Review On Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

The drive is designed to work either horizontally or vertically, though small rubber feet on the bottom make the former the more sensible choice. Annoyingly, however, it also requires a separate power adapter rather than drawing power from the Xbox 360.Two USB ports on the rear make up for the socket used by the drive, and allow those with a wireless adapter to keep it hidden at the back of the system.

The player can only be used to watch movies - Microsoft is adamant we’ll see no games in HD DVD format, and the unit even refuses to play normal game discs. Given the notably slow operation of first-generation Blu-ray and HD DVD players, it is important to check out the drive’s performance. Sure enough, in tests it took almost a minute to go from powering up the console to watching a movie. With the console already on, however, the time to start a movie dropped dramatically to just 10 seconds.

The drive is also relatively quiet compared to the console itself. It also had no complaints when it came to picture and sound quality; even compared to an up scaling DVD player, improvements in the high-definition transfer were clearly seen. Colors were bold, the overall image was crystal clear and there was lots of extra detail at both 720p and 1080i settings. In fact, the only thing that is not satisfied is the HD DVD menu design as chapter selection can be a bit of pain.

If you already own an Xbox 360, Microsoft’s HD DVD package provides a great way to sample high-definition movies without committing too much money to a new format. In fact, given the price of standalone players, it’s a bit of a steal.