflection
Chauffeur de la gdlk
For anybody on the fence about picking up the drive, Circuit City has a $40 off $200 coupon which makes getting the player more affordable. I'm still considering whether I want to get it though, I'm not a big movie watcher.
http://www.circuitcity.com/image/Landing_Pages/AllConnect/print.pdf
For the record, I know a related coupon was floating around in Nov. 2006, but this particular one doesn't expire until 3/31/2007.
http://www.circuitcity.com/image/Landing_Pages/AllConnect/print.pdf
For the record, I know a related coupon was floating around in Nov. 2006, but this particular one doesn't expire until 3/31/2007.
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