A few quick 360 questions

fish99

fish99

fish99

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Hi,

Like many people I'm interested in the new HD movie formats, especially since buying a new widescreen TFT (Dell 2007WFP - I know it can't display 1080p btw, but for the puposes of this discussion let's assume I'm going to get a 2407WFP in the future) and viewing lots of HD trailers on it. It seems to me that the cheapest way to get on the HD bandwagon will be the new HD-DVD drive for the 360 which will be around £140 I believe.

I don't have a 360 though, but with stuff like Gear of War starting to appear, I'm quite interested in a 360 for games too.

First thing that occurs to me - no HDMI or DVI leads seem to be available for the 360, just VGA and component, so what happens when films start appearing with content protection enabled?

Second thing - I have enough to get the core package right now @ £200. I'm guessing I can just stick the 20GB HD in this at a later point, pick up the VGA cable, and it won't be any different than the premium pack right? (well apart from the wired controllers which isn't a problem)

Third question - is this a good way into HD movies? The other options - HD-DVD / Blueray PC drive or HD-DVD / Blueray player, or indeed PS3, all seem to cost a lot more, and PS games have never really appealed to me (let's not turn this into a 360/PS3 discussion btw). I know from personal experience that DVD playback on both Xbox and PS2 was pretty poor (colour banding due to software decompression etc) - is the same thing likely with 360 HD-DVD and PS3-BR ?

Thanks in advance for all opinions and info,
Simon.
 
HDMI doesn't appear to be coming at the moment, or the near future, but currently there's apparently no real intention of enabling the content protection on HD-DVD films. You can still use component (which I think the monitor has inputs for) and VGA for the HD viewing fine.

Core + HDD pretty much makes it premium, bar the headset and the wireless controller.

With getting into HD movies, you have to bear in mind that we're still VERY early into the format war, and it currently could go either way. The HD-DVD drive is a good way into the market due to its price. Generally the Xbox 1 DVD playback was great, and amazing compared to the PS2 playback. I'd wait for some decent reviews and user comments bout the HD-DVD drive before I would buy the drive.
 
DaveyD said:
HDMI doesn't appear to be coming at the moment, or the near future, but currently there's apparently no real intention of enabling the content protection on HD-DVD films. You can still use component (which I think the monitor has inputs for) and VGA for the HD viewing fine.
Click to expand...

I've heard an HDMI cable is to be announced before Xmas, along with a few other things.
 
fish99 said:
Second thing - I have enough to get the core package right now @ £200. I'm guessing I can just stick the 20GB HD in this at a later point, pick up the VGA cable, and it won't be any different than the premium pack right? (well apart from the wired controllers which isn't a problem)
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I know you don't have the cash for it yet, but I strongly recommend getting the premium if at all possible. The HD is an essential device, you could buy it later but if you were to get the Core 360 - you'd not be able to download all that free content off the marketplace which is one of the big things about the 360.
 
2007WFP doesn't have component sadly, and I hear bad things about the component input on the 2407WFP if I was to get one of those in the future. If anything VGA would be the best option since my PC uses the DVI input at the moment, and I wouldn't want to be swapping cables all the time (if a HDMI cable appeared and there was a HDMI-DVI converter available). Sounds like I shouldn't be worrying about HDCP at the moment anyway.

I hear contradictory reports about the PQ using VGA though, some people saying it has a blue/grey hue, others saying it's fantastic.

The format war thing doesn't worry me too much since I wouldn't be buying a great number of movies and the HD-DVD drive is pretty cheap. If I have to switch to BR a few years down the line that isn't going to bother me too much.
 
If you look around you can get some fantastic deals on the Xbox 360 at the moment. £279.99 with a shed load of extras.

...Don't want the extras? Sell them and bring the cost down to £200 :)
 
TomWilko said:
If you look around you can get some fantastic deals on the Xbox 360 at the moment. £279.99 with a shed load of extras.

...Don't want the extras? Sell them and bring the cost down to £200 :)
Click to expand...

Surely getting the 200 quid one in the first place would be the best idea if you dont want the extras lol.
 
TomWilko said:
If you look around you can get some fantastic deals on the Xbox 360 at the moment. £279.99 with a shed load of extras.

...Don't want the extras? Sell them and bring the cost down to £200 :)
Click to expand...

I know you can't tell me the retailer due to competitor rules, but could you tell me what the extras are and whether that was core or premium plz? Cheers :)
 
fish99 said:
I know you can't tell me the retailer due to competitor rules, but could you tell me what the extras are and whether that was core or premium plz? Cheers :)
Click to expand...

i think the premium comes with hard drive, better cable, wireless pad.. and maybe a dvd remote (unless that changed)

however people can tell you 100%. im getting a 360 sometime soon :D
 
Sorry for the confusion, I just meant the offers TomWilko was referring to, not the difference between core and premium. I got the impression he was saying there were some specific offers around at the moment and wanted to know what they consisted of.

Just so I'm absolutely clear about core/premium though - can someone just confim that there's no benefit from premium that can't be gained from getting the HD for the core system? Obviously I'm only referring to benefits that relate specifically to the HD, not stuff like wireless controllers, headsets etc...

It's just I could buy core + game + vga cable right now, and then the HD in a month. I know I couldn't save progress in said game, but I can live with that for a month. I'm not very good at saving up money you see :D
 
**Please remove any competitors I have accidently mentioned, I know most of these are allowed for sure**

I thought Argos had the £279.99 deal going on but it looks like that has ended...however watch out over the coming weeks as because of Christmas I guarantee something of equal will be back.

Toyrus are doing good deals all the time both instore and online so worth a look.

I recently purchased my 360 from Boots online, seriously watch out here as well. I used a 10% offer code and then got a wedge of Boots Advantage Card points for the purchase that bought the entire Xbox Premium console down to £210 delivered. An update to that was when I emailed them about when the points would be available, the guy who emailed back gave me an extra 500 because I had used a code that didn't give me the best deal. £205 delivered for an Xbox Premium :D

Just keep looking out for the offers. In regards of why buy a deal and then sell...why not just buy a core and hard-drive. Quite simply their are fools on Ebay who like to pay over the top for items and as such its very easy to make your money back on things.

Sorry I couldn't give you a blazing deal right now but keep looking and they will definately appear :)

EDIT: Just read your post, if thats how you want to do it then that seems fair enough...if your using a VGA cable then thats a seperate purchase anyway so it seems a pretty sensible way of doing things. I was heading in that direction to until the Boots offer came up the other week.
 
Cheers Tom, I'll check out those places you mention and keep my eyes open :)

Looks like that's everything I need to know then. Even if the HD-DVD drive turns out to be pants (which would be pretty surprising really) and I didn't get one, I've still got a great new console.

Thanks everyone :cool:
 
its been posted on these forums before that microsoft are going to put hd films on the marketplace to download.
so we are going to be able to watch some hd films without the hd player.
 
One last question - will a film typically be released in HD-DVD or BR and not both? Let's say there a film you're particularly after (LOTR triliogy for instance), it'd be pretty dissapointing if it came out only on BR if you had the HD-DVD drive for the 360. Is that the scenario we're likely to see?
 
fish99 said:
One last question - will a film typically be released in HD-DVD or BR and not both? Let's say there a film you're particularly after (LOTR triliogy for instance), it'd be pretty dissapointing if it came out only on BR if you had the HD-DVD drive for the 360. Is that the scenario we're likely to see?
Click to expand...
It'll be both formats. It'll cause an uproar to release a film on a single format.
 
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