I got around to trying the HD-DVD Xbox 360 add on and I have to say I am incredibly impressed. I have it connected with Component Cables so I am limited to 1080i resolution, but King Kong looks stunning.
I have made a few trips to try and buy another HD-DVD movie, but I just haven’t found anything that warranted the $20-30 price per. I am waiting for a big movie like The Lord of the Rings or Casino Royale (Which I think will be blu-ray only, eww)
That being said, I took a few comparison shots of King Kong in HD-DVD as well as King Kong in 480p on the same TV to show you the differences as best I can. I will tell you that the difference in person is even more drastic than these photos depict.
Regular DVD
HD-DVD
Regular DVD
HD-DVD
A few things weren’t clear to me so I wanted to take a few minutes to make them more clear. The HD-DVD add on does NOT upscale regular DVD unless you are using the VGA cable. I do have the VGA cable, and tried it, but on my television, the image suffered from major washed out color when using the VGA cable. It was unusable to me so I didn’t do much further testing. The TV is a 65″ Mitsubishi 1080p DLP TV so I doubt it was because of a junky television.
It does display DVD in progressive scan and actually looks quite a bit better than my Panasonic upscaling HDMI DVD player. There was a noticeable difference especially in anti-aliasing and edges/patterns. I think the DVD player does an amazing job.
There is definitely more noise when the Xbox 360 and the HD-DVD are running, it’s audible during quieter scenes.
All negatives aside, the Xbox 360 makes a graceful interface for a DVD player and the picture quality is exceptional. I would not personally recommend the VGA cable to get to 1080p but I welcome comments from anyone who had better luck than I did with it.
I only got the player because my DVD player died and I needed a replacement anyway, I can’t say I would recommend it as a stand alone purchase. The selection of HD-DVD movies is pretty slim, they are kind of expensive, and quite a few of the upcoming movies I really want seem to only have release dates for Blu-Ray, I am hoping that changes.
[...] Xbox 360 HD-DVD Add-On Drive ReviewXbox 360 HD-DVD Add-On Drive Review By Jason Burns on February 15th, 2007 with no comments Read more articles on Home Theater . I got around to trying… [...]
You mentioned:
“There is definitely more noise when the Xbox 360 and the HD-DVD are running, it’s audible during quieter scenes.”
Thanks for the heads up on this, I will pass it on to my clients.
Here are my thoughts…
The HD DVD add on to Xbox was a good business move on their part. It gives the owner a chance to enjoy HD content without the full HDDVD price normally associated with a player.
The real question is that with Blue ray sales dominating over HDDVD sales at this time is that will Xbox eventually come up with a blue ray attatchment?