one and only 360 HD-DVD Drive thread & LINKS - Page 4

With component video your TV is going to have to scale no matter what as your plasma's native resolution is 1024x768 (720P = 1280x720) (1080i = 1920x1080)
Your TV will be doing the scaling in this scenario.

If you use the VGA connection you will be able to select 1024x768 and specify Widescreen format and everything should be output to your displays native resolution BUT the XBOX 360 will do the scaling when playing HD-DVD video. (It will have to scale 1920x1080 to 1024x768).

So if your TV will do a better job of scaling than the XBOX then stick with 1080i or 720P over component.

If the Xbox scaling looks better go VGA at 1024x768

Studios are also looking at the total number of HD-DVD players out there as a potential market, and not just the attach rate. So people purchasing multiple players is still a good thing. Obviously, if MS can sell millions of these, that will get the studios' attention just like the promise of millions of BD players via the PS3 got them to sign on to BD in the first place.

So a good question would be 'just how well does the xbox scale 1024x768 over VGA'? better than the pannys/sonys?

Anyone figure out how to get this remote to work with a Sony TV and how to eject the HD Drive when you stop a movie?

Amir,
Any word on the stuttering issue? Is it as simple as people not restarting their units after loading the disc? I have heard many mentions of this throughout most of the 360 add on threads.

I watched a bit of Kong, a bit of Batman, and the entirety of "The Thing". No stuttering at all, just smooth HD goodness.

I DID restart my 360 after installing the update, however.

I didn't get any sort of manual with the HD-DVD drive to program the remote with other devices either. Maybe there is something at the microsoft website, or both of us are idiots and we threw out some small advertisement looking paper that was actually the codes for other devices.

I just checked the only manual I thought I recieved and I'm indeed right that it gives no codes to work with any other devices. Maybe MS did something so it suppose to automatically detect and work with some devices in limited fashion. However it doesn't work with any of my devices at all so I need something to code them into the remote.

you know i called tech support and of course they were no help. spoke to someone in india who had no clue and had me press all the letter buttons which did nothing but activate u control on the movie. she then tried to get someone else and of course my call was routed back like i was just calling for the first time. i ended up hanging up

ok i just found some info on their web site. i got my tv to work with the remote, now if i could only figure out the eject problem

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/sy...ntrolcodes.htm

I "taught" my Onkyo receiver remote the XBOX controls, but the XBOX will not take the signal from the Onkyo remote. Any ideas?

Mine is arriving today so I will check out my movies on the adapter as well. I have only had problems on rentals on my HD-A1 so I hope the drive on the 360 add on is less sensitive.

ok so i will give mission impossible 3 another try since i restarted it last night and didnt know....

Does VGA/PC input on Sammy HLS DLP do 1:1 mapping without overscan? I am wondering if I can connect the Xbox HD-DVD to Sammy via PC input & get 1080p.

Can you post a few links?
ta.

I do not have time to post the links, but I have seen mention of it in quite a few 360 threads over the past few days. Mine is arriving today and I hope it plays flawlessly.

yes i saw 1 comment yesterday on the subject but thought it was a one of thing, then again i bet they thought the same with the Tosh video/audio drops back in april and look where that went

I thought it was a one time thing too, but then I saw more posts so I figured I would ask the question. Could be nothing (most likely), but just wanted to make certain.

I will let everyone know if I have any issues as I plan to watch King Kong once the Fedex guy arrives.

What Is The Best Setting To Put My Tv On For The Vga Cable. Also Does The Drive Come With The 1080p Update On A Disc.i Live In A Rural Area With No Broadband. My Drive Will Not Be In Until Next Week Ordered It From Value Electronics. Just Trying To Find The Best Set Up For The Drive So I Can Have Everything In Place When It Gets Here. Thanks For Any Help

I went to the dolby website and found this information:

"If your A/V receiver or processor has neither multichannel analog or digital inputs, but is equipped with 5.1-channel Dolby® Digital decoding and playback, you will still be able to enjoy 5.1-channel performance from next-generation optical players. Included within 7.1-channel multichannel Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD streams is a core 5.1 mix prepared by the content maker that is used when the player is set for 5.1-channel mode. After playback audio signals have been mixed in the player, the PCM signal can be encoded to a Dolby Digital signal and output from the player via S/PDIF (optical or coaxial) to your connected Dolby Digital A/V receiver or processor.

In many instances, the audio quality you will experience from this connection may be better than what you would experience during playback of standard-definition DVD-Video discs, especially if the native signal on the disc is Dolby TrueHD or high-bit-rate Dolby Digital Plus. This is a direct result of a higher-quality source signal feeding a Dolby Digital encoder running at 640 kbpshigher than the maximum bit rate on DVD-Video."

So to sum it up: The sound output is coming from the xbox 360 itself, which only has a spdif out. This limits to a 640kbps 5.1 channel ouput. It is still better than the 5.1 output of a regular dvd (i have the 360 add-on and can attest it does sound better), but I am highly dissappointed that without either multichannel analog outs or hdmi, we will NEVER hear dolby digital plus (3 Mbps-6Mbps of encoded audio) or dolby TrueHD (up to 18Mbps audio) as compared to only 640kbps.

I have a sony 40 " xbr lcd (native resolution ~1380x768) which the vga output of the xbox nails perfectly and so the picture of the hd-dvd is light years ahead of my progressive output 480p sony dvd player. However, I think that glossed over on the xbox website with all of the benefit of increased picture quality (they are really hyping 1080p) is the fact that we will never get the true sound benefit we should be getting with these discs. Overall, I am happy about my purchase as it allows me to watch hd-dvd relatively inexpensively in the short term.

I highly recommend the dolby web site as an eye opener for these new codecs.

Well, I knew about this from the get-go. Never was spec'd to be anything but standard (higher bit-rate) DD. For $200 though....Now, I have my A1 for dd+, TrueHD, etc.

Just went to Circuit City and bought the add on for $159.99

How you ask? Some awesome person at DVDTalk just posted this coupon:

http://www.badongo.com/file/1668694

It is $40 off any purchase of $199 or more! Printed it out, took it in to Circuit City, purchased the add on for $159.99

Great deal for anyone still on the fence!

i think you are right. for $200 i have my short term hdtv fix, but it is overall disappointing that this won't be available, and i wish this was slightly clearer in the marketing (although who would ever market a negative point about a piece of equipment). I am not sure that this is a true limit of the player as it has a usb out. is it doing any processing or is it just passing through to the 360 which is passing undecoded to the av reciever? theoretically i guess in the future the 360 could be software updated to decode the stream and have a new type of digital out. it seems like the output on the 360 is propietary which then ends in various normal outputs (component/vga etc.) maybe they could get their propietary out to end in an hdmi and solve this problem altogether - although i don't know if their propietary plug has the same bandwidth as hdmi.

Stupid question follows:

Which are better in order?

TrueHD, DD+, DD5.1, and ahhm, 2channel?

From the above, it looks like TrueHD is 18mbps, and DD+ is 3 to 6, so True is best I guess?

thanks for the info in advance!

They didn't object to it being a printout?

I think they could software "fix" for one of the new formats dd+/ TrueHD. The PS3, I believe, will do TrueHD through HDMI. But if you're like the vast majority of people who don't have an HDMI capable receiver then that's a lost cause. PS3 will use the optical/coaxial for high bit rate DTS (1.5 Mbps).

No, I printed both sides as well.

One thing though...it wouldn't scan and they had to type it in...the DVDTalk member had the same problem...but when they type it in it works fine.

Hi,
First and foremost, I must state that the HD add-on is killer times 10. I have King Kong, as well as a few others and have nothing but raves to say. I have been running everything via 1080i and the component cables. That said, I ran out today and got the 360 HD VGA adaptor to see what the differences might be as compared to my component outs. From what I've read, standard DVD's get the upconversion treatment only via VGA outs, and I wanted to see what that would look like. Also via the VGA cable, 1080p is possible, and ALLEGEDLY my projector will do that, but I'm not sure there either if somebody knows.

Having never used either a VGA out on the 360, or my RGB in on my Sony Cienza HS51a (8 months old), I'm not sure I'm doing something wrong here.

When booting up the 360 after installing the VGA cable, it gave me about 12 resolutions to pick from. Long gone were the display settings I was used to:480p, 1080i, etc. Many of these resolutions to me looked like 4:3 physically on the screen, even though widescreen mode was selected as the display type. I broke out my projector manual and it stated the maximum resolution for the VGA connection was 1280 by 720, so I chose that one. It at least went to a widescreen mode, but there was still about 3 inches to the right and left of the screen that were not filled in, which has never happened to me before with the standard components out and 1080i selected.

Then to make matters worse, I lost about 1/2 of the picture setting options on my Sony front projector because I was using the PC RGB in. This was explained in the manual that this would happen, but, I thought it was a real downer as I have the projector really tweaked out with Gammas, RCP, Black level adj., etc.

I could live with all of that so far, had the picture absolutely blown me away when I put King Kong on again. But, it was not to be. Yes, it still looked good, but nowhere near as good as via my regular component cable outputs did!!!!!! It looked rather washed out and the colors just did not "pop" like they did via component. I would say on absolute terms the pic was only about 75% as good via the VGA output.

The only thing I have not mentioned is that I did have to use a 10 foot Belkin SVGA extension to get up to my projector as it's ceiling mounted. It was of the $30 variety. I have no reason to believe that would be the root cause, but I did not try it without it as I think back to my experiment.

Does anyone have any advice or can tell if I'm doing something wrong here? If not, this HD VGA cable is going back!

Seeing that I was running the VGA at 1280 by 720 anyway; would that be theoretically "better" or "worse" then 1080i? I'm not so hip to the PC resolutions and am curious as to if I should even be bothering if that's the max resolution I can get via RGB inputs on my projector.

1080i = 1920 x 1080

What display are you using?

This seems to be a display by display issue. I have read others who also believe the component produces better PQ.