 "x-box 360 HD DVD player review." | 2010-02-08 |
| - Reviewed By X-box guru from Fremont, OH |
| Great product! The picture is awesome. High def is the way to go. The only issue I have had with the HD DVD player was on the Transformers dvd, it continually asks for you to download a patch for a secure link so the picture stops for a second the movie. It has not happened with any other companies dvds. Yes the HD DVD id a dead technology, but it's one of those things that's a cool thing to have. Plus you can find the HD DVDs for dirt cheap. Better picture than a regular dvd, and a cheap dvd price. Can't go wrong with that. If you can find the player for a decent price it's well worth the money. Just keep in mind, your not getting any new movies. |
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| "Format is dead, but this is a great product" | 2009-12-16 |
| - Reviewed By tech geek from Mid-MI |
Does anyone really care about HD-DVDs? I don't, but I still bought an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for the holidays. Why?
-It's cheap. I got the player for not much more than you'd pay for any good upscaling DVD player.
-It still works just fine. Even though Xbox 360 has gone through some major upgrades, including the full revamp of the dashboard through the New Xbox Experience (NXE), the player is still 100% compatible, and it still still plays regular DVDs in addition to the HD-DVD functionality.
-It enhances the Xbox 360. I tend to play one game at a time on my 360, so I like leaving that game disc in the tray. Now I can pop in a DVD without swapping out my game disc, and if I want to swap from my DVD to play my game, it's literally three button presses away (Guide button, scroll down, A button). The 360 can effectively swap between two discs at a time with this add-on (although the HD-DVD player cannot play game discs).
-The 360 is always on. Playing a DVD leaves the Xbox 360 in "quiet" mode, making whisper-quiet noise but continuing to charge controllers or download content without interrupting playback. If someone messages you online, your Friends list is one press of the Guide button away. You can also wake the console from background mode to full functionality in moments. As an example: You could be watching a movie, get a friend invite from someone to play the new Call of Duty (or ignore it with privacy settings), and boot over into a Party with them in one seamless experience (should you choose to). The unified experience is really marvelous.
-Planet Earth. Frankly, I only care about the "HD" part of the player for the documentary Planet Earth. Considering the HD-DVD version is available for bargain prices, I am one happy camper! The rest of the HD-DVD catalog is similarly bargain-priced, and I'll probably pick up a few more titles eventually.
-Doesn't use up ports. The HD-DVD player plugs into your 360 through a USB plug (and comes with its own power cord), but it has two additional USB plugs on its backside, so on balance you're actually adding one USB slot to your console. Again, just brilliant design.
-It comes with a free universal remote. A good DVD player plus universal remote usually costs as much as this is going for now, so you're getting a good deal.
-And newer 360 consoles do output to HDMI, which was a complaint at launch. I don't really care about this, and most HDTVs still don't really support true 1080p through HDMI, so you probably don't care either. But if you do, it's there.
Overall, this is one of the very best extensions for the Xbox 360 console. You might not even care about HD-DVD, but this is still a great buy for the disc-swapping it saves, not to mention the universal remote, and the extra USB port might be handy. You even get access to a library of bargain HD-DVDs, which is a very good thing too. |
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 "The Format May Be Dead, But That Means Savings For Me." | 2009-10-22 |
| - Reviewed By Nix from Michigan, USA |
I bought one of these HD DVD drives for the Xbox 360 when they were first released, and while I liked the quality of HD DVD, the ease of connection, and the general features of this device, I also couldn't justify the price of it or HD DVD movies at the time. DVD was cheaper, and when upscaled by the Xbox 360, looked almost as good as HD DVD in some cases. My Xbox 360 was itself incredibly noisy, and I also didn't love that I needed to connect via VGA in order to get that upscaling or the high-quality image that HD DVD provides... So I returned the HD DVD player and waited for a format to emerge the winner.
Fast-forward to late 2009. I've got a new Jasper model Xbox 360 which runs quietly and has a HDMI port. I decided to get the HD DVD player for two reasons:
1. The HD DVD player for Xbox 360 is the cheapest HD media player available.
2. There are more than 800 HD DVD titles out there that work with this player, and they're all available at bargain prices.
For WAY less than the cost of a Blu-Ray player alone, I got an HD DVD player and several movies. I realize the format is dead, but HD DVD doesn't have region codes, and so I'm free to choose from any of the 800+ HD DVD titles that were released around the world. Imports work fine on thi player, and most of them offer English in some way. Import titles include many movies that were not released on HD DVD in America, and I'm able to find titles for under $5 these days. No, I won't get anything new on HD DVD. Production stopped in 2008, and so I won't be able to get the last three Harry Potter movies on HD DVD, for example. However, the first several ARE on HD DVD, as are great movies like Blade Runner, Dawn of the Dead, and several others that I enjoy watching many times over the years.
Of course, being a dead format, I can't expect much support from Microsoft for this device, but I figure that used and left-over HD DVD players will be laying around in pawn shops and online stores collecting dust for the next decade or so, and so I'm not too worried about being saddled with movies I can't watch. There will always be some cheap alternative to get back into watching HD DVDs.
And as a bonus, this player lets me watch DVDs on my Xbox 360 without putting the wear & tear on my console's primary optical drive. That's a handy thing.
Negatives include the drive's need for an additional AC outlet, and of course, the fact that the format is dead.
This is obviously not the best choice for everyone at this late stage, and I'm sure I'll grab a standalone Blu-Ray player some day soon (I had a PS3, but Blu-ray Discs were still too expensive to be worth it to me), but for now it's a low-cost way to get the most out of my HDTV. It's a lesser substitute for the winner of the format war, but it will do for now.
As an aside, I will say that I prefer HD DVD as a format over Blu-ray Disc. HD DVD has better menu features, no region codes, smoother controls, and better network features. Blu-ray, while looking just as good as HD DVD, has gone through several specs just to get to the point of being CLOSE to HD DVD in terms of bonus features. I really wish that the major studios would have fought harder to make HD DVD the winner, but alas! It was not to be. HD DVD has joined Super 8, Betamax, Laserdisc, and VideoDisc in the hall of dead video media formats. Now all that remains is to see what kind of afterlife it can maintain. |
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| "Works with vista!" | 2009-06-28 |
| - Reviewed By Mr. Hett from Baltimore MD |
| I added a bluray disc player to my computer and it came with software for HD DVD also. Just out of curiosity, I plugged in the Xbox HD DVD player and Vista recognized it. I didnt need any thing else to set it up. I popped in transformers (the HD DVD version), and it worked flawlessly. So it is kind of like a two in one player. |
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| "Xbox 360 HD DVD" | 2009-06-17 |
| - Reviewed By Gamer from Tucson, AZ USA |
| For anyone with an Xbox 360, this HD DVD player is a must-have! I use it to watch DVDs while my wife watches regular tv. And this unit is CHEAP! Get one before they are no longer available as Microsoft discontinued them. |
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| "Awsome!!!" | 2009-06-01 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
| This HD DVD player is great!! I have one and recently purchased one for my brother and we are both very pleased! I've noticed it even up-converts some of the newer standard DVDs as well. The only down is that is hard to find HD DVDs now since the Blu-ray take over because it seems the only way to purchase HD DVDs are by searching online at [...] sites. Im going to wait until the next gen console to start purchasing Blu-ray discs because Microsoft recently received rights to place the Blu-ray into their next X-Box 720 and with rumors have it, the HD DVD player will be compatable with the new X-Box 720 so we'll have the best of both worlds! Plus since Blu-ray took over you purchase the HD DVDs at almost the same price for a standard DVD! I highly recommend this product! |
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