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360 HD-DVD Add-on Dropped to $179
Joystiq reports that the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 has been permanently dropped in price to $179. Additionally, Bob Barker style, you get five free movies too: "Appearing at Comic-Con in San Diego, the announcement was made amidst promotion for the HD-DVD releases of the film 300 and the cheerleader epic, Heroes. Not content with just a twenty dollar dip, Microsoft has extended Toshiba's 'Perfect Offer' promotion to Xbox 360 owners, awarding five free movies with purchase. The hard part now is choosing between Casablanca and The Dukes of Hazzard. Naturally, the Xbox Live Marketplace wasn't left out in all this news as 300 will be making its way to the service in HD on August 14th, while free content for Heroes will arrive sometime before its HD-DVD release."
Save $20, save the world
$20 got them 3 days of coverage from all the major news outlets... It's been on the front page of Google news for days. Tiny price-cut, tons of press. Geniuses. They really are amazing.
rtfa, not only a $20 price cut, but 5 free hd dvd movies. As expensive as these things are, your getting at least a $100 in bonuses. This might make me go out and get one, provided I could get the season 1 of heroes as one of my 5.
The 5-free thing is just a "me too" for the offer that is currently available for BluRay players.
You can't pick whichever ones you'd like. Similar to the BluRay offer, you have strict restrictions on which crappy movies you can get free. The list is available in PDF format only. Check it out. No Heroes.
1) Target does sell the Xbox 360 HD-DVD and they also sell HD DVD players on their website.
2) You are underestimating the sophistication of the market if you think that just because you can't walk into your local Target and buy a BR, that is going to affect people from making an informed decision on what to buy for a relatively technical piece of kit. The internet wasn't around back in the day of Beta/VHS.
3) Target customer service for tech pretty much is non-existant. If you want to by something fancy/technology-wise and you're not an internet-informed / internet-shopper, you go to Best Buy or Circuit City - both are HD dealers.
4) Not saying who is going to win the format war, or if there will be a truth when/if folks just publish on a duel-format disk and the cost of duel-format players drops. But this isn't a huge blow that people are making it out to be.
Anyone really buying into BD/HDDVD? I'd rather just watch a HD movie on one my HD movie channels or the occasional $6 rental off the Live Marketplace.
That is not true. Target agreed to a limited exclusivity agreement with Sony to carry only their BR player for a time. They still sell hd-dvd movies, as well as the HD-DVD addon for Xbox360. Assuming the war is still ongoing after Christmas, they will start carrying hd-dvd drives too.
Since most of these HD-DVD / Blu-Ray topics as of late are all flamewars akin to ps3 vs. 360. I thought I'd jump in and try to add some reason.
I bought the 360 hddvd add-on because I wanted to see what some of these movies were like in 720p (I don't own a 1080p tv). I found a great deal on craigslist and that was really the only reason I bought one. The movies look fantastic; much better than upconverted dvds, and noticeably better than movies on HD channels over Dish Network (from the compression I assume). In addition to the higher quality the way the menu works while watching a dvd is much friendlier (something that always annoyed me about dvds) and they have a new way of presenting some of the extras. NetFlix rents both hd-dvds and Blu-Rays now, so for that and the $100 or so i paid for it, it was a decent buy.
Obviously there are downsides. I hate playing it through the 360. The fans are noisy (not initially but eventually) and the start-up is a mild annoyance. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I assume I'd have the same problems playing blu-rays through the ps3. Theres just nothing as convenient as a stand-alone player... but theres something to be said for saving $300 when buying into unproven technology.
There are no "winners/losers" here yet, anyone claiming so is a fan-boi or uninformed. There are still some great movies you can only get on HD-DVD (and vice-versa with Blu-Ray) so people who are fans of those will still gravitate towards their respective studios and what format that studio supports.
Now with hybrid players appearing I wouldn't be surprised if we see a dual format thats basically invisible to the consumer. In 10 years (or whatever, i'm making an example) the majority of people will own a hybrid player, you'd head to BB or CC and pick up the latest release not even really paying attention to whether it has a Red case or a Blue case.
Not really sure where I'm going with this. Heh. I'd say if you own a 360, a hd tv and you're into the hd craze. Its only a couple of hundred dollars, its been fun for me and I've probably gotten that much enjoyment out of it. If you don't have an hd-tv, you don't really care about the hd craziness thats been going on, or you don't have $200 to blow on tech that you'll throw away in a few years, I wouldn't even worry about it. You're missing out on a few lines of resolution but nothing you should kick yourself over.
Why spend $100 on Wifi? If you're not right beside your router (I like wired connections when I'm close enough anyways) just buy a $40 access point, a $20 switch, and you've not only saved $40 but with that hardware behind your TV you can connect ALL your consoles (and any other network enabled device) back to your router without having to worry about individual wifi adapters.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I'd agree if the porn industry wasn't backing HDDVD.
Both the 360 and PS3 upconvert DVD's (if your system has the latest updates) but only over VGA or HDMI. Upconverters (of any kind) aren't allowed to use component video due to a licencing restriction on the DVD format.