the_jackal Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Ok so heres the deal i just got of the phone from harvey norman and i asked if they had any box 360 hd dvd player in stock and the woman had no idea what i wan taking about so she switched me through to tv and and other electicals and he said we dont sell the gear here then wanted to switch me back to were i just came from. So anyways after all that i got on the phone to eb games and they said they might not be getting them in for a few weeks but if they get them in soon they will give us a yell. SO once again again no luck so i tryed game traders and they said they might be getting them in soon but if not then tomorrow so what other places can you think of that might sell them because it sound like to me no where is gonna get them in and i live a a pretty big town its almost a city and i cant find anything or anyone that know's what im talking about so has anyone got ant ideas.
the_jackal Posted March 28, 2007 Author Posted March 28, 2007 oh opps i forgot about that i live in bundaberg central QLD we just about have every store there is besides jb hifi and i just called k mart and they dont stock them so still no luck.
gtr73 Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Maybe you wait for this to hit the market instead: Xbox 360 Elite with HDMI & 120Gig HDD Ooh yeah baby!
Chesty Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 oh opps i forgot about that i live in bundaberg central QLD we just about have every store there is besides jb hifi and i just called k mart and they dont stock them so still no luck. Bundaberg? Relax, CRT will be coming your way shortly...
Dolphy Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Hi, I'm sure that the HD DVD drive is due to be released tomorrow. Try them tomorrow, or you local EB. Rgds, Dolphy
CoNFooZeD Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Maybe you wait for this to hit the market instead:Xbox 360 Elite with HDMI & 120Gig HDD Ooh yeah baby! Still no HD-DVD drive though The HD DVD drive will not be internal or bundled -- Microsoft never did or nor does not currently have plans to put an HD DVD drive in the 360.
Skid_MacMarx Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 Maybe you wait for this to hit the market instead:Xbox 360 Elite with HDMI & 120Gig HDD Ooh yeah baby! It doesn't appear the HD-DVD drive is inbuilt .. well .. atleast from the article you refer to The HD DVD drive will not be internal or bundled -- Microsoft never did or nor does not currently have plans to put an HD DVD drive in the 360. http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/20/xbox-36...nd-120gb-drive/
AndrewW Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 It doesn't appear the HD-DVD drive is inbuilt .. well .. atleast from the article you refer to[/b] http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/20/xbox-36...nd-120gb-drive/ nope, Microsoft are continuing to give their customers the choice to purchase the HD addon, rather than forcing it on them like the PS3. Andrew.
IanD1503559705 Posted March 28, 2007 Posted March 28, 2007 oh opps i forgot about that i live in bundaberg central QLD we just about have every store there is besides jb hifi and i just called k mart and they dont stock them so still no luck. Dick Smiths don't seem to be getting any until after 8 April, Harvey Norman appear to be waiting on stock too, EB and JB so far seem to have little stock in mainly for pre-orders and I'm not sure when Kmart/Big W/Target will be getting stock. If you are not concerned about the hassle of returning warranty items to online stores, you might get one quicker and cheaper in the short term from an online retailer. http://www.dvdcrave.com.au/products/product.jsp?pid=33326 is reasonably cheap and has cheap postage. http://www.dvdorchard.com.au seems to have put their price up. http://www.infocusdvd.com.au also seems to have put the price up. There are probably other online retailers too.
50mxe20 Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 oh opps i forgot about that i live in bundaberg central QLD we just about have every store there is besides jb hifi and i just called k mart and they dont stock them so still no luck.Add it to your profile?
Tinsanta Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 Dont look at Toys R Us, Not enough support for Hd-DVD and 360 at the moment so we are sticking to Blu-Ray and not stocking the HD dvd player. A couple other retailers are doing the same. Although on the same not PS3 is going very slow but Sony basicly said its not a day one console but long term.
IanD1503559705 Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 Well, the official Microsoft release date has arrived and no sign of the addon at my local Big W or Target. Still have to check Kmart, but there doesn't seem to be much retailer interest: not surprising when there has been virtually zero advertising to enthuse the customer.
gtr73 Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 Dont look at Toys R Us, Not enough support for Hd-DVD and 360 at the moment so we are sticking to Blu-Ray and not stocking the HD dvd player. A couple other retailers are doing the same. Although on the same not PS3 is going very slow but Sony basicly said its not a day one console but long term. Well, the official Microsoft release date has arrived and no sign of the addon at my local Big W or Target.Still have to check Kmart, but there doesn't seem to be much retailer interest: not surprising when there has been virtually zero advertising to enthuse the customer. Lets face it, the Hi Def market for anything is still only small in Australia. So not surprising there's little interest for the PS3 with Blu-Ray and the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD - simply not that many HD movies, HD games and cheap HD televisions to encourage growth of a bigger market. But in a couple of years from now, when the masses wake up to it (sorry, forced fed it), very different story I'm sure . . . . Best option I think at this point, is get your Xbox 360 HD-DVD via order online.
jules123 Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 Picked up a 360 hd-dvd drive this afternoon from JB hifi in Canberra (civic store). Called them up to check first and found that there was only one left - they had sold an entire 'box' (don't know what volume that is exactly, though) earlier today and there was only one left!! Got them to put it aside for me and picked up up a short time ago (full price - $249) First impressions are sweet - a quick look at a few scenes of King Kong looks spectacular to say the least, sound does appear to be very good (dolby digital plus soundtrack) haven't given it a thorough workout though, but it does sound very detailed and impressive... I was just wondering - I haven't looked into this much yet so go easy - but does anyone know if the dolby digital plus is compressed for output? the max bitrate of optical is 1.5mb/sec which is the same rate dolby digital plus is encoded isn't it? Do we get full rate dolby digital plus or not? Will give some more feedback when I have a better chance to play-around - hopefully tonight...!
IanD1503559705 Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 I was just wondering - I haven't looked into this much yet so go easy - but does anyone know if the dolby digital plus is compressed for output? the max bitrate of optical is 1.5mb/sec which is the same rate dolby digital plus is encoded isn't it? Do we get full rate dolby digital plus or not? Well, playing back Kong with PowerDVD 6.5 shows the DD soundtrack is 1536kbps IIRC. Unfortunately the onscreen info doesn't seem to distinguish between DD and DD+ (it just says DD). Since this is equivalent to a full DTS soundtrack bitrate (and that can be output via SPDIF), I would say DD+ can be output via digital at least in this case. According to Dolby, DD+ can be encoded at up to 6mbps. Consequently, we don't get "full" rate DD+ but we do get whatever the author felt appropriate. Whether the bitrate we got is adequate or compressed from what it could have been: who can say? The drive is somewhat noisy though. Would like to connect to my media server in another room and stream to the HTPC, to keep noise to a minimum, if I can work out how to do it.
Kirium Posted March 29, 2007 Posted March 29, 2007 The issue of sound is a murky one right now... Apparently, the unit defaults to a night mode, giving much reduced dynamic range. MS is apparently working on this, but the player has been out for 4 months now and still nothing. AVSforum is tracking alot of this. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread....ge=98&pp=30 Quote:2. Why dont you try to give a release indicator of the xbox360 DTS update. As one previous stated - half the joy is in waiting for something, that you KNOW when to get! For myself I have stopped purchasing more HD DVD's, as I will need more specific information on update, before investing more money in movies and concerts with relatively "poor" sound stage. I appreciate this. But it took me three months of trying to get you the last answer . But I will give it another shot and see if I can share more. As to more info, here is an embarrassing nugget. The reason the audio dynamic range is not where it should be is that the Dolby Digital/DD+ decoder is permanently stuck in the "night" mode. This is the mode you can set on your DVD player where the dynamics are compressed as to not wake up the others sleeping in the house. Apparently, Dolby certification rules mandate that night mode be on, if there is no UI to turn it on and off. Their assumption is that without such UI, this a portable DVD player and such, driving a TV with its little speaker which may get damaged with full dynamic range! Anyway, the above is a silly requirement in this situation but I don't want to put the fault on Dolby. We should have caught this and put in the UI and do it right. So the update will have a UI setting with default being full dynamic range. This is why I said earlier that even normal Dolby Digital output will sound better. But per pervious posts, we will also be adding DTS encoding output at its higher rate.
the_jackal Posted March 29, 2007 Author Posted March 29, 2007 Well after all that game traders had a few hd dvd players in stock so I went down there and paid full price 249 bucks but i dont have a hd tv yet might be getting one tomorrow just have to wait and see how payday works out but anyway I just had to open it and i put it on my sd tv and it just played a normal Pciture so yea im gonna have to look around for one.
Skid_MacMarx Posted March 30, 2007 Posted March 30, 2007 We've received numerous reader reports that Universal's new 'Children of Men' HD DVD is a bit of lemon for some Xbox 360 owners, due to incompatibility problems with the console's HD DVD add-on drive. . . . When testing the disc out on our own Xbox 360 add-on HD DVD drive, we had the same results -- the disc spins in the tray, but is seemingly unrecognized by the system. A black screen and a reboot threw us back to the Microsoft Dashboard menu regardless of how many times we continued to try and load the film. We tried this dic on another Xbox 360 and found the same problem. Strangely, that tryout was even more unsuccessful -- we didn't even make it to a black screen, it simply spun the disc longer than usual and remained at the Dashboard menu. http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Uni...ayback_Snag/552
angryofmayfair Posted March 30, 2007 Posted March 30, 2007 I picked up the $249 HD DVD kit from JB hi-fi in Fountain Gate (Melb) two days go. I was surprised to see they had a stack (perhaps 20) of them tucked away in the back corner with other xBox 360 accessories - nothing at all as far as marketing displays etc. Considering that Harvey Norman and Dick Smith had not received their stocks and that JB has supposedly stated they will not be supporting HD DVD then it's all the more surprising they had so much stock Very impressed with the PQ but very unimpressed with the 360 and HD player - they are both huge noisy POS and don't deserve a spot in my HT room alongside my silent MacMini HTPC, in fact they are both going in to the next room and will be connected via a component/optical ext cable - I'm beginning to think that I should have waitied for a decent HD player rather than this noisy POS....
Felix.. Posted March 30, 2007 Posted March 30, 2007 Very impressed with the PQ but very unimpressed with the 360 and HD player - they are both huge noisy POS and don't deserve a spot in my HT room alongside my silent MacMini HTPC, in fact they are both going in to the next room and will be connected via a component/optical ext cable - I'm beginning to think that I should have waitied for a decent HD player rather than this noisy POS.... Yes the noise factor is a major drawback of the 360 for me too although I've never played either a DVD or HD DVD on it, nor care to. It's a shame because in pretty much all other respects the 360 rocks, better price than the PS3, better controllers, better interface and online features, and most importantly of all better games...at least at the present time. I'm hoping the newly announced Elite version might run cooler and therefore hopefully a bit quieter. Well one can hope.
yabbal Posted March 30, 2007 Posted March 30, 2007 On gamespot.com they said the new elite model does not use the new processor yet. If this is true I will hang out a bit longer - there's no rush for me till halo 3 comes out. Back on topic though, if I had a 360 now I would get a HD-DVD drive for it, even if it ultimatley fails (not saying it will) then I only blew $190 on it. I wouldnt buy a stand alone player (bluray or HD-DVD) at this stage as I would cry if that format failed after paying $1500 for the player. My only concern is getting the movies for it - they just started stocking BluRay movies at work due to the PS3 release, yet there appears there are no plans to sell HD-DVD disks even though they stock the 360 HD-DVD drives.
IanD1503559705 Posted March 31, 2007 Posted March 31, 2007 I picked up the $249 HD DVD kit from JB hi-fi in Fountain Gate (Melb) two days go. I was surprised to see they had a stack (perhaps 20) of them tucked away in the back corner with other xBox 360 accessories - nothing at all as far as marketing displays etc.Considering that Harvey Norman and Dick Smith had not received their stocks and that JB has supposedly stated they will not be supporting HD DVD then it's all the more surprising they had so much stock Very impressed with the PQ but very unimpressed with the 360 and HD player - they are both huge noisy POS and don't deserve a spot in my HT room alongside my silent MacMini HTPC, in fact they are both going in to the next room and will be connected via a component/optical ext cable - I'm beginning to think that I should have waitied for a decent HD player rather than this noisy POS.... Yes, it is curious that JB were amongst the first to actually make stocks of the addon available, considering they are anti-HD-DVD: I suppose they are just supporting Xbox 360 and treat it like any other accessory. Have you considered connecting the addon directly to the MacMini, or doesn't it have the grunt to play HD-DVD? I gather Mac supports the addon directly without additional drivers. I'm looking into locating the addon in the study connected to a media server PC and sharing the drive to the HTPC via ethernet, to remove the noise issue, but I think I need the assistance of AnyDVD HD.
IanD1503559705 Posted March 31, 2007 Posted March 31, 2007 http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Uni...ayback_Snag/552 The forum comments pertaining to that article indicate a wide range of experiences, however one stood out for me and that was a few posters had issues, wiped/cleaned the disc and then all was okay. This is fascinating, because I used to occasionally experience something similar with brand new DVDs: they would look perfect out of the box, but would experience playback issues to varying degrees; a quick clean with a mild detergent generally cured the problem. I'm wondering if during the manufacturing process, some discs get a thin coat of oil or some transparent substance deposited on them (or maybe they miss a cleaning step) which interferes with laser focusing. I have also received a few HD-DVD and DVD discs with small smears of a hard transparent grease-like substance. At first glance the smears look like deep scratches, but clean off with mild detergent. My money is on some of the playback issues being due to foreign substances on the disc surface, even though the disc looks perfect to the naked eye. I doubt whether many owners clean a brand new disc if it looks okay.
angryofmayfair Posted April 1, 2007 Posted April 1, 2007 Have you considered connecting the addon directly to the MacMini, or doesn't it have the grunt to play HD-DVD? I gather Mac supports the addon directly without additional drivers. No I wasn't aware that the Mac would support the HD DVD addon directly - if this is the case I will certainly be giving it a try! Do you have any more info/links about this? TIA
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