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zippyjuan
02-27-2008, 10:02 PM
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20080227152738_Microsoft_Drops_Price_of_Xbox_360_HD_DVD_Drive_to_49.html
I haven't confirmed this with any retailers.

Microsoft Drops Price of Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive to $49.
Microsoft Sales Last HD DVD Drives for Xbox 360

Category: Multimedia

by Anton Shilov

[ 02/27/2008 | 03:27 PM ]


Microsoft Corp. has officially cut the price of its HD DVD add-on player for its Xbox 360 game console to about $50 following the recent decision to discontinue the drive because of Toshiba’s withdrawal from the format war. While with the drive from Microsoft it is more affordable than ever to watch high-definition movies, the pending lack of HD DVD titles in the following quarters does not make it a good investment.


Microsoft HD DVD drive for Xbox 360 system can playback HD DVD movies provided that it is plugged to the gaming system from Microsoft or a personal computer running Windows operating system using USB bus. From now on the device is price at $49.99, a price-point of an advanced DVD burner.

Despite of the fact that HD DVD standard may see its dusk soon, there are several hundreds of movies available on such discs, many of them are exclusive to HD DVD. As of mid-February, over 380 HD DVD titles have been released in the USA, over 210 Japanese HD DVD titles have been released and there are hundreds of HD DVD titles available in Europe with tens more incoming. Therefore, HD DVD playback capability seems to be a truly valuable feature now and in the forthcoming quarters.

But while there are loads of HD DVD movies available now at a discount price, given the fact that the vast majority of them are expected to be available on Blu-ray disc eventually, it may not make sense for many customers to grab an HD DVD add-on now.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disc drives for PCs and video game consoles in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements.

eSDee
02-29-2008, 12:03 AM
I just bought one today. $49.99 from Best Buy. Comes with King Kong plus 5 mail-in movies. The ones that I am getting are:

Full Metal Jacket - one of my all time favorites
Babel - heard it was good
The Italian Job - saw it. entertaining. will look good in HD.
The Thing - old school excellent horror flick. I am looking forward to seeing it in HD.
U2 Rattle and Hum- I'll play this in the background at a party one day.

not bad for free right? :shrug:

The reason I decided to buy a dead format was because I was reading on Gear Log (http://www.gearlog.com) that they believe that there will be an abundance of HD-DVD's soon since there won't be any more HD-DVD manufacturers. Passwird already has Planet Earth in HD-DVD for $30! Deep discount also has great deals on DVD's at the moment. I am buying 3 of them for $13 each. They are regular DVD prices, but in high def. Also not too shabby.

Finally this drive is USB and can be used as an external HD-DVD player on a PC. That doesn't restrict you to the Xbox for your HD-DVD viewing. Macintosh doesn't have a HD-DVD application that will work with this device, but I am willing to bet that it soon will.

johnnymk
02-29-2008, 03:09 AM
I was wondering whether it could be used with a PC. Thanks for the info.

Jeffbx
02-29-2008, 05:10 AM
If you're the 'investor' type, I'd recommend picking up a handful of these. I bet in about 2-3 years they'll be fetching a pretty big premium on ebay.

Hoser
02-29-2008, 02:03 PM
If you're using the drive on a PC, does your monitor have to have HDMI as an input?

Devhux
02-29-2008, 02:23 PM
If you're using the drive on a PC, does your monitor have to have HDMI as an input?

DVI will work just fine -- and I don't think any studios used the flag that would degrade the resolution if it wasn't HDCP compliant, so I believe that won't be a huge issue either.