Xbox 360 HD DVD player stoops to $129
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 4th 2007 10:22PM
posted Dec 4th 2007 10:22PM
Read - $129.99 at Amazon
Read - $129.98 at Toys R Us
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quite interesting this gets posted after you just posted about michael bays dislike of microsoft and it's conspiracy! lol
Great! Now if they could only make it less ugly...
I'll be looking at the HD picture, not the drive
Don't get me wrong, the picture is great. My friend has one and its nice. It just doesn't look very visually pleasing next to the 360. It just has an odd shape.
I'm also a stickler for aesthetics, but I've owned the drive for a few months now and totally forgot the lack of fung shui. Either way, +1 for the drive, works really well, picture is beautiful, way better than DVD upscaled, and lets me rip to DivX. :)
Andrew,
I've been trying to figure out how to rip to divx. Can you throw me a link or email me at mrmonisimo@bellsouth.net. Thanks!
LOL
not
and then right underneath the main article is a huge advertisment for Blu ray! haha the mind boggles (by the way i am a hd dvd fan and owner)
And right under the iPod articles you get ads of the Zune. And right on the side of the Windows articles you get the I'm a Mac ads.
Why are you an hddvd backer? Just curious
D*mmit! I haven't got my free HD DVD's yet either!
John, are you talking about the "buy a such-and-such player, get this many [insert hi def format here] movies" deals?
I did the same thing when I got my PS3 back in July. The movies came just a few weeks ago. Assuming it's the same deal for HD-DVD, the movies will come. It just takes freaking forever.
Yea Fruition, that's the one. It's been so long, I forgot what I checked off.
Eh, you've probably seen them by now, anyway...
Me neither, they're "backordered". More like we're pulling mad interest on accounts payable.
toys r us is a penny cheaper! Go to hell mazon...
correction: mazon=amazon
i work at toysrus, i get a 10% discount too =D
Firefox + Ad Block Plus = no Blu ray ads!
Seconded.
thirded
Ads? That's so last century.
Hurray firefox+ad block plus.
When are they going to bring this out in black to match my Elite? I bet they release a pink, or baby blue first.
When they make a black one, I'm in like Flynn. Until then... I'm a holdout on the format war. But the price keeps on dropping and my smile gets bigger... I know they'll make a black one someday... and if not well PS3 will be cheaper by then too.
Now only £99.98 at Amazon.co.uk which is good but at the same time crap given that the $ is on the slippery slope to hell (£1 = $2.05).
Oh and get your damn comments system fixed. I fed up of posting comments and not have them appearing. I'm also not getting notification of replies.
I would buy this in a heartbeat if they matched the price here in Canada.
Why is it still $199.99 CDN?
For nostalgia's sake...
go to best buy they have an american price match promotion going on right now.
BestBuy.ca doesn't really have a US price match promotion. It's just advertising - "The hottest gifts are already priced at or below U.S. prices - In the last 30 days, we've dropped the prices on over a thousand of products you want.". HD-DVD addon is not one of them.
Anyone know if this thing has been hacked to work properly on a mac yet?
Anyone know if Squirrels learned to read?
Can you connect this via USB to a mac and have it work?
Not sure about a Mac, but it works (without drivers, I believe) perfectly on a PC. All you Mac people boot up to Windows anyways so I would assume so.
Yes. The thing works perfectly on a Mac. All you need to make sure is that you have the software to play HD-DVDs.
Is this something that is supported out-of-the-box with Leopard? I've read elsewhere that it it's recognized by 10.4 but that there were no drivers available for movie playback.
Oh man, when we replace our 480p with a 1080 I'm definitely getting this. 130 bucks is practically the same price as a DVD player and I already got the 360.
Don't forget this thing is an ugly dongle and the 360 is an extremely noisy machine. You might be better off to buy a dedicated player.
It's not loud when operating this drive.
I still can't believe I got this thing over a year ago for 99$ by price matching at a Best Buy with a misprinted ad.
Me too. I did the same thing and have been enjoying my 720p (limited by my tv) goodness ever since!!!
Hmm...can't help but wonder why all the sudden HD-DVD price cuts. Seems like it has become a weekly thing. $129 and 5 or 6 free movies still seems steep, given a stand-alone player is $169 or so with 7-10 free movies through some retailers. The value they are slowly chipping the players down to seems like a bit of desperation.
There is a format war going on and HD DVDs are cheaper to manufacture which is one of their early selling points. Of course I do agree it is coming very fast but wouldn’t you do so to make a killing in the holiday season? Microsoft, a backer of HD DVD has to compete with a PS3 which comes with Blu-ray as part of the bundle (more expensive yes) but also PS3 plays games on Blu0ray which means in number of discs and over all business, Blu-ray has better numbers, but to the consumer, HD DVDs are slightly cheaper. (If only they could make the combo discs the same prices as their blu-ray counter parts and we have a winner!)
M
Console movie players are too damn noisy. I have the PS3 and I only watch Blu Rays on it. I thought I'd watch both DVD's and Blu Rays on it but I ended up reattaching my 5 year old 480i non progressive, component cable only Panasonic DVD player to it because its so damn loud(for movies). Fan noise isn't so bad when playing games but when watching a movie, very noticeable.
Just get the dedicated $200 HDDVD player.
(I could care less about HD wars, I just happen to have a PS3 so I get it on Netflix)
Weird. I have a PS3 for Blu-Ray watching and I only have the occasional noise. I have never had a problem with the PS3 taking away from the movie as it only makes loud scanning noises when the disc is starting or when manually changing chapters. Plus, there is no way the PS3's drive, even at its loudest, could be heard over a decent surround system.
Go watch an Ingmar Bergman-movie and you'll find out what silence sounds like. We dont want a noisy player there, do we?
Not drive noise, fan noise for the PS3. It's not as loud as the Xbox, but its definitely not whisper quiet. I know when the fan runs, I know when it kicks into medium speed, and I definitely know when it kicks into high gear. My 5 year old Panasonic DVD player, dead quiet. Not a peep. There are no fans for there to be fan noise. PS3 is quite audible during the quiet parts of the movie. My PS3 is in my room, which isn't too big and in which surround sound would be overkill.
Just a correction, you must mean "480i Composite cable only"
When will we see these price cuts in Oz? I can't find one for under AUD230 = USD200...
That's probably including Australian VAT and hidden import tarifs.
Still doesn't explain it the USD70 difference...
Guess i'll just have to import it myself.
I have one and I have 2 complaints:
1. 360 is a jet engine during quiet parts of a movie
2. the heck with the price of the device... call me again when the price of HDDVDs drop t 17$ rather than 25 or 30.
Not cheap enough.
I just ordered a second one of these for my bedroom 360... already had one in the living room. Comes with 5 free movies + "King Kong", so the drive is practically free.
This is REALLY gonna mess with Sony and the Blu-ray camp. I LOVE it.
riiiiiiiight.
Robert... just took a stroll through your comments. Do you work for Sony?
"The value they are slowly chipping the players down to seems like a bit of desperation."
I'ts called Christmas. It's called a format war. I understand you own a PS3, but your decision doesn't invalidate the other option.
Sony needs to be careful in their overconfidence. Superior quality (which is debateable depending on what's important to the individual) doesn't always win the day. If it did, they wouldn't have been able to keep the $699 PS3s in stock, right?You think Sony would learn from its past.
*sigh* and all these years I've been preaching about how awesome BetaMax was, is, & is to come...
The format war is pretty complicated. HD-DVD has sold more stand-alone hardware, but Blu-Ray continues to outpace in software sales even after the massive price cuts. That blog link you posted hasn't proven to be the true case, as of yet. The most important thing most people don't realize is that each format has different movies. I suggest you do more research before you buy into either format to determine what suits you best. I don't see why the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 wouldn't work on the PC, but your PC will need to be very up to date for it to work well, and you will need a good monitor to take full advantage.
Price is back to $179 on Amazon right now...not sure if it's a mistake or what.
Amazon's price has gone up to 179. Right when I was about to buy it. Too bad. I'll check later to see if it's down.
Does anyone know if bestbuy.com is still doing their price match service
I bought that drive a week ago for 179.99 and I was wondering if maybe I could get the difference back, if i show the store clerks my receipt and both ads from toyrus.com and amazon.com.
I'm pretty sure that you could. Usually they allow 14 days to adjust prices, I think. Worth a try.
Maybe it wasn't time for that price yet. Microsoft probably told them to hold off for a while.
I hope so, David. I'll only buy this if it is $130.00. And I'll for sure get Amazon's Visa if it'll cost me $99.99 after it.
Amazon still says $179 for me.
the jet engine noise doesn't happen while playing hddvds. it seems to only engage when using the normal game / dvd drive.
(not that i can go double check right now seeing as my 360 RROD a week ago)
Damnit, I just bought this thing last week, after months and months of holding off waiting for a price drop. Time to return it to place of purchase! :D
Good News Billy and others who bought that xbox hddvd drive 14 days before the this sale!
If you're like me and have purchased this product at a retailer that has a price match guarantee like Bestbuy (that's where I bought mine) no more than 14 days ago you are eligible to get the difference of that price back, but before you go off running to bestbuy you still need to do a couple of things:
1. Print the ad with the price from a website
2. find your receipt
3. if the people at your retailer are not as***** then we are done but if you want to avoid loosing $50.00 here are some extra steps you need to do
when I went to best buy to get my money, the cashier at the customer service desk told me that i was not eligible because according to BESTBUY manager "this item was not in stock at toyrus.com when they had looked at it and the fact that it was in stock at the time I printed that ad did not matter" this had really made my blood boil because it was bull*hit, but i kept my cool and made a trip to toyrus that was 200m away and asked them if they still had the hddvd drive in stock and it turned out that toyrus employees have godly powers and had created 5 of them in a matter of about 180 seconds, I asked the Toyrus associate to give me the stores telephone number and walked back to bestbuy to win my case
and I did
Bestbuy - 1000 points Toyrus +1000 points
ok, it seems to me that a simple usb cable cant handle that kind of information. with most HD players using HDMI or component output how can a usb handle all that information. i know i must be missing something here. does the 360 up scale it or what?
USB 2.0 is capable of 480mb/s. That's an entire HD movie in what, under a minute? You underestimate how much USB can handle these days.
So a direct answer to your question, no, zero data is lost.
The drive is only passing the bitstream from the HD DVD disk to the Xbox360, where the audio and video bitstreams are decoded and output. At 480mbps, USB 2.0 has more than enough bandwidth available to handle this, as HD DVD is limited to a maximum video bitrate of around 30mbps.
Also be sure to notice the mb/s instead of the Mb/s. Big difference.
I think you mean Mb/s vs MB/s. Although a lowercase M is significant when refering to metric units, in this case it is meaningless. someone using the a lowercase m vs an Uppercase M still gets the information across
Mb/s means MegaBit per second
MB/s means MegaByte per second (1 MB = 8 Mb)
mb/s would literally mean millibits per second, since there is no such thing as a Millibit (1/1000th of a bit) most people just assume the lowercase m stands for Megabit.
your right thanks.. i guess i did underestimate how much the usb port can handle.
lol i guess its just kinda hard to take it seriously when its got so many useless products out there. :P
It is also $129 at TRU. I went locally and picked one up for $117.94 after tax with a 15% off coupon for Babies R Us that I found in store.
I just tried to pick one up locally but they told me they don't price match the web site. any tip how i can get them to sell it to me.
Still 129 at Toys R Us' website. Free shipping too.
Got mine for $80 at the local Wal-Mart. Regular price.
$80 regular price at Wal-Mart? It is $179 online. What Wal-Mart was this?
Me too. I picked one up at a Best Buy that wasn't paying too much attention to the ad. It had even expired and they still offered me the price match. Just goes to show you that it never hurts to ask a stupid question as long as there is a good deal involved.
I have one of these attached to my elite, and have a question that maybe one of you can answer. I have a Samsung LNT4671F, a nice 1080p LCD tv, and as i said an elite hooked up through the HDMI port. Now my Blu-ray movies played through my PS3 look incredible, but it seems like every HD-DVD movie I play though my Xbox player has a lot of video noise in dark scenes. For instance, in Transformers, during the scene at the kids house when the lights go out. The picture is so grainy/staticky(sp?) that its hard to watch. This only seems to happen during dark scenes and only on my HDDVD player, like I said, Blu-Ray seems to be perfect.
Any ideas on why this is? Is it the player, or???
Could be a faulty cable. Did you set your box's settings to run at 1080p? Also try upping the black enhance in the display settings on the Xbox.
Yeah, its all running at 1080p, and I don't think its a faulty cable since the games themselves running on the system look fine. As for setting the black enhance settings on the Xbox, I am not even sure I know how to do that....
John S, go to the system blade > Display and you'll see the option.
Andrew,
You said earlier you could rip to divx. I've been trying to figure out how to rip to do this. Can you throw me a link or email me at mrmonisimo@bellsouth.net. Thanks!
Amazon might be back up to $179.99, but Toys-R-Us is still showing $129.98 (as of 12:46pm EST)...
T'RU's site says "temporarily not available online" :-(
Stupid TRU, i check it on my smartphone and it shows available but i cant click the add to cart. now i check on my pc and its still out of stock
Wouldn't one need to compare the Xbox HDDVD addon, with the higher-end Toshibas, in terms of price?
Xbox HDDVD = 1080p over HDMI
Toshiba A3 = 1080i maximum
right?
Wouldn't that make the 360 add-on the best deal going since the cheapest 1080p Toshiba is like $300?
If you have a 1080p TV it doesn't matter if you feed it 1080p or 1080i. It's going to be 1080p no matter what.
Stop buying into the buzzwords, propaganda and hype. I guarantee you won't even notice the difference between 1080i and 1080p if you watched the same film on the same TV.
I'm not buying into the hype of anything, and I certainly understand the concepts of video processing and output resolutions.
That said, my problem is with comparing two products that are not alike. In this case, the output capabilities of the Xbox HDDVD Add-on more closely resemble the Toshiba A30 than the A3. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to compare the PRICE of the add-on to the PRICE of the A30.
Whether or not someone notices or knows the difference between 1080i and 1080p is irrelevant.
That's interesting. I worked for Toys "R" Us for nearly ten years while in high school and college. It has the HD-DVD priced at $129.98. TRU's pricing also reflects the status of a product. Ending in 9 means in good (healthy) status. Ending in 8 means clearance until inventories are depleted. When inventory reaches a certain mark, the price is changed to end in 7 to mean "close-out".
I wonder if this is a signal that the HD-DVD add-on may be on its way out due to financial losses or a newer, better replacement product. Starting to look like the Sega Genesis CD-64.
"better replacement product" = Xbox 360 with integrated/on-board HD-DVD drive ???
I bought mine for $89 at FYE, new!
or an "Xbox 360 Ultimate" that comes with an internal HDDVD player... ;)
This would be a nice easy HD add-on for a media center PC.
Hmmm...finally looks tempting. Anyone know if I can use a US 360 HD-DVD drive with a Euro 360?
just checked the links:
Amazon price is $149.99 (still a little too high for me)
TYU price is $129.98, still not available online (from the info Chris posted, doesn't look good for getting one at this price from TYU)
Yesterday- i printed the the toys r us ad from the website and went to best buy at lunch to pick up the hd dvd player to add to my media center pc. I noticed the price match policy on the wall and decided to hold the printer out page in my pocket... best buy will match the price if you show them the ad when you buy, but they will match 110% if you show the ad after you buy! so i paid my 179, and then after work i went back in with the ad and the receipt and they gave me a ~$60 refund on a $50 difference (with taxes and all). that's a really weird policy...
a little more footwork on your part nets you an additional 10%...
This is not a permanent price drop.
This is a sale,
As of today it looks like your lucky to find them in stock anywhere at this price.
I'm not exactly sure how BD is winning the format war except with buyouts, deceit, and skewed numbers concerning PS3 at this point. I mean Paramount was paid like $150 mil to go exclusive, but just Sony, not the whole BDA, just dropped money on Fox to stay exclusive, instead of following Warner who was about to go HD DVD exclusive without money (based on coding problems with BD, ala the massive delay on the Matrix Trilogy). And then they dropped half a billion on Warner to go exlusive. It's like WTF? Where did that come from? Sony better start making alot more money very soon, or they'll be bankrupt soon.
But about the war in general and the addon price drop, an arcade with an addon is now as cheap as the bottom end PS3 (ok $10 more). And since all the 360's have HDMI as well as VGA 1080p, I think the only reason we aren't seeing a huge HD DVD shift is the lack of advertisement.
I mean, without PS3, there really isn't a war at all. 2.7 mil BD players vs 800K HD players w/ 4.2 mil BD disc vs 2.6 mil HD disc in 2007. What is said about PS3's being used occasionally for movies seems to be generally a truism. But now the 360 has a PS3 price-performance equivalent with the arcade-addon combo.
If only the masses would realize that Sony is trying vertically integrate all media and rape them for their dough.