Xbox 360 HD DVD Player
May 8th, 2010 | 
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 List Price: $49.99 Sale Price: $53.00 
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You've experienced next-generation gaming on Xbox 360 - now experience next-generation DVD movies with HD DVD. The Xbox 360 HD DVD player is the most affordable way to jump into the next generation of DVD technology, along with the flexibility to enter when you are ready. Just plug Xbox 360 HD DVD player into Xbox 360 and enjoy the ultimate home theater experience with more clarity and detail than broadcast, cable or satellite HD. Feed your HDTV the high definition content it craves with HD DVD on Xbox 360!
- Stunning video and immersive surround-sound audio with up to six times higher resolution than standard DVD
- Innovative interactive content enables PIP commentary, scene selection, and menu access, all while the movie is playing!
- Only HD DVD offers a 'combo' disk: DVD on one side allows playback on all your existing DVD players in your home or car
- Enjoy hundreds of great HD DVD movies this holiday from major studios such as Universal, Warner, Paramount, Studio Canal, and more
Posted in Microsoft Games
Rating
This is an incredible HD-DVD player! Setup was a breeze. Just plug it in and pop in the install disc included. That’s it. Just be sure to reboot your 360 after the install. Otherwise when you try and play a movie it will be incredibly jerky. A quick reboot and you’re up and running.
Next, it’s FAST. I mean REALLY fast. Not quite as snappy as a DVD, but still it’s quick. It loads the movie in about 30 sec., the menus are responsive, and chapter skipping is quite good. If you’ve ever seen an Toshiba HD-A1 boot up, it’s like comparing a Yugo to an F1 car.
Next the picture is amazing. I only have a 720p set running through component, but the detail and crispness are striking. I’ll have to compare “King Kong” to “Batman Begins” when it comes tomorrow, but so far I am VERY impressed. The sound is also very good. I don’t have a system that can handle anything better than DTS, so anything with Dolby TrueHD will have to be evaluated by someone else. However I don’t know if the 360 can actually output Dolby TrueHD yet, but since everything is being done via software that’s easy to remedy.
If you have a 360, buy this drive. It’s the cheapest and best HD-DVD player out there for the price.
Rating
I’ve been watching HDTV programming for quite a while now, so I was expecting only a minor improvement going to HD-DVD/Blu-ray. Boy was I wrong! The picture quality on the included King Kong disc is absolutely stunning! The difference isn’t the resolution, but rather the lack of compression artifacts, and the great care taken in the making of this HD transfer. I hadn’t realized how much I had gotten accustomed to the compression artifacts in HDTV broadcasts. The stunning clarity of a well-mastered HD source really caught me by surprise. If you’ve already got an Xbox 360 and an HDTV, this HD-DVD drive is well worth the purchase.
Setup is extremely easy. Plug it into the wall, but don’t plug it into the Xbox just yet. Power up the Xbox and plop the update CD into the internal drive. It will install an update to your system and then prompt you connect the external drive via the included USB cable. That’s it! Put in a movie and enjoy!
Navigation with a remote works well, just like a normal DVD player. I actually used my univeral remote, so I can’t comment specifically on the bundled Microsoft remote, but it looks pretty typical.
As a bonus, this drive is recognized by Windows XP when plugged into a USB2 port. At the moment, there’s no way to watch the movie itself, but you can see all the files on the disc, and it brings hope that with the next releases of PowerDVD/WinDVD, we might be able to watch HD-DVD movies on a PC using this drive.
Rating
If you already have a 360, then this is your cheapest way to get HDDVDs on your TV. I actually got mine from Circuit City for $159, so there was no way I could pass it up. The picture quality is great. Not having HDMI is not a big deal since component looks just as good. Also, the studios have said they don’t plan on invoking ICT. The only real bummer is it can only output audio via Toslink. What this means is you can’t hear Dolby TrueHD with it. It gets downconverted (along with DD+) to regular DD. It still sounds better than DVDs, however. The only solution to this is if Microsoft decides to add HDMI in the future, but even then you will need an A/V Reciever that can decode TrueHD, which doesn’t exist yet.
Overall, I say if you have a 360, you can’t go wrong with the price. If you don’t have a 360, you may be better off getting the second generation Toshiba player that is due in a couple of weeks.
Rating
I have had HD in my house for over a year. When we got our 1st HD set we were amazed by the picture quality of HDTV broadcasts. A year later and we are still impressed, but we have become more “used to it.” Well, the reaction when I first showed King Kong to everyone in my house can be sumed up in one word, “Wow!” That’s it, nothing else needs to be said.
On the subject of HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, every movie I have seen for Blu-ray has looked grainy (even Mission Impossible 3). No such negative for HD DVD. For me, HD DVD is the clear (lol) winner.
P.s. Please remember to re-boot your xbox after the install and before playing a movie. If you don’t, you’ll get choppy playback.
Rating
If you have an XBOX 360 and and HDTV, this HD-DVD drive add-on is a no brainer. Microsoft utilized the 360’s three processor cores and implemented a software based solution for decoding HD video. The results are pretty amazing. The picture generated over a component cable connection is crystal clear and beautiful. Colors are strong and vibrant, and the picture quality is light years beyond DVD. I’ve found the alternative format (Blu-Ray) to be washed out and not nearly as clean and crisp as the HD-DVD format on my Samsung DLP (1080i). I was thoroughly impressed, and extremely happy that I made this purchase.
For a limited time, the package also includes a 360 media remote and a King Kong HD-DVD. Can’t beat it. Worth every penny.
Rating
In one word, yes. As for picture, I think it says all I need to when I’m staring at the FBI warning screen and catch myself drooling. No I didn’t use an HDMI cable and my Samsung DLP is rated only up to 1080i, but I own a $3000 Denon that plays 1080p, or lets you pick, and the image quality was better with the Xbox 360. Hey, it’s using three core chips for signal processing, upsampling while the top Denon only has two(at 200+ MgHz), so am I surprised that the xbox player won…yes. I’ve been watching for about a week now and tested all the shows I could on my system and hands down, better sound, stunning image.
It loads WAY faster than the Toshiba HD-DVD player as well as the Samsung BR player. I like both formats, but when you take price, quality, and compare it to some high-end competition and it wins, I say go cheep. I’ve seen them all (I own an A/V company), so I know words are cheap. Therefore, all I can say is I live for sound and movies and this was the most impressive display I’ve seen. I may be dead wrong, but go with the warranty and check it out for yourself. Just don’t get scared when the salesman starts talking about the HDMI cable. If you’re worried, go with the S-VGA cable if your TV will take it and you want to try it versus the
component.
Overall, if you’re looking for the next thing and want it now, try out the xbox-360 HD-DVD player.
Hope this helps and sorry I didn’t put in a negative section, but I just haven’t found something to complain about when compared to the other two players.
Happy shopping.
Rating
I’ve been using this Xbox HD-DVD player for almost a month now and so far it works just great. I actually had no plans to buy either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD until one of those losers became a dominate player. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. And for $200, I couldn’t pass it up since I already had an Xbox. And I couldn’t bring myself to keep buying low-def regular DVD’s with these awesome HD DVD’s out there. AND, the HD DVD combo discs still have regular DVD content for normal DVD players in other rooms in the house.
Out of the box, this drive is extremely easy to setup. Just pop in the setup CD, plug it in, and you’re ready to go. There is a separate power cord as well. The included remote is nice, but I’ll stick with my Harmony 880. It’s able to control all the basic functions of the player. The player is also unable take advantage of the improved audio quality of HD-DVD, so you just get the normal “good” audio quality you had with previous DVD’s. Which isn’t bad, but still somewhat disappointing. Otherwise, all the menu’s work nicely, the player starts up fairly quick, and the picture quality is awesome – for component video at least.
Component is probably the biggest negative I can think of – and that’s really due to the Xbox 360’s fault, not the player itself. If you think HD DVD looks good on your xbox component connection in 1080i, just wait until you see it via your HDMI port in 1080i or even 1080p (if your TV accept 1080p and is big enough to take advantage of such a high res). Unfortunately, there is no word of HDMI for the xbox. So you only get 1080i via the Component connection. To get 1080p, you need the VGA cable, which has a somewhat better picture.
So I bought the VGA cable. The picture does look a little better on my 61′ Samsung HL-S6187W since it’s also at 1080p, but there is a 1-3″ border around the screen, and the image is tilted. Samsung had no idea how to fix it. But I suspected that might happen since a TV with a VGA port is still a TV, not a PC Monitor. Your results will of course vary depending on your model TV.
The VGA port limitations aren’t that big of a deal. If you REALLY want 1080p, you just need HDMI – period. I’ll live with 1080i via Component for now until the 1080p players come down in price. In the meantime, at least I’ve got some awesome looking HD movies to watch on my new TV!
Pros:
* Cheapest HD-DVD solution if you have an XBox 360
* Easy to setup
* Accepts IR from your universal remote via the Xbox
* Great picture quality
* Includes Microsoft Remote and free King-Kong HD-DVD
* UPDATE: HDMI Output (with Xbox 360 Elite Only)
Cons:
* Only outputs 1080i via Component (VGA required for 1080p)
* VGA output has limitations, both due to Xbox and/or your TV
* Can’t take advantage of HD-DVD improved audio quality formats
Bottom line, if you have an Xbox 360, and have a HD TV, you’ve gotta pick one of these up. You just can’t go wrong for a $200 entry-level HD player!
*** ELITE/HDMI UPDATE ***
Just purchased the Xbox 360 Elite w/ HDMI. This HD DVD player is even more awesome than before. We just watched the entire Matrix Trilogy in HD DVD in 1080p on the 61″ Samsung DLP – and it looked awesome. When compared to component, the HDMI picture is much more crisp, detailed, and even better black levels. Definately recommended!
Rating
(edited March 2009)
As you should be aware, Blu-ray has won the format war. If you’re looking at one of these, it’s probably just as an accessory drive to reduce wear-and-tear on your 360’s DVD drive. I still use mine for that purpose, although I wouldn’t recommend paying more than about thirty or forty bucks for one.
Pros: Easy setup. Plugged it in, installed a firmware upgrade, and started watching a movie. The integration with the 360 is well executed; at any time in the movie, you can bring up the 360 guide blade, or even switch over to the 360 dashboard. So if you have a disc in each drive, you can switch between gaming and watching movies as much as you like without having to restart the console. This is surprisingly useful. Don’t worry about losing a USB port on your 360, because the HD DVD player itself has an extra two input ports on the back, allowing you to use four wired controllers, should you so desire. Finally, the drive is extremely quiet, making it the obvious choice for standard DVD playback.
Cons: The external enclosure will unfortunately add more clutter and tangle to your setup, especially since the HD DVD drive has its own power plug. It does not upsample regular DVDs over component video cables, just like any other DVD player on the market; however, this can be done by any 360 (with or without the HD DVD drive) if you use HDMI or VGA cables instead of component.
Here’s a quick feature list:
- Plugs into your 360 via USB.
- Has two additional USB ports on the HD DVD drive (allowing the use of a total of 4 wired controllers, should you wish to).
- Has its own, clunky power supply (it is not powered by the 360).
- Much, much quieter than the 360’s built-in regular DVD drive.
- Software integrates it into the 360’s Dashboard, allowing you to swap between playing games and watching a movie without restarting the console or ejecting the disc.
- No additional A/V cables, which means it displays on your TV through your 360.
- It DOES NOT upsample regular DVDs over component cables. However, it appears that all 360s (with or without this drive) can upsample regular DVDs if you use HDMI or VGA cables instead of component cables. (thanks to commenter Michael Andreev)
- If you have an old 360 without HDMI, you probably cannot view HD DVDs at higher resolution than 720p, unless your TV accepts 1080p over component cables (this is rare at this point) or your TV has a VGA port. If you have one of the newer 360 models with HDMI, you can output up to 1080p.
I hope this review has been helpful to you. If you have anything you think I should add or any changes to suggest, leave a comment and I’ll check back occasionally.
Rating
Let me admit, when I heard about the new Dual Blu-ray/HD-DVD player, I was glad that the format war(from my perspective) would be over since I could purchase any HD movie and not be afraid that the format will tank and would have to rebuy the movie on the other format. But since I am an avid gamer, I had already purchased an Xbox 360 before that and was considering my options. I had already paid $400 for the 360, and another $200 would be $600 for the 360+hd dvd add on. And to play blu ray movies, $600 for the PS3. Now that is $1200, and the dual format blu-ray+hd dvd is $1200. I would think that one would take the Xbox 360+360 hd-dvd player+PS3 over the dual format player because you are getting more for your money. You get games, blu-ray and hd-dvds vs. blu-ray movies and hd-dvds WITHOUT the interactive menu features. That means on the dual format it will act like a dvd and to select scenes you will have to go back to the main menu. I am a true av fan and want the best from my technologies. With that said, I am a proud owner of a 360+360 hd-dvd and a PS3(60gb) and it is the greatest AV experience u will ever have. ’nuff said.
Rating
Without getting into debates as to which hi-def movie format is the better one because that battle will still be going on for a while, I would rather tell you all why I purchased this product. It’s simple. I’m a gamer first, so therefore I already owned an Xbox 360. So I viewed it as buying a HD-DVD player for far less than what one would cost in the store. Considering Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were still very expensive at the time I bought it, how could I pass it up? Owning a 360 essentially gives someone a headstart into the hi-def arena (granted, they are cheaper now than when I bought it, as is natural with technology so the difference isn’t as great).
Like most Xbox 360 peripherals it’s very easy to set up and works flawlessly, and I don’t have a single complaint about it besides the fact that both HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray discs still cost way too much but that has nothing to do with the player. Unfortunately, my 360 is not one of the newer models with HDMI, but that really doesn’t matter because I have a 720p TV right now anyway. The TV is what makes the real difference.
The market has changed since I bought this, but I’m happy with it.