After the recent price changes on standalone HD DVD players, many people wondered when the Xbox 360’s HD DVD add-on would drop in price. After all, $149 for a standalone HD-A3 is cheaper than $179 for the 360’s add-on.

Wonder no more, because the 360’s HD DVD add-on is now listing for $129. Well, it’s supposed to be, any way. Earlier in the day, Amazon had sold these at $79 for a few hours and quickly ran out. When I first checked, these drives were out of stock and being sold through one of Amazon’s partners for a higher price. Upon checking just minutes ago, the drive is back at $79.

The add-on is intended for the Xbox 360, but it can also be attached to your PC via USB, thus allowing you to view HD DVD movies on your PC for a lot less than some of the other HD DVD internal drives available. The drawback to using this drive with a PC is that it will need to be plugged in separately, whereas an internal drive would just get its power from inside the PC. On the other hand, this 360 drive is eligible for the 5 free movie offer, and it also comes with King Kong in the box.

• Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on player at Amazon.com

If the price is not $129 or less, then it means Amazon is out of stock and you’re seeing a product from one of their partner vendors.

• $119 at Best Buy

Sites are reporting on the Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator that was announced by Microsoft this morning, and some HD DVD users might be wondering exactly what the heck it is and what it means for HD DVD.

The emulator is a $3K software product that involves the use of an Xbox 360 to simulate real-world HD DVD usage and performance. It generates a lot of diagnostic information that makes it easier on the programmers to debug problems. Developers can then use their time much more efficiently as they work on their disc features.

Though you download it via Xbox Live (with a silver or higher account), this is not a product meant for general consumer use, it’s for the content providers. If a studio has already started working on an HD DVD, this emulator means they’ll have more time to work on the HDi features of that disc, and they’ll have a much better way to test those features out. (more…)

A hearty welcome to all those of you who recently joined the HD DVD and home theater world by way of the recent sales and promotions. Hopefully, your new player plugged right in, and everything worked smoothly, and you were able to enjoy high-definition movies on your HDTV right away. But there are likely to be some people who encountered a few problems.

I’ve had my cable box suddenly stop “speaking” to my HDTV a couple of times while I was switching between HD channels, and the only fix was to turn both my TV and cable box on and off to get them to “talk” to each other again. It’s all related to HDMI magic that I just barely understand. Thankfully, this issue doesn’t come up too frequently. So you see, it’s not just you. Everybody can have a problem now and then with their electronics.

The world of home theater can be complicated and confusing. There are numerous models of HDTVs, each with their own quirks about how you hook things up to them, what kinds of resolutions they support, and even how they handle audio. On top of that, some home theater setups also include A/V receivers which can be equally finicky about the audio coming in or going out of them.

Adding a new component to the mix, can introduce new reasons for things to stop working, or work differently than you’ve been accustomed to.

It’s beyond the scope of this website to field all the numerous issues or questions that might come up with HD DVD installations, but there are a few places where you can get help from some very helpful and knowledgeable people. I’m referring to the forums where home theater and HD DVD enthusiasts hang out. At the end is a list of places where you might get some help.

Before you ask your question, please check if your particular question or a similar one has already been asked and if the existing solutions work for you as well. It’s bad forum etiquette to barge in and repeat topics that have already been addressed in the past. Doing so might turn the normally helpful participants into being less friendly. Try the forums in this order:

1. AVS Forum HD DVD Players (Highly recommended!) Start here: New HD DVD Owners
2. Home Theater Forum - HD DVD area
3. HD DVD area at HighDefDigest.com

To keep this useful and focused, the only comments allowed on this posting are those that point to additional forums, websites, or other resources to add to the list above, or additional advice.

Earlier this week at the DVD conference in Los Angeles, Carl Pinto, vice president of product development and product management at Toshiba, predicted that notebook computers with HD DVD drives should cost $1,000 by Christmas. Until recently, an HD DVD-capable computer would cost at least $400 to $600 more because of the expense of the HD DVD drive and added requirements for better video cards and CPUs. Thanks to newer technology, the additional expense has been lowered dramatically, and Pinto says, “Our goal for the third quarter of 2008 is to bring that cost down to under $100.” Intel backed up this assertion last month at the Intel Developer Forum by announcing support for high-definition video decoding on their hardware.

A laptop is essentially a portable HDTV system, and there are many people who use them in this manner, whether they live in a small space or while traveling. Making HD DVD drives available (eventually as standard equipment) on notebooks and desktop computers is part of the strategy to ensure that you’re surrounded by HD DVD everywhere. Toshiba and HP have already been making HD DVD drives available on their products, and both of them joined Acer and others in announcing new HD DVD-equipped notebook and desktop PCs for October. (more…)

As promised a couple of months ago, Toshiba has delivered the September 1080p/24 firmware update for second-generation HD DVD players (HD-XA2, HD-A20, HD-A2, HD-AW2, and HD-D2). This version 2.5 firmware’s newest features are support for 1080p/24 and more OSD (on-screen display) language options. The update information page also says this update has fixes for web connectivity and HDMI/DVI issues, but I’m not sure whether these are fixes for issues discovered since the previous version, or if they’re just the same fixes from previous updates (updates contain all fixes from previous updates).

This update is not going to magically add 1080p ability to your HD-A2, AW2, or D2, because those players are limited to 1080i by the chips and hardware in them. It will also not magically make your HDTV display in 1080p unless that feature is already present in your display.

What it will do for those of you with an XA2, or A20 is add a new option in your “Picture” menu settings for “Up to 1080p/24Hz.”

Films are shot at 24 frames per second (anything per second is called Hertz or Hz, thus the 24Hz), (more…)

Like I said in the previous posting about IFA news, you can only get the good coverage from european sites. Toshiba’s latest HD DVD showing is an ultra-slim HD DVD drive. It comes in reader as well as burner variations. This is consistent with Toshiba’s earlier IFA comments about targeting computer users as a back-door for getting HD DVD out there.

I’m not sure that I’d be super interested in making 15GB backups when my total hard drive space approaches several hundreds of gigabytes, but being able to view my discs in a room other than the one where my HDTV is located is appealing. Having this kind of thing built-in to a laptop would be a more natural fit for watching HD DVD when you’re out and about. For example, many people spend enough time on the road as part of work/business that taking one of those seasonal TV episode compilations makes a lot of sense. And after you’ve been bitten by that HD bug, then standard definition DVDs just don’t cut it any more.

• Toshiba unveils slim HD DVD-Writer for the man-purse

In recent news, we’ve heard that Toshiba’s upcoming HD-A35 and Onkyo’s DV-HD805 players will feature HDMI 1.3a which enables “Deep Color” output. It’s always nice to brag that your gadgets have the latest gee-whiz features, but it’s even better when you actually understand what you’re bragging about. It’s even more important to know whether you might have been misled about how cool or useful the feature is. “Deep Color” is one of those features that sounds great, but let’s see if it’s all that you think it’s made out to be.

Let’s make this a practical lesson so that you’re not left with more buzzwords and confusion. These steps are for Windows XP, but the same ideas apply to all computers.

Right-click on your desktop, and select the last item, “Properties,” so that you can examine how your video is set up. On the dialog box that comes up next, select the right-most tab for “Settings.” Here, you’ll see the resolution that your screen is currently set at – the higher the numbers, the more pixels and detail you get. Low numbers like 640×480 correspond to the picture quality of ordinary TVs and DVDs. Higher numbers, such as 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1900×1200, and so on, move you into HDTV territory.

“Color Quality” is at the bottom right of the dialog. The available settings depend on your video card and monitor. In the old days, this would be set to 8-bit graphics because some games only worked properly in that mode, and some computers or cards were so slow that 8-bit actually made things go faster. The other extreme is 32-bits of color, and there is usually a 16-bit “medium” option as well. These numbers refer to how much data it takes to represent a pixel – a single dot – on the screen. More bits means more colors (i.e. more shades for each color), but it also requires a little more speed and performance from all of the components involved.

Voila! You’ve just understood the basic principles about Deep Color. Standard HD DVD (and Blu-ray) discs are made for 24-bit color, and the HDMI 1.3a specification allows colors to be represented by 30, 36, and 48 bits.

Now for the “gotcha!” in all of this: (more…)

Version 2.2 of the firmware for Toshiba’s second-generation HD DVD players (all the ones with a 2 or 20 in their model number) has just been released at Toshiba’s support site. You can download it from here or download it straight to your HD DVD player if it’s already connected to the internet. You can also call Toshiba at (800) 319-6684 for more help on updating your player if you’re having trouble with updating.

The list of issues fixed in this update looks a lot like the same list from the last two updates. If you have not updated in a while (and skipped the 2.1 update from last week), then you might want to consider upgrading to 2.2. If you haven’t been having any problems with your player, then you need not be in any particular hurry to get this latest version.

If you’re planning on getting 300 and had not upgraded to 2.1 either, then you should probably get this update because it will definitely improve some of the interactivity features on that disc.

Amazon.com accidentally leaked a preview of Toshiba’s next-generation HD DVD players last week, but Toshiba officially announced the players today. Right on time for our site redesign, no doubt.

The new players will be the HD-A3, HD-A30 and HD-A35, and they supercede the current HD-A2, HD-A20 and XA-20 models (which were the successors to the A1, etc. — wanna place any bets on what next year’s models will be named?).

We’ll learn more about these players next month at the CEDIA show in Colorado, but the information that’s been shared in Toshiba’s press release is that the two higher models feature something called “CE-Link,” which is a way for your HD DVD player to communicate with other devices that it’s connected to (like your TV and home theater amplifier) via its HDMI cable. This will allow your HD DVD player to turn the other two devices on, for example, if they’re not already on — allowing for a one-touch playing of discs. It’s a two-way control, which means that the other devices can send commands to the player as well acknowledge receiving a command, ensuring that the device is in the proper state.

The top-of-the-line HD-A35 boasts a few more enhancements:

• Support for “Deep Color” via HDMI
• Up to 7.1 channel High Bit Rate audio via HDMI

These new players are slimmer than the ones they replace, and feature a high-gloss “piano black” finish.

Pricing on these models is $299, $399 and $499 — I’m sure you can figure out which price applies to which model. According to the press release, the A3 and A35 models will become available in October, and the A30 comes out in September. We’ll be glad to show you some pictures and tell you where they’re available.

I’m sure that all of us who’ve had to deal with the “remote shuffle” (having to find and use multiple remotes to get all of the devices selected properly on each corresponding device) will greatly appreciate CE-Link. Of course, you’ll need to have an HDTV and other devices that support CE-Link in order to make this all work out. Is that a big problem? For those of us who have already invested in HDTVs and systems, yes it is a problem, but we’re actually in the minority at about 30%. If you were forward-thinking enough and purchased an HDTV that already came equipped with HDMI-CEC (the generic name for CE-Link), then you’re in luck. The bigger population of people has yet to purchase an HDTV of any kind, and haven’t even had to commit to a high-definition DVD format, and they’ll definitely have some fun with this.

UPDATE: More information about HDMI-CEC enabled HDTVs coming soon in an upcoming post.