Well looky looky here, we landed an
Xbox HD DVD drive. We're already all well aware of what it can and can't do; we just know you want the pics of the unboxing, it
sitting next to the Xbox, and maybe a few bonus shots next to a real life HD DVD player. Hell, we'll even throw in some pics of it next to the competition (you know
what we're talking about). Click on, enjoy!
Ah, that familiar sight.
There we go, that's what we were looking for.
The back.
The top, sorta.
Crack that one open, too!
Remote! Adapter! USB cable!
Stacked up on top.
The hardware in the box, unpacked.
Okay! Now, we're SO not taking responsibility for that sticker up on the back. Normally we just leave stickers on while photographing (unless it's on the facade, like that white one) but for whatever reason our unit came with the remnants of some badge, torn off and sticky gross, unable to be removed. We'd assume your retail unit probably won't have the same issue.
Flipped.
USB ports and WiFi adapter groove.
Facade sticker removed.
Ruh roh!
That's a big HD DVD player.
The shot we know you've been waiting for.
posted Nov 9th 2006 2:09PM
Good article about Xbox HD DVD.
http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com
i want
I'm not a fanboy for either camp (I have a 360 and am preordered for a PS3) but is it just me or does it just look stupid, having a 360 with a working tray and then a vestigial cd player unit attached.... They should have at least made it somehow attach or integrate onto the 360 because it just looks like some cheap ass addon/afterthough. Could be just me though, at least we'll see what the picture quality is like, that's all that really matters in the end.
i presume the hd-dvd player wont be able to be used as an hd-dvd player without the xbox? any comments?
My Amazon.com pre-order got delayed until next week :-(
Dying to see how this works out and if good ol' USB can keep up with all those high def bits flying by. There's theory, then there's reality ...
I also don't really care if it looks a bit goofy. My 360 sits behind the TV so it doesn't make much difference to me.
Ah. I love unboxing new stuff.
PS3 ftw
search engadget they have a rticle about that but what I'M WONDERING CAN THE XBOX HDDVD HOOK UP TO THE PS3???????????? some hack might make a homebrew just for that
Looks bigger than I thought it would be.
lawl have fun with your DVD games
Where's the bundled copy of King Kong on HD-DVD?
I'm sure it won't come with the bundled King Kong for what're essentially review pieces sent specifically so Engadget can try it out. Retail versions will have the movie.
btw, M$ wrote 4.7 million lines of code to make this thing work w/ the 360's three processors.
Does it, well you know, ah, play HD DVDs????
How does the HD DVD play quality compare to the Toshiba???
Ryan, you are awesome.
I assume MS will replace the internal DVD with a HD-DVD as soon as it's economically feasible.
The great thing with the current solution is that you can hook the drive up to your pc as well. I'm not sure if you can play hd-dvd movies although, something with the copy protection.
Actually I like the idea of separating the game drive from the movie drive. I had problems last generation with both PS2 & Xbox drives dieing. At least this saves on the wear and tear of the unit drive.
I hope there's an XBOX 360.5 that doesn't look like garbage and have add-on units that don't really attach or integrate to the system itself.
At least Nintendo's add-on disk drives looked like part of the system...
Yeah it is pretty stupid on how it doesn't really match the 360. It looks like a book sitting next to the console. At least they could have made it so it would easily sit on top of the unit in the curve.
Is there any compelling reason why MS does not simply make a 360 with the HD drive built in? Any reason why you could not simply replace the existing 360's DVD drive with the HD-DVD drive?
Yeah what the hell is up with that, i mean WTF dude. wouldn't it be simpler if not cheaper to do. (Not to mention it would probably work better and look better.)
I am HAPPY it is not part of the 360. I dont want a HD DVD player until the winner is clear AND we all know console based DVD players were poor even at their best (Xbox was ok... PS2 STUNK)
We dont need to combine all this tech, in the end it doesnt save anyone any money.
Agreed - Pagercam
Unboxing pr0n is one thing, but how does this thing stack up to my Tosh HD-A1? Is it faster(please let it be)? Down/sideconvert to 720p better? More resilient to scratches etc. Remote backlighted? Any info in pack-in materials mentioning HDMI?
omg the picture captions cracked me up!
I would like to nominate this post ( particularly the photo captions ) for second funniest of the year, second only to that post about the "smelling" robot that mistook someone for bacon.
HAHAHAHHAA NNTPgrip why would you buy a HD-DVD player only to down convert the signal to something less. Got to much money in your pocket?
1) not everyone has a 1080p tv
2) not everyone wants to spend $500+ on a standalone when they can buy a cheap addon for a console they already own
3) you are a tit
Geeze I wish i held out for a ps3 now... :(
So the hddvd player comes with a remote. Will I be able to use the media remote I already have? They look exactly the same.
Bloody hell it's huge!
Actually makes the PS3's size a lot more impressive. The Xbox on it's own is almost as big as the PS3 and it doesn't have a next-gen disc drive or a power brick inside it.
Soo glad they didn't put drive inside 360. The HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives are to slow. I want my fast load times.
its .. its .. its .. its .. its .. its ..
Beautiful !!!!!
Wow this is like me taking a DVD player and hooking a DVD player up to it. Im not spending my money on this, pretty much an upscaler player, though I have a 360 I think ill stick with the blu-ray movies when I get my Ps3, atleast I know its native 1080p. Just gotta get that TV now 720p wont cut it any more :)
Any chance you could plug it in and tell us how the picture looks instead of just stacking it next to a bunch of devices that we can't buy?
The PS3 is so shiny!!!
It looks like Darth Vader...
In my opinion the X-box 360 is better looking for sure...
To bad I don't game... They both look pretty sweet...
geeze i know what i want for christmas
any1 know what this can upscale 2 ( 720p,1080i,1080p,etc)
PLEASE does any1 know the uk release date i sure know what i want for christmas
PInPoint - cause my 60" plasma does 720p, and the Tosh HD-A1's internal scaler does not do a good job going down from 1080i - I believe it uses the "bob" method, "bob"ing one field off to essentially give a 540p image, then interpolates/upscales to 720p. My TVs internal scaler does a much better job. However, anytime a TV is forced to scale on its own, there is a possibility of interlace to progressive motion artifacting as the TV has no direct access to source material. Any attempts for the more advanced motion adaptive de-interlacing by the TV could possibly result in audio delay lip-sync issues. - or something like that...
Thing hooks up USB, looks like. If DVD Jon could work his magic, we could have open-source HDDVD player software for the Yellow-Dog linux that you can get for the PS3. Or the developer for PowerDVD could provide for like $50. That would be cool as hell.
NNTPgrip, have you upgraded to the 2.0 Firmware? Along with adding TrueHD 5.1 support, it also fixed the 720p conversion issues (which were caused by downsampling everything to 480p then back to 720p, not to 540p). It now samples from 1080p straight to 720p if you select 720p as the output and looks far better than before.
Movies on HD DVD are 1080p native, and use the superior VC-1 codec hence why have a reputation for looking better than Blu-ray movies which has mostly been encoded with old school MPEG-2.
We've yet to see what Blu-ray playback on PS3 will be like, hopefully better than the dire DVD playback on PS2.
Here we go again.
The PS3 and ALL blu-ray players are capable of using VC-1, mpeg4 AVC, and Mpeg2. It is up to the content providers as to which encoding they chose.
So how long till someone cracks this open and puts it in a pc? Or is that not possible?
Only the first set of movies on BR used MPG-2. Both standards are essentially identical except for the physical disk. They use the same codecs, store the same resolution, use the same DRM etc. Once things get rolling, movies will be identical.
Now that said. Where is the HDMI connector on the Xbox?
So is this for sale in say, best buys yet? I hear gamestops dont have them in yet. Anyone know?
I should add HDMI becomes important for two reasons:
1: 1080P supporte over component is sketchy at best.
2: Eventually the turn on the DRM and you can't watch movies on your Xbox anymore.
If you actually want a setup that does Games and Hi Def movies, the Sony makes a lot more sense to me.
HD-DVD is a doomed format. I'm waiting for the first Blu-Ray player for Xbox360.
thats why they made this an add-on, and not integral to the functioning of the XBOX360... they dont have all of their proverbial eggs in the same proverbial basket... [cough] SONY [cough cough]... if blueray tanks, then all sony got was an added expense to the dev cycle of the ps3
I've never understood the complaints about the Xbox 360s look. I think it looks pretty nice. I don't have much interest in owning one (nor a PS3), but the Xbox 360 doesn't look ugly at all to my eyes. It's certainly much, much nicer looking than the (admittedly shiny, but) very klunky looking PS3 (looks like a VCR from the 80s). Having said that, the 360s add-on HD-DVD drive looks pretty dopey. It doesn't even match the look of the Xbox 360. It looks out of place. Like a cheap external 5.25" case.
Peter,
1. It depends on the TV.
2. No, that's not how it works.
Hmm, when I think of things to put in my tv system the thing I really want is another huge power brick. Oh well.
Any reviews anywhere of picture quality? I saw the Tosh HD player this weekend and it looked nice; not $500 plus the cost of the discs nice though.
Once they turn on the copy protection (after they have everyone hooked) here is what happens:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/691/691408p1.html
If you purchased an HDTV more than a couple of years ago, chances are you are using Component Video (the red, green, and blue plugs) to connect HD sources to your TV. Component Video is an analog transmission, which means that it can't work with the absurdly stringent AACS copy-protection Hollywood has insisted be integrated into the new formats. Thus, no HDMI input on your TV, no hi-def DVD for you. If you don't have a compatible TV, you'll either receive a massively downgraded sub-720p resolution version of the content, or what the studios are suggesting, a warning screen followed by nothing.
'Thus, no HDMI input on your TV, no hi-def DVD for you"
Careful there buddy. This is not exactly true. Having HDMI is not the ONLY way to be HDCP ready. There are many pre-HDMI tvs out there that have DVI inputs that are also HDCP ready. I bet you just scared the shit outa quite a few people out there.
Also I dont think the movie studios are going to be able to impliment this for at least another two years. They want their content protection, but more over they want people to buy their goods. So what would happen if they cut off 25% of the HD market 3 years after it began.
*I know HDTVs have been around longer then 3 years, but thats just about how long they have been selling to your adverage joe.