360 hd vs standalone

[CGizzi]

hi all

Is the 360 hddvd actually any good? I have the Denon 1920 which im really happy with at the moment & am thinking of 2 options:

a: get the 360 HD addon £120ish?
b: Sell my Denon 1920 & buy something like the Toshiba HD-E1 HD DVD Player for £250 ish?

 

[MagicSteve]

I've got the same DVD player hooked up to my display and I've just got an HD-DVD drive for my 360 from eBay. Once it arrives I'll give you some impressions if you like.

I've basically bought it as a stop over until a dual format region free (for Blu-Ray) player turns up, hoping Samsung helps me out there, it'll let me watch HD-DVD films (okay not optimum performance, but for £120 it doesn't matter).

 

[rcaudwell]

I have the HD-DVD addon and am watching on 37inch LG LCD. Haven`t seen the standalone players but am very happy with the 360 addon. Picture quality is very noticeably better than standard DVD, I`m not much of an audio connosieur (?sp) but don`t have any problem with the sound from the add-on, although many do, so if you`re an audiophile maybe that would sway your decision towards a standalone player.

 

[nl7474]

I recently sold my HD add-on and with some ebay magic raised enough for a PS3 so am lucky enough to own a 360 and PS3 (my wife is thrilled) The reasons?



- The 360 is just too noisy imo to be a credible movie playing device. Add the HD drive too and you have something akin to a hairdryer buzzing away. I just got fed up with it.
- Whilst I don't care my gut tells me that BR will win out in the format war.
- I got fed up waiting for the sound fix on DTS/lip synch.

PQ was good, though mind you after watching MI3 on bluray my (uneducated) opinion is that the PS3 is a better BR player than the 360 add on is a HD DVD player but then that could be the HDMI difference on my TV?

For games though if you forced me to choose I'd keep the 360.

Good luck.

 

[The_Wierd]

One thing to bear in mind if you are going to replace your main player with the HD-E1 is that although HD-DVDs are region free, stadard DVD playback is locked to Region 2, with no way to multi-region it (at the moment). Of course if all your DVDs are R2, then its no problem.

 

[MagicSteve]

Feedback as promised:

Got the add-on last night and watch a bit of King Kong, Goodfellas and about 45mins of Serenity.

* I wasn't blown away by the picture quality. Expected the difference to more similar to football on Sky Sports 1 vs Sky Sports HD 1 - not that much of a difference to my eyes. I am yet to compare my DVD copy of Serenity upscaled to 1080i via the DVD player against the HD-DVD copy.

* No problem with sound or lip-syncing at this time.

* The noise of the 360 and HD-DVD drive can be intrusive whilst watching a film.

My equipment:
Sony Bravia KDL40W2000
Sky HD
Denon 1920
Xbox 360 + HD-DVD add on
Videologic Digitheatre DTS

We've gone for the add on as it's a cheap way to be able to play HD-DVDs, it's not going to be as good as a standalone player, but I'm waiting to see if the Samsung dual format machine is any good. It's out around the end of the year, and I'm way too impatient.