I just purchased an HD-DVD add-on for my 360 that will hook up to my Toshiba 46" 1080i HDTV. I know that you cant upconvert through componet b/c of some legal mumbo jumbo but I thought you could upconvert a back up DVD. Since the backup would get rid of the copyright protection should't your Drive upconvert?? I guess I was wrong, because I can't find a difference in pic from the original DVD and the backup. OH, well. Any thoughts on this? Another thing I thought I read is that HD-DVD would fill your screen but when I watch King Kong or Batman Begins I get a letterbox. I guess the aspect ratio of Army of Darkness is on a larger scale b/c it fills my screen. My TV also won't let me zoom in on the pic b/c it states "Not Available" when I press picture size. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Ash
First, the 360 HD DVD add on does not upconvert DVD's thru component - even backups. You can get a pretty good upconverted picture using the 360 VGA cable though - that is if your Toshiba has a VGA input. Your second question involves OAR (Original Aspect Ratio). Read diabolos' excellent discussion and thread here: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/226188
I just purchased a xbox 360 hd-dvd add-on and was dissapointed when I fould out the upscaling could only be achieved over vga cable. I unfortunatly don't have a vga input on my toshiba tv, but I do have a DVI input. I was wondering that if I purchased a vga cable for my 360, and got a vga to dvi converter, would I be able to achieve upscaling through my 360 hd-dvd player??
Hello. I have been searching all over for an answer to this issue. It is briefly mentioned in this thread but redirects to another thread which doesn't answer my question. I have a Samsung 61" HDTV DLP 1080P XBOX 360/HD-DVD Component and VGA cables. When I watch Kink Kong via the Xbox 360 HD-DVD through VGA set to the proper resolution (1268/1080)p there appears a black border around the whole movie. The border is about 1-2 inches wide (I didn't measure). I was under the assumption that 1080p movies would take up all the screen??? I returned the HD-DVD because of this issue and until I can get is resolved. Also, when playing Lost Planet in Component(1080p) some of the screen is missing and I can tell this because when I play it via VGA I see the whole screen probably as the developers intended. Any thoughts, any ideas, any answers will be appreciated. Thanks much!!!
This might answer some of your questions: Xbox 360 is Xbox 360's Seriously Flawed DVD Playback FOR NOW. from : http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2088533,00.asp So there a 35 buck dvd player > than xbox 360, therefore you should return it and buy a real hd dvd player.
The extremetech review is on the progressive scan 480p output from the 360. It is well known that the standard DVD performance of the 360 is suspect at best. It didn't test the HD-DVD ouput at 720p or 1080i/p. This is where you'll see a difference.
why would you buy this HD xbox addon to play your normal movies? This is a HD player. If your buying it, just play your HD-DVDs with it. and use your normal Player for regular Dvds. The reviews on the HD-addon for xbox viewing HD-DVDs are quite good.. and it's the cheapest $$ player you can buy.
This is just an update. I figured out why my Samsung HDTV displays a black bar around the HD-DVD movie. More over, I figured out that the display can be enlarged to fill the entire screen. This is while using VGA cables as opposed to component cables. I didn't think my TV allowed me to adjust the screen size but it does. So I have been using the VGA cables ever since. I still returned the XBOX360 HD-DVD player, however. But through the VGA cable, standard DVD's look great. Of course they aren't as detailed as HD-DVD but there exists no 'graininess' as you would see via component cables. I was surprised at the difference between using VGA and component. My XBox games fit 'as they should' on the screen. They fill the screen entirely with no over/under lapping. So the moral of my story? If you have Xbox360 and a HDTV with VGA input, go VGA and scrap the component.
Get them here http://rs23.rapidshare.com/files/3149367...P-BluePrint.rar Extract the .rar file to your desktop and open the file, in that file you will see 3 files, you only need to install the 1 file. Right click on the thdudf.inf and select install (right under open of course) and reboot your machine. You now have a HD player installed on your rig.