The high definition era is upon us.  From television to gaming to movies, make no mistake that the high definition era is slowly but surely making its way into homes across the world.  With that said, the ‘season of giving’ came a little early for me and it came with quite the assortment of gifts!

For those of you who really know me, you’d know that I’m an avid supporter of all things high definition or as some of you may recognize, HD.  I have an RCA Scenium HDTV with all the HD programming from my satellite provider.  There’s nothing like watching an NBA game in high definition, an NFL one and certainly nothing like playing some Gears of War in high definition.   Many HD enthusiasts dream of the trifecta of high definition…games, movies and television.  Well I completed my high definition trifecta the other day when the ‘season of giving’ brought the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 along with 7 high definition movies right to my doorstep!

I’m sure you all can imagine the smile on my face as I was moments away from seeing some HD movies.  I’m here now to give you a review of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player.  I’ve added some pictures throughout the review for a quick look at the player.  Here is the entire set of Xbox 360 HD-DVD player photos.

What I’ve also done is centered Episode #22 around the high definition theme.  In this show you’ll hear from DVD Town’s John Puccio.  I invited him on the show to give his opinions on what high definition really is as I realize some of you may not be in the know when it comes to this.  He has some very interesting commentary concerning the subject.

Now let’s dig right into the review.

Manufacturer: Microsoft
Cost: $199.99 US

Design

The HD-DVD player comes with the Universal Media Remote (batteries included), a software disc, cables for connecting and the King King HD-DVD (for a limited time).  It is designed very much like a miniature Xbox 360 console.  It’s perfectly matched to compliment the console and conveniently sized so it doesn’t take up too much room in your entertainment area.  Like the console, you can place the player flat or upright.  Unlike the console however, it only has rubber feet on the bottom so it might make more sense to leave it flat.  It’s better flat in my opinion.

I want to make a note about how well the eject button was designed.  I can’t explain it really but it was so gentle to the touch.  I barely knew that I had pressed it and in fact I only knew when the disc ejected.  It’s not as sturdy as the eject button on the console.  It feels really good.  That’s the best way I can explain it.  It takes very little effort at all and in fact it’s almost as if you have to simply put your finger over it and the disc will eject.  I loved it.

Performance/Use

The player was amazingly quiet.  I’ve always been a standalone player kind of guy who never even considered watching movies on my console.  This is a first for me and I figured the noise coming from the player would distract my movie viewing.  But surprisingly there was no noise at all and this is without turning up the movie’s volume.

To get an idea of how much difference there is between standard DVDs and HD-DVDs, you have to compare the two side by side.  That’s exactly what I did.  Now remember my HDTV supports 1080i so that will be the basis of my comparison.  I had both the HD-DVD version and the DVD version.  I put the DVD version in the built-in DVD player that my TV has and of course, I put the HD-DVD version into the player.  As you can imagine, I was getting ready for a lot of remote control button pressing between the player and DVD.  I noticed an immediate difference between the two.  The player presented more clarity, more colors and overall much better quality than the standard version.  I had my doubts about the ability of the player and its high definition capability, but they were put to rest last night.  I did the comparison with the Fast & the Furious Tokyo Drift, Training Day, King Kong, Batman Begins and also Mission Impossible 3 as I have the standard version of all those movies.  The player was simply amazing with its high definition presentation.  It was like the first time I had seen an NBA game in high definition.  My eyes felt as if they were finally awake.

In regards to the visual presentation of the movies, the player was incredible but I can’t say the same about the audio.  I had both the standard DVD player and HD-DVD player individually connected to Dolby Digital 5.1 via optical cable on my audio receiver.  So again, I was flipping between both channels on the receiver…the standard and the HD player to see if there was any difference in audio.  I noticed that there was.  For some reason, the audio on the standard DVD had more strength than the audio from the HD player.  The range of it felt as if some of the strength had been lost from the center channel speaker.  It was still really good audio but the center channel just felt a bit weaker.  I searched around to see if this had been mentioned in other cases and I found out about some issues people were reporting with decoding the audio.  Dolby Digital Plus is the standard that most, if not all, HD-DVDs are produced in.  Consider it Dolby Digital 5.1 with a few steroids to understand what Dolby Digital Plus is.  My receiver only does 5.1 so the DD+ has to be decoded to DD 5.1 in order to match my receiver and it seems it isn’t done perfectly to reproduce an authentic 5.1 sound.  Would it make a difference if I had a receiver that supported DD+?  I’m sure that it would.  But even with saying that, the receiver only gets the sound to output and doesn’t do any conversion itself so you’d have to consider that it loss some range before it got to my receiver.

I’ve also read reports about audio syncing and delays when it comes to TrueHD and DD+.  I know what you’re thinking.  If I can hear it then I’m fine right?  Well I’m like many of you but there are some audio heads out there so I have to make mention of it so that everyone is prepared when investing in this.  I can’t say if the problems are with the disc or the player at this point because it is something that isn’t just exclusive to the Xbox 360 add-on as I’ve heard this issue with standalone players as well, in particular the Toshiba HD-A1.

I could go on and on about how HDMI or 6-8 channel inputs on A/V receivers are needed for TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus to be output but that would confuse you and quite possibly confuse me.  It’s worth mentioning that none of these audio problems were present when playing a standard DVD in the HD-DVD player.

On the Universal Media Remote, you can hit the B button at any time to bookmark a part of the movie.  They’re called ‘My Scenes’.  So, to get back to a specific point in the movie, simply hit the B button and select the scene.  Not all movies support the feature though.  If you press the Guide button to go back to the dashboard, your movie will be restart upon firing up the HD player again.  Some of you may be used to turning off your DVD player and after a day or so, resuming right where you left off but that’s not the case here.  Shutting it off or going back to the dashboard will lose your place in the movie.  However, you can hit stop and pick up where you left off if you have errands to run.

There is also a well designed menu system that lets you navigate the movie.  You can get to this easily with the remote and control things like fast forwarding, rewinding etc.  You can see a few pics of the menu system in the Flickr set.

Last Thoughts

The HD-DVD player did just about everything I imagined it would do especially on the visual side of things.  For the price it’s being offered, I consider it a steal for anyone looking to make the transition to HD-DVD movies and entertainment.  I hope the issues with the audio are sorted out wherever the source of the problems may be.  Make no mistake about it though, the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player shines a very bright light for any fan of high definition to see.

You can purchase it right now in the US.  It will be releasing soon in other territories as well so those abroad keep your eyes open for it.

Miscellaneous

These are the little things I specifically tried out and noted because I knew someone would ask.  Consider them small details that are worth mentioning.

There are extra USB slots on the player so you can add additional accessories to the player itself.  I, for example, have my wireless adapter on the player and not on the console.  So the extra slots allow for some good accessory management for sure.

No HDMI connection.

You can’t eject the disc with the remote.  When you press the eject button on the remote, it will eject the tray on the console and not the player.  Having your Xbox 360 set to boot from the disc will boot the console’s disc and not the player.  The fast forward and rewind speed on HD-DVDs only goes up to 16x whereas on standard DVDs you can fast forward or rewind at speeds up to 32x.

Standard DVDs will play in the HD-DVD player and are converted to 480p when using component cables which was very nice.  The Universal Media Remote does have codes to set for use on your specific television.

And now let’s get to the show.  (yes I realize I said Wed, November 28 on the show…oh the joy of being unscripted lol)

Format:
40:42, 18.6MB, mp3

Show files:
mp3 – Get the show in mp3!
iTunes – Subscribe to Unscripted 360 in iTunes