Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-On Now $129
by Pravin on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 in players, hardware.
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
- $119 at Best Buy
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.


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
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.



