Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

I've been using this Xbox HD-DVD player for almost a month now and so far it works just great. I actually had no plans to buy either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD until one of those losers became a dominate player. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon. And for $200, I couldn't pass it up since I already had an Xbox. And I couldn't bring myself to keep buying low-def regular DVD's with these awesome HD DVD's out there. AND, the HD DVD combo discs still have regular DVD content for normal DVD players in other rooms in the house.

Out of the box, this drive is extremely easy to setup. Just pop in the setup CD, plug it in, and you're ready to go. There is a separate power cord as well. The included remote is nice, but I'll stick with my Harmony 880. It's able to control all the basic functions of the player. The player is also unable take advantage of the improved audio quality of HD-DVD, so you just get the normal "good" audio quality you had with...Read more

Microsoft has released the HD-DVD drive as an obvious counterstrike to the PS3's Blu-Ray capability, but the drive is much more than a bullet point in the console & format war.

PROS: The HD-DVD drive is quite simply the most efficient and cost-effective HD solution for those of us that already own XBOX 360s. However, even if you were to consider buying a 360 with the HD-DVD drive solely for movie watching, it is still very competetively priced compared to the stand-alone models. Adding to its value, the package includes Microsoft's Universal Remote, and a copy of King Kong on HD DVD. The picture and sound quality is superb, as advertised, almost identical to the quality produced from Toshiba's newer HD DVD model. Add all this to the fact that installation and operation is quick and seamless, with load times for discs quicker than that of the Toshiba. Finally, for those of you with super-nice TVs, at the time of release the XBox 360 HD DVD drive is the only HD source...Read more

This is a great product if you already own the XBOX 360. As everyone has already mentioned, it's no-brainer for $200.

Pros:
· Incredible 1080i picture that blows away any HD transmission from your cable/satellite provider even at 1080i - at least on my HDTV.
· Runs much quieter than the noisy regular DVD drive of the XBOX 360
· Up-scales regular DVDs. I did a real-time comparison with a regular DVD movie and quickly switched it from the XBOX 360 regular DVD tray and then into the HD-DVD player. I witnessed an incredible upscale in visual quality to the point that it was almost as good as an actual HD-DVD movie. The other amazing thing about my little experiment was that since both drives are "powered" through the same XBOX 360 processor/"brain", upon switching from one drive to the next, the XBOX was "smart" enough to pick up right where I stopped to the exact second in the scene from the regular DVD player. I was pretty impressed by that. Not sure how...Read more