Just bought a 360, preordered hd-dvd

[Malakai]

Well, after many months of thinking about it, I finally bought an Xbox 360 system, Enchanted Arms, Plug n Charge kit, and intercooler system, at bestbuy. I also ordered 3 other 360 games off of ebay that aren't here yet: Moto GP 2006, Oblivion, and Battle for Middle Earth II.

I bought the premium system, which included the hard drive, headset, hd av cable, ethernet cable, and wireless controller but still have to buy the wireless game adapter, which is way overpriced, at $99 at most retailers. In the coming weeks, we'll see if there are any on ebay for a good price.

Gamestop was the only online store that I could find that is taking pre-orders for the HD-DVD 360 drive. So, I pre-ordered one from there as well. Blu-Ray will probably win the format war in the end, but as of right now, I'm not going to pay $1000+ just for a blu-ray player, and after buying the xbox premium, accessories, games, and some other various wifi stuff, I probably won't get the ps3 system at launch..

I would have liked to waited until 2007, when microsoft will be replacing their current cpu with one that will run a lot cooler, but I didn't want to wait any longer.. PSU is coming out in like a month or so, which I'll hopefully get too :/

 

[VertigoXX]

Why does anyone think BR is gonna "win the format war"? HD-DVD is less expensive, and the movies are capable of being played on most older DVD players (using the regular DVD layer). BR is too sensitive to scratches to even handle the discs without velvet gloves, let alone how discs get handled around here (3 younger siblings, etc.).

While I still think Wii is gonna be the best of the 3 (fun factor rather than 'hardkore grafix'), between PS3 and X360, you probably made the right choice. PS3 is going to be like the 3DO was, the way-too-expensive system everyone drools over but can't actualy afford. By the time Sony performs a rectal-cranial seperation and lowers the price, it'll be too late and only hardcore gamers will pick it up.

 

[Malakai]

This is just my take on it. I think blu ray will win based on content, not on price. Based on what is available on HD-DVD vs BD discs right now, I like a lot more of the BD movies.

Silent Hill, Underworld Evolutions, Fifth Element, Saw, House of Flying Daggers, Lord of War, Click, Benchwarmers, Brothers Grimm, Dark Water, The Great Raid, Punisher, Stargate, The Terminator 1, Terminator 2, House of Wax, Stealth, Species, Ultraviolet, Flightplan, The Omen, Descent, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Enemy of the State, etc.

I'm not saying that all of the above movies are great, but are generally the types of movies I like. Now for a list of HD DVDs that I'm interested in:

Army of Darkness, Land of the Dead, 12 monkeys, the green mile, van helsing, Slither, V for Vendetta, The Thing, Dune, ....

And then there are a few that are available on both: Corpse Bride, Full Metal Jacket, Sahara, Tomb Raider, T-3 (I think HD DVD is skipping 1 and 2 for now, while blu-ray will have them all).

For some unknown reason, HD DVD is promoting happy gilmore, while blu-ray has a lot of the newer stuff, like basic instinct 2, ultraviolet, and others.

 

[VertigoXX]

Distribution rights for T3 are owned by Fox and Universal. T1 and T2's US distribution rights were bought by Artisan in the late 90's, who in turn got bought by Lion's Gate. I'm not quite sure who ended up with the rights to the first two Terminators after that. (Though, I do know that Fox is the ones doing the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series.)

And keep in mind, this early in the game, of course movies from studios owned by Sony are only going to be avaliable on Sony's format.

Truth be told, in the long run, I expect both formats to fail. Regular DVD has just in the past 2 years or so become the expected standard. (My fiance works at Blockbuster, and they still get more people every day who come in and leave in frustration because they no longer have VHS movies.)

The mass consumer market is not ready to upgrade. This will be like when Laserdisc came out. Early adopters loved it, but in the end it failed because people had just gotten used to VHS.

It is with that in mind that I say if either of them has any chance, it is HD-DVD, due solely to the layer support that will allow the movies to play on older, standard DVD players. By making the NEW format compatible with the old equipment, you don't shut out those who have just recently upgraded out of necessity.

This is kind of why 28% of the visitors to my site are still using Windows 98. Back in 98, only 33% of homes had computers. Now, it is somewhere closer to 80%. As people have upgraded to newer computers over the years, many then give their older computers to family members who would otherwise never buy a PC. Suddenly, Grandma has Johnny's old Pentium II eMachine set up with an AOL account so she can e-mail her family. If it was announced that effective February 1st, 2007, in order to use the Internet, you had to be using a Macintosh system running Linux, you would not see everyone rushing out to buy MACs. Most people would simply stop using the 'net. Same way, if a movie studio announced that effective Feburary 1st, 2007, their movies would only be avaliable on Blu-Ray discs, you would not see everyone rushing out to by BRD players. Most consumers would simply not buy that studio's movies. But if a studio announced that they were going to go HD-DVD only, with the support for standard DVD format on the discs, the general consumer would not be affected other than complaining about the price hike, and EVENTUALY would get a HD-DVD player to replace or upgrade their old DVD player. It took a long time for DVD to become the standard. It will take a long time for a new standard to replace it.

 

[Malakai]

I'm a big fan of laser discs myself, and there were several pros and cons to them. I'd consider not having a big enough selection a con, and the laserdisc had a huge selection, probably over 200k. They had their first movies in 78, and last in japan in around 2001. A lot of the stuff from late 70s and early 80s would have been educational, but 81 is when they'd start putting on real movies, like the Goonies and such.

Laserdiscs were considered successful in Japan, for anime collectors, and in China in the early 90s, as a rental format. Karaoke was also a big thing with laser discs for awhile, and even 8" music video discs.

There was also some success to the arcades using laserdisc technology, with games like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, cliff hanger, badlands, cobra command, Time Gal, Ninja Hayate, and several others.

Later on, pioneer would release a home video game laser disc player called Pioneer Laseractive, which used LD-Roms for both sega cd and turbo graphix. Unlike laser disc arcades, which used a seperate board for data and then the laser disc only for audio and video, the laser active disc stored both data and audio/video, like a cd-rom.

Laser discs were the first home video systems that introduced AC-3 dolby digital, DTS, and in 1999, 6.1 surround sound on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Unlike DVDs, laser discs always used full bitrate audio. DVDs had a couple full bit-rate out but usually revised the discs, possibly to get "extras" on them, and most are now half bitrate. So, even now, audio enthusiasts I'm sure still will prefer laser disc audio to dvd.

With HD DVD comes lossless sound and the first true 7.1 surround I believe, but it'll be awhile before either formats actually get a good enough selection to be called a success.

There were at least 2 laser disc-type recorders made, one of which was compatible with laser disc video, but they never hit an average consumer price range. This recordable format was RLV, or Recordable Laservision disc, which came out in 1984.

According to another site, Pioneer actually had exclusive contracts with several musicians, for concerts, that today still can't be released on any other format. This has mostly collectors value today but may have been a marketable thing back then.

Anamorphic widescreen laser discs, there were about 11 or 12 released in Japan called Squeeze Discs. Terminator 2, cliffhanger, and a few others were released on this format.

Prices of laser discs varied greatly from one to another. I've seen them marked new between maybe $25, and as high as $220 or so for the japanese version of phantom menace in Japan. The star wars faces movies were $70 apiece if I remember correctly, and a lot of movies probably averages $39, when laserdisc was trying to hit the mass consumer market. (When media play and every music store had them everywhere.)

According to another website, laser disc prices were intentionally kept higher than VHS to get back losses at the box office. It sounds corny, but who knows if it worked or not.

Even as late as 2001, laser disc players were said to still be used in education, along with the LD rom/pc interface, albeit very limited.

Compared to the VCR, the laser disc was probably a total failure, with only around 2 or 3% of households having a player at one time, but we can't discount all of the other markets and ventures the laser disc has went through. It has come a long way, for criterian conosuirs, karaoke, concert, and music buffs, audio enthusiasts, arcades, and other various collectors.

Laser discs

78-01

R.I.P

 

[Malakai]

Well, from what I can tell about the terminator series is MGM owns The first one, which will be distributed by fox, Lionsgate owns the 2nd one, and warner brothers is going to be distributing terminator 3 on blu-ray and hd dvd. They'll be distributing films for new line and hbo.

 

[Malakai]

What is starting to concern me now about hd dvd is that hardly any of the movies out currently are featuring full bitrate sound. It's ashame that laserdisc feature full bitrate sound and may actually beat out 2 generations of DVD-based players in the sound department.

 

[dibz]

HD-DVD is still pretty fresh on the market, I'd give it some time before getting too concerned. Hell, when DVD came out I picked up Robin Hood, the damn 2 hour movie was split half-half on each side of the disc, it had to be flipped half way through. No extras on the disc either, and the quality was poor to boot. I noticed later on it was re-released in a decent fashion, but I'm just pointing out an example.

 

[Cloud121]

I would have liked to waited until 2007, when microsoft will be replacing their current cpu with one that will run a lot cooler.

That's what I'm doing. Wii will hold me over nicely until then though.

 

[lordofduct]

I'll start what I have to say about these new formats by stating a question.

How many people do you know that still use older 20 inch range CRTs, use cable or RCA at best, use only the built in TV speakers and can't notice the difference between VHS or DVD when it comes to video quality (not special features)?

I know the majority of my friends and acquantances don't even know what HD-DVD or BR is... the only comment I hear is, "Oh that special DVD drive they put in the new Playstation!" (note the name recognition as well)

Yeah... these people don't have the interest or the money to upgrade yet. They can't even understand what the i or p means after the resolution... it is to much lingo and bs for them to stay interested. Who seriousily wants to spend time LEARNING how to watch movies? My mom can't stand DVDs already because she has to wait for the menu to load on her 12 inch VCR/TV combo. She's really gonna hate it when she is told she has to buy all new movies. Crap she doesn't even have cable.

These formats are for enthusiasts like ourselves and will probably stay the way of laserdisc. Two very good formats that will never see the light of mass consumerism.

 

[Malakai]

Both formats are backwards compatible, fortunately, and anamorphic widescreen dvds should still look good on newer Hi-Def Televisions. There are some that don't, like independent, low-budget, grainy films, like hell night, evil dead, and others, and while those will look better in hi-def than watching the SD versions on an HDTV, they aren't going to look that great compared to newer or high-budgeted stuff, but what the hell. This is the age of remaking every thing that was once good.

 

[Malakai]

Unfortunately, one company has done did the impossible, create a blu ray multi-format disc. Since the red laser reads data on one of the top layers and the blue laser reads data from bottom layers, both versions can be had on the same side of a single disc.

A normal dvd player will recognize the blu ray disc as a normal dvd, because it can't read that deep in to the dvd's layers.

That was one of the advantages of hd-dvd, being able to have a combo format.

In other news, I finally got my 360 hd-dvd player in this morning and got to test out king kong, full metal jacket, and corpse bride.

I don't have a dvd versions of corpse bride to compare the hd version to, but I have a divx version that is very good. It's hard to tell the difference between the two, because the source is what you'd call perfect. This movie never got to touch any analog at all. So, there's zero film grain, etc.

Full Metal Jacket.. I also have not been able to compare this to the hd dvd version, but several people seem to think the original dvd version has a lot less film grain. This is the first time the movie has been released in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The dvd was released at 1.33:1. For that reason alone, kubrick fans should like the release, although video quality is nothing to call home about.

King kong, a movie I really did not care for, actually has some of the most impressive video quality I've seen so far in HD DVD. Like I said, it's hard to compare corpse bride, because it was all done in digital. This is a real live-action movie, albeit with a lot of cgi effects and animation.

I'll probably watch slither tomorrow and also am waiting on Blazing Saddles to come in the mail.

The 360 drive was easy to set up, and the remote that comes with it is really nice, a lot better quality than the xbox 1's dvd remote. The remote itself is $29 seperately, and king kong is around $25-$30 as well. Circuitcity also has a printable coupon to get $40 off at this address: http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2546/editedym4.jpg

That coupon ends on the 30th I believe, and several people on the web are reporting that they've used it to buy 360 hd dvd drives.

Installing the hd dvd drive was simple. Connect the power cable to the power supply, and the power supply to the drive. Then plug in the usb cable from the small connector on the hd dvd drive to the larger standard usb connector on the back of the 360 system.

Power on the system, put the install cd in the xbox 360's drive (not the hd dvd drive) and it will load up and say there's an update available. Choose yes, and it'll install the hd dvd software for it. Reboot your system, make sure the tape is off of the face of the hd dvd drive (so that the drive can open/close,) put in an hd dvd, close the drive, and wait about 20-30 seconds.

So far, the player has played fine with out any video problems that a few people have reported on the net.

There really are two types of HD programming. They are the older or more grainy programming, which may still look good or better on an hdtv, and then there's going to be stuff with little or no grain. This is going to be for people that like crystal clear pictures, theater buffs, ya know?

Over all, I am completely satisfied with the 360's addon player so far. I hope that more high-quality media comes to the system soon.