An In Depth Xbox 360 HD DVD Review

I have taken a look at several different components of the Xbox 360 and now it is time for an Xbox 360 HD DVD review. What I would like to do in this Xbox 360 HD DVD review is take a look at what the current Xbox offers versus its competition and previous units. The first part of the Xbox 360 HD DVD review will compare and contrast the unit with the previous one, while the second part of the Xbox 360 HD DVD review will look at it versus the Wii and Playstation 3. If you are looking for a complete Xbox 360 console review I suggest searching for a different article.

Original Xbox Versus The Xbox 360 HD DVD Review

On the old Xbox you had the option of converting the unit into a DVD player. In order to do this you had to purchase a separate component that plugged into one of the control slot. There were a couple things that were really bad about this. First off was that although all the games for the Xbox were DVDs you could not read regular DVDs out of the box. IN addition when the DVD player was running you had to take one of the controller spots up so that you could not readily and easily switch between four players and DVD mode. That being said, the add on was not that expensive and it was fairly easy to switch and allow you to go into game mode.

Microsoft addressed these issues out of the box and the Xboxes are now able to read DVDs. The only real negative is while they can read regular DVDs, the HD DVD format is going by the wayside and is being taken over by blue ray. This threatens to leave this component of the Xbox in the dust and we will have to see what Microsoft does to address this issue.

Playstation, Wii Versus The Xbox 360 HD DVD Review

The Playstation comes with Blue Ray native on the unit. This was the format that is going to be the industry standard so for this the Playstation is clearly ahead of the Xbox. The Wii does not come with High Definition DVD playback ability, so the Xbox surpasses it in this area. As far as playback quality, HD DVD is the superior format but again Blue Ray appears to be the industry choice so while the Xbox beats at the Wii, it fails to beat the Playstation.

There you have it, a look at where the Xbox 360 stands against its competition in the HD DVD arena.