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Oct 24 / Ozymandias

[Edit] Time to Pick Up that HD-DVD Drive

Yes, I have one and love it – though I’ll admit that at this point I don’t see a difference between visual quality on well-encoded HD-DVD or BluRay discs. They both look fantastic! That said, I just saw the following on Evil Avatar:

As most of you already know Best Buy had an awesome promotion this week. With the purchase of a Xbox 360 HD DVD drive you would also recieve Heroes Season 1 for free (a $99 value!). Yes, great deal, but was that not enough for you?
In this same ad there was another HD DVD deal which allowed you to pick two free HD DVD movies with the purchase of any HD DVD player. Originally Best Buy intended this deal to only apply to Toshiba set top boxes, but due to poor word choice they have chosen to honor the promotion for the Xbox 360 HD DVD player due to being overwhelmed with complaints.
Now with the purchase of the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player you recieve:

  • King Kong (packed in with the drive itself)
  • Heroes Season 1
  • 2 Free HD DVDs of your choice priced $34.99 or below
  • 5 Additional free HD DVDs (via mail in rebate)

That is 9 Free HD DVDs with the purchase of the drive. If you’ve already purchased the drive just take in your receipt to recieve the two additional free movies.

Heroes is a fantastic series, and it looks great in HD. If you had been considering picking it up anyway, this deal makes it a no-brainer IMO.

[Edit: Just came across a similar offer, except online at Buy.com. $165 gets you the HD-DVD drive, King Kong, Heroes Season 1, and five HD-DVDs of your choice (from a preset list). Seriously, if you have an HDTV do yourself a favor and pick one up!]

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  • http://www.corpnews.com Rasputin

    I’m pretty annoyed with all of this because I picked up the 360 HD-DVD player in February or March and I can’t take advantage of any of these deals.

  • Bret

    So Lame.    I bought mine at Fred Meyer a month ago specifically to rent Heroes Season one from netflix on HD-DVD.   Bad timing I Guess.

  • http://technowledgy.spaces.live.com BackScatter

    Ya, I picked one up last December and I'm a little bummed about the recent offers too. That's the price you pay for being an early adopter of anything, really.  Tech goes up and prices come down – You have to decide where you're jumping in. I'd normally have waited awhile on something like this to let the two camps slug it out, but in this case I didn't really think the price to jump in was unreasonable.

    For what it's worth, I'm a huge movie buff and I really like the HD-DVD drive too. I've pretty much switched over to buying all HD-DVD flicks now – They look fantastic and the additional functionality over my old DVD player is impressive.

  • Porktree

    I bought my hd-dvd way back in December and I love it.  I’m kind of cheesed that Blockbuster only rents HD online.  And I’m worried that the recent sales numbers have blu-ray outselling hd movies at a ratio of 2-1. I don’t see why the hd (and blu-ray) movie is 1/3 again as much in price as a normal dvd, but the mpaa and movie industry what it is, I kind of expect the forced rear entry.

  • http://flektor-blog.com Ron

    Kudos to me for not buying anything early!  I’m gonna take advantage of this.

  • JohnCz

    Sounds like a great deal!

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    The 360 HD-DVD wont appeal mass market cos its too bulky and noisely with a 360 running along side, not to mention another power brick. Saying that I’d buy a HD-DVD 360 but MS decided against this.

  • islandkiwi

    I loved the first season of Heroes…I may look into this.

  • http://www.section9studios.com Jason

    JJS UK made a good point, however you are missing a bigger picture here – 180 bucks and such a great deal like this is REALLY a great deal.  Its a TERRIFIC way to convince people who wouldnt normally have ever considered going one way or the other with the whole next-gen DVD war (like myself), but a no brainer like this is a great way to "sample" HD DVD and see if its something you want to make a bigger committment on (like say, for a better more expensive stand alone player etc).

    Yes the 360 is too loud, and even with full surround sound it still makes too much noise to be a distraction, but at this price and bonus its still worth it to "check it out".

    Even if you never buy another HD-DVD again you still got your money’s worth!

  • imaginedbug

    "Yes the 360 is too loud, and even with full surround sound it still makes too much noise to be a distraction"

    Mine must’ve been quiet compared to the one(s) you’ve heard, because when I used my now-deceased Xbox 360 to watch a movie it was quiet as any other DVD player I’ve owned to date (and I’ve gone through one every 18 months since mid-1999).

    Sure, it makes some noise when playing a game, but most of the noise comes from the DVD-drive, and even then it depends on the game you’re playing (Crackdown is noisy as heck, while Halo 3 seems quieter). But despite the noise level of the drive or system itself, I’ve yet to be distracted while playing a game.

  • ushman360

    @Ron,yes 5 kudos for you! that is the best advice for any gamer looking to buy hardware.

  • http://tom.xlotus.net Tom C

    Tell you what… buy me an HDTV first, then you can start selling me on your format war drive.

  • 360 tag: JJS UK

    Well $400 you get a standalone player which supposely can play games too.. (PS3) This unit is small, no power brick and reliable plus has a big movie HD library.

    I think it comes down to what you like doing. 360 is great for gaming but I may get a PS3 solely for Bluray Q1 2008. I suppose my decision rests on how well implemented HD movies are when they’re launched in UK(supposely by end year). My considerations are price, speed of download, content and quality of HD both picture AND SOUND..

    If Sony had games which it doesnt and LIVE(with dedicated servers) it would be the No1 choice but doesnt so MS wins at pres. Agree?

  • http://live.xbox.com/member/Butwheaty Butwheaty

    Keep in mind that purchasing the add-on HD DVD drive requires that Microsoft make a 360 that doesn’t break.  You’re still better off buying a standalone player, no matter how "good" this deal appears to be.

    Now on my 4th console, it would really piss me off if I *did* have the add-on drive (oh, and I refuse to use Vista … for other reasons).

  • JohnCz

    http://www.joystiq.com/…/netflix-wants-service-on-your-console

    Although I think the HD-DVD deal is attractive…the potential of this NetFlix offering is huge.  I’ve been waiting for some sort of monthly movie subscription plan.  XBox offerings are okay, but this could bring 10s of thousands of titles.  Ideally, I want to see this delivered by way of SilverLight.

  • JohnCz

    Also, rumor has it that the fall update will bring web-based games to XBox.  If true, this might give further credance to a SilverLight based NetFlix implementation on XBox platform.  Very very cool if it pans out.

  • Trellium

    That Netflix concept is one I have been waiting for since the MS board added Netflix people :) .  I don’t like that a little bit, it’s HUGE for us. We love Netflix, we would use their download service a lot more if it would show on the TV. Let us use a 360 for that, and we would probably buy another 360 Arcade for delivery to the tv in the bedroom.

    I hope MS is thinking about using the 360 to offer all options for content (cable via the top secret tv tuner idea, Netflix subscriptions, video rentals from Live itself or another source like HBO, …).

    That is the sort of thing that sells more than one 360 per house, plus a ton more houses that want one 360.

  • Blu ray >>>>>>> HD DVD

    HD DVD is losing its sales and market shares.

    X360 doesn’t have HDMI 1.3, shame nobody can enjoy on their LPCM 5.1/7.1 systems.

    I am not saying you should get a PS3 but MS should have included HDMI 1.3 and fix their reliability issues. And they should have released Vista on HD DVD so people get HD DVD

  • Paul

    Heroes on HD-DVD is a treat.  The U Control features are excellent!

  • SpaceShot

    Many gamers complain Live doesn’t have dedicated servers.  They would be sorely disappointed if it did.

    What MSFT has done is enable infinite life for a game.  You can still play every XBL launch game with anyone you choose.  If my friend and I wanted to play Ghost Recon, we can.  If we wanted to play Halo 2, we can.

    EA’s choice to require dedicated "sign-in" servers demonstrates what would happen if MSFT made the poor choice of dedicating servers for gameplay on Live.

    EA simply chooses to end support for games, and you are done.  You can’t play anymore.  It doesn’t matter that you picked up the game 9 months after release and only got to play it for 9 months.  EA decides when your money is no longer worth their time, and pulls the plug.

    MSFT made the correct choice, and I am glad I can play all the games in my library (since I avoid EA games like a sick plague) with my friends anytime I want for the foreseeable future.

    Can’t say that about EA’s games… and you couldn’t say that about games with dedicated servers.

  • TANK

    I bought HD-DVD last year, almost wish i’d have waited now!  :)

    I don’t own BluRay but i’ve seen it in stores.  Frys had Surf’s Up playing instore and i have to say, it looked kind of crappy.  Looked like old Mpeg encoding instead of the new H264 stuff like HDDVD uses.  Not many movies come out on both formats but i’d love to see a direct side by side.  HD looks better in some respects but the compression can lead to less sharp images especially if they’re not using H264.

  • vittala

    I have been on the fence about getting the HD add on but this deal is too good to pass up. I also ordered a 30GB Brown Zune for $99 -$10 promotion from buy.com so I guess today is my M$ Appreciation Day…. great deals though.

  • Misframed

    I went to BB and picked up the HD DVD drive on Monday but they would not offer the 2 free HD DVD’s (I asked).  But I took my receipt in yesterday and they were able to get my other 2 discs free… What a deal!

  • vittala

    I picked it up at Best Buy and got the deal although they were out of Heroes so I had to get a rain check and take it to a second Best Buy but they had it and it all worked out. What a bargain, thanks Ozzy for pointing this out.