360 HD-DVD Add-on Dropped to $179 77
Joystiq reports that the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 has been permanently dropped in price to $179. Additionally, Bob Barker style, you get five free movies too: "Appearing at Comic-Con in San Diego, the announcement was made amidst promotion for the HD-DVD releases of the film 300 and the cheerleader epic, Heroes. Not content with just a twenty dollar dip, Microsoft has extended Toshiba's 'Perfect Offer' promotion to Xbox 360 owners, awarding five free movies with purchase. The hard part now is choosing between Casablanca and The Dukes of Hazzard. Naturally, the Xbox Live Marketplace wasn't left out in all this news as 300 will be making its way to the service in HD on August 14th, while free content for Heroes will arrive sometime before its HD-DVD release."
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't even care about the games being on HD-DVD (Score:2)
Actually what I'd really like is just being able to cache and spool games of the faster, quieter HD - ignore my post - as you were.
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Microsoft has the worlds best PR department (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's only a 3% price cut.
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Re: a $55 HD DVD player? (Score:2)
That's how I would value them as the movies are $20 on Amazon (and that's where I buy them), but it should be noted the HD DVD's MSRP are $25 so the potential savings is $125 in movies... (If of course you want them...) which would make the player $55.
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The add-on is not an HD-DVD player without an XBox 360, and thus the cost before the cut was signifigantly higher than $200. That makes the price cut significantly smaller than 10%.
Also, the movie selection sucks. It is unlikely that you could find 5 within the criteria that you would have bought more than one or two of, since it forces you to pick from multiple genres and eras. That's a lame offer. (BluRay has the same
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And that red-ring-of-death problem? Months of coverage! Frackin' geniuses!
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You can't pick whichever ones you'd like. Similar to the BluRay offer, you have strict restrictions on which crappy movies you can get free. The list is available in PDF format only [toshiba.com]. Check it out. No Heroes.
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A media centre could
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Still, a 360 will play back H.264, MPEG2 or WMV format versions of whatever you're downloading too, so the recommendation still stands.
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1) Target does sell the Xbox 360 HD-DVD and they also sell HD DVD players on their website.
2) You are underestimating the sophistication of the market if you think that just because you can't walk into your local Target and buy a BR, that is going to affect people from making an informed decision on what to buy for a relatively technical piece of kit. The internet wasn't around back in the day of Beta/VHS.
3) Target customer service for tech pretty much is non-existant. If you wan
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1) It SOUNDS to me, everwhere I read - here or Digg - that it IS over because Target is carrying them with exclusive endcaps. That is the prevailing opinion.
2) Walmart's revenue is 351 billion. Target's revenue is 59.4 billion. The Target news does not whipe out the WalMart news.
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who wants to see porn in HD? (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
I guess that's 20$ less than I *would* have spent, had I intended on buying this, or any "next generation" movie format. Until this entire thing sorts itself out, I refuse to buy either. I personally hope they both go down in flames, and in return, we can get something the entire market agrees upon. Not only that, maybe we'll get something less locked down. (I know, it'll never happen, but one can always hope.)
My interest in next generation formats has very little to do with movies, anyway. I'm much more in
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Microsoft'll still find a way to scratch it though.
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The problem is picking what the next great format will be but you are right Microsoft'll still fin
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blah (Score:3, Interesting)
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But seriously, I am not buying into it, that is for sure. I couldn't care less about each of the formats. Also, I don't want to do anything to increase Microsofts dominance in this world, and I will never buy anything from Sony again. And, I am trying to watch less TV anyway!!
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New consoles upconverting old DVDs (Score:1)
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I don't think you really understand the point (Score:2)
The reason upconversion on the player side makes sense is because it happens in the digital domain. Whereas if you go over component and have your TV upconvert it, it's lossier - it has to go to analog and then back to digital again and then gets upconverted.
Past that it just becomes a matter of which thing is better at conversion, your player or your TV.
The main gain from upconverting players is that they force you to use a 100% digital connection.
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The 360 does DVD upconverting o
Already Implemented (Score:2)
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Both the 360 and PS3 upconvert DVD's (if your system has the latest updates) but only over VGA or HDMI. Upconverters (of any kind) aren't allowed to use component video due to a licencing restriction on the DVD format.
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I do know that DVDs look great (at least 480p) in the Elite, and they actually do look a bit better on the HD Drive
My roommate and I did get bored and decided to set up my 720p Native LCD (Elite/HDMI/HD Drive) next to his 1080i HDTV (Upscaling DVD Player/DVI) and
Trolls and Orcs (Score:4, Insightful)
I bought the 360 hddvd add-on because I wanted to see what some of these movies were like in 720p (I don't own a 1080p tv). I found a great deal on craigslist and that was really the only reason I bought one. The movies look fantastic; much better than upconverted dvds, and noticeably better than movies on HD channels over Dish Network (from the compression I assume). In addition to the higher quality the way the menu works while watching a dvd is much friendlier (something that always annoyed me about dvds) and they have a new way of presenting some of the extras. NetFlix rents both hd-dvds and Blu-Rays now, so for that and the $100 or so i paid for it, it was a decent buy.
Obviously there are downsides. I hate playing it through the 360. The fans are noisy (not initially but eventually) and the start-up is a mild annoyance. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I assume I'd have the same problems playing blu-rays through the ps3. Theres just nothing as convenient as a stand-alone player... but theres something to be said for saving $300 when buying into unproven technology.
There are no "winners/losers" here yet, anyone claiming so is a fan-boi or uninformed. There are still some great movies you can only get on HD-DVD (and vice-versa with Blu-Ray) so people who are fans of those will still gravitate towards their respective studios and what format that studio supports.
Now with hybrid players appearing I wouldn't be surprised if we see a dual format thats basically invisible to the consumer. In 10 years (or whatever, i'm making an example) the majority of people will own a hybrid player, you'd head to BB or CC and pick up the latest release not even really paying attention to whether it has a Red case or a Blue case.
Not really sure where I'm going with this. Heh. I'd say if you own a 360, a hd tv and you're into the hd craze. Its only a couple of hundred dollars, its been fun for me and I've probably gotten that much enjoyment out of it. If you don't have an hd-tv, you don't really care about the hd craziness thats been going on, or you don't have $200 to blow on tech that you'll throw away in a few years, I wouldn't even worry about it. You're missing out on a few lines of resolution but nothing you should kick yourself over.
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Which is the reason why I hope HD-DVD lives - it's got less DRM than Blu-Ray, and being able to rip HD-DVD is useful for those who don't want to carry around discs and such.
Plus the DVD Forum got rid of the bloody region code for HD-DVD (at least, region coding doesn't exist on HD-DVD yet). Sure you can get region hacks, but considering th
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What's so hard? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Useful as a PC Drive (Score:2)
However, looking at the posted PDF for the Toshiba rebate (assuming a similar plan) the movies are a little thin on selection.
But
How to kill Sony's PS3, permqnently (Score:1)