MS has officially dropped the price of the 360's HD DVD drive to $50.
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EkpFAypuEyNSxjtAyW.php

I'm thinking I might get one.

Here's how I see it:
-An external DVD drive (for PC) would cost at least $50, so even if you forget about the fact that it plays HD DVDs, that's still a pretty good deal
-It comes with a remote that can still be used with the 360
-HD DVD movies are going to really drop in price
-The offer for five free HD DVD movies is still available as long as you buy the player before Feb 28th, which works out to $10 per movie and a free player. Not bad at all.

Might as well, $50 isn't much to drop at all.

That's really a great deal...but the fact that HD-DVD is going to die out really makes buying it a bad decision in the long run. :\ I wish this format battle had never taken place.

to bad its useless

yep totally useless... it's not like it reads DVDs, and we all know all those HD DVD exclusives will be released on bluray immediately

Yeah, because nobody owns an HD-DVD, right?

you might be able to find some decent hddvd titles for cheap if you wait it out. King Kong, Transformers, Bourne Trilogy, Hot Fuzz, Children of Men, 300 are all decent movies on HDDVD.

However, you can find the Toshiba HD-DVD players for 80-90 bucks. They come with 300 + Bourne Identity, as well as the 5 free movies offer. They also upscale your regular dvds to 720p/1080i, so that's probably a better buy.

XBox 360 upscales regular DVDs out of the box (at least with HDMI) so I disagree that that is the better buy. If you want a cheap player with the possibility of some really cheap movies to go with it, I don't see how this is a bad buy at all.

if you don't already have a 360 (or a PC capable of playing HD DVDs) it's a bad buy

if you have a reciever that can accept bitstreamed lossless or multichannel LPCM over HDMI it's a bad buy (the 360 downconverts the audio to 640Kbps Dolby Digital or 1.5Mbps DTS and yes even the HDMI 360s)

the biggest advantage of the standalone over the 360 is audio output however the player selling for $83 on amazon (A3) is a 1080i player... the A30 is $130 the A35 is $230 and are both 1080p players (the 360 is a 1080p player)

also don't forget no player will upscale DVD over component (this includes the 360, PS3, upconvert players, standalone HD DVD and bluray players) completely unrelated but a point that should be brought up anyway since upscaling was mentioned

I wouldn't mark this in the "bad buy" area. It just would be a factor in determing how much do you want to spend to get the features that are important for you.

Of course this is only a good buy if you own a 360. I wonder how much their Blueray players will be.

you know what I would seriously consider getting a hd dvd burner and stocking up on hd dvd-r's

I'd buy one just to turn around and sell it on eBay. I'm sure there's someone out there that doesn't know HD-DVD is dead yet.

can i hook it up to pcs with usb and no external power supply?

DVD FOR LYFE

$0... imaginary players are always free

they weren't huge backers of hd dvd.. they developed the HDi stuff that HD DVD uses and placed a toshiba made drive in an enclosure... MS is more likely to focus entirely on downloads possibly trying to milk HDi a bit more by working it into future downloadable movies on xbox live



pc yes usb yes external power supply required

HDDVD is dead.

Why not just save 50/80 dollars for a bluray player?

i doubt you'll make a profit

Microsoft have already said that if the demand was high enough they would make a bluray player. I'm pretty damn confident said demand will be high.

I believe that statement was one exec and his exact words were taken out of context, or something like that. MS has confirmed nothing.

A bluray drive would be pretty easy money, though. Who knows, we'll see.

.

hahaha stat ♥