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[Landlocked]

MS drops the ball on this again. I'm a home theater nut - and since, according to MS. the standard drive is all that will be needed for gaming, I'm not going to buy a drive that may be crippled soon.

2010 as a deadline for now low-res flags? Yeah right. Wait people start making HDMI copies and cracking the disc protection.

[rasstar]

QUOTE(Landlocked @ May 23 2006, 08:25 PM)

MS drops the ball on this again. I'm a home theater nut - and since, according to MS. the standard drive is all that will be needed for gaming, I'm not going to buy a drive that may be crippled soon.

2010 as a deadline for now low-res flags? Yeah right. Wait people start making HDMI copies and cracking the disc protection.

You can't be a theatre nut if you are relying on a gaming console to meet your home theatre needs. If you were a true fan you would go out and buy a stand alone player. Gaming consoles are specifically designed for gaming...some idiot just decided to give you one or two extra features.

[IntestineMan]

Make do with component video for now!

By the time 2010 comes around we will be able to by stand-alone HD-DVD players with hdmi/hdcp at WalMart for $25 and Xbox360/PS3 etc. will be irrelevant.


rasstar, Xbox360 is designed for more than gaming in mind. It has built-in DVD player, MCE integration and even plays audio and pictures from standard XP PCs (even portable music players). The upcoming HD-DVD add-on will give it another option. Some are using their Xbox 360 to stream HD content over lan right now to their HDTV from MCE. To make another arguement, we have played with friends on several occasions these DVD games like "Scene-It" and they can be pretty fun to play. Based on your arguments, DVD players should not be allowed to play anything but movies! I think it is neat when people find uses for things other than they are intended for.

I personally use a mod'd Xbox with XBMC and use it for most of my music/video streaming and even DVD playback. I also own an Xbox 360 and I play a few games on it. I have it setup with an MCE PC but I don't like how it organizes everything. I do consider myself a HT nut! I own a couple DVD players but I find XBMC to be good enough for me right now. It may technically not be the best video output quality but I am not claiming that it is and it looks suprisingly good on my 100" screen. The way I am doing everything is so I can upgrade to whatever else suits my needs in the future. If I had to upgrade it right now, I would probably use a Mac Mini. Buying HD-DVD or BlueRay at this time does not make any sense for me... no movies that I like, the player appears thrown together quickly and is slow and buggy (I have seen one at local store and had a chance to play with it for a while) and most importantly I do not watch movies over and over... and over like some people seem to do - once is usually good enough for me and I usually rent movies.

oh, before I forget... about the claims that HDMI is so superior since it is "pure digital", and is immune to any sort of variation in cabling quality etc. - do a google search for "hdmi eye pattern" and maybe even "hdmi cliff effect"! It is interesting to discover that HDMI has its flaws.

[Lizard King]

QUOTE(IntestineMan @ May 23 2006, 07:42 PM)

rasstar, Xbox360 is designed for more than gaming in mind. It has built-in DVD player, MCE integration and even plays audio and pictures from standard XP PCs (even portable music players). The upcoming HD-DVD add-on will give it another option. Some are using their Xbox 360 to stream HD content over lan right now to their HDTV from MCE. To make another arguement, we have played with friends on several occasions these DVD games like "Scene-It" and they can be pretty fun to play. Based on your arguments, DVD players should not be allowed to play anything but movies! I think it is neat when people find uses for things other than they are intended for.

Sorry buddy, I'm gonna have to agree with Rasstar on this one. The 360 may have features listed about the ability to play cd's mp3's and DVD's, but it's pretty poor in execution. DVD artifacting is worse than my 8 year old RCA deck, CD audio has no bass (not subwoofer channel, limited low frequency in the 2 channel proper audio signal), and $30 handheld MP3 players have better organization and display features. A HTPC, the Xbox is not.

DVD players should be allowed for nothing but movies, Mine's sitting right above my CD player which gets less use for audio than the turntable on the pedestal next to it.

Even the original Xbox has bad DVD playback (when not running XBMC). It'll be a hard sell to get me using the 360 for anything but games - ie, what it was designed (primarily) for. An all in one device as a gimmick ONLY.

[heraldoffailure]

QUOTE(Lizard King @ May 24 2006, 01:22 AM)

Sorry buddy, I'm gonna have to agree with Rasstar on this one. The 360 may have features listed about the ability to play cd's mp3's and DVD's, but it's pretty poor in execution. DVD artifacting is worse than my 8 year old RCA deck, CD audio has no bass (not subwoofer channel, limited low frequency in the 2 channel proper audio signal), and $30 handheld MP3 players have better organization and display features. A HTPC, the Xbox is not.

DVD players should be allowed for nothing but movies, Mine's sitting right above my CD player which gets less use for audio than the turntable on the pedestal next to it.

Even the original Xbox has bad DVD playback (when not running XBMC). It'll be a hard sell to get me using the 360 for anything but games - ie, what it was designed (primarily) for. An all in one device as a gimmick ONLY.

And-freaking-how.  The orig xbox is a sad sad music box without XBMC and the 360 is a sad sad media player, so much potential but limited so much by corporate initiative.  I love how Peter Moore talks about PS3, Sony, and a hidden corporate initiative, but MS neutered the 360s media playback because of their corporate push for DRM.  Leave the corporations to the hardware, and the scene to the unlimited creativity to unleash upon it.

[leorimolo]

who says it doesnt have an hdmi port   youll see

[Reaper527]

QUOTE(Obveron @ Aug 16 2006, 08:51 AM)

Burning to blu-ray will probably be useless since you wont have the HDCP code (unless its hacked).  I'd recommend using your computer to output to you HDTV via component, or DVI/HDMI (if your TV will accept digital signals without HDCP).  As for storage, if your hard drive isnt good enough, try using mpeg4 to compress 1080i content to fit on a DVD-R/+R.. wmv-hd have good results using this idea.. but you need a fast computer to decode.
There are various videocards on the market that can output to a HDTV.. or you can get a RGB to Component transcoder box.

why did you bump a 4 month old topic thats full of old, inaccurate information? this threads just going to cause confusion now that there is a recent one where MS says they are possibly releasing a dvi/hdmi cable.