No more HD-DVD for Xbox... She's going Blu-Ray

That's as close to official as you'll get. Why waste the effort in the face of cheap standalone players, when they make a ton more on XBLVM?
Click to expand...

Shame for anyone owning an XBOX and wanting to buy HD movies then isn't it. Instead of buying a Blu-Ray movie for around R200-R300 for your HD Content (Price will come down), now you get to download an inferior quality movie onto your XBOX that may crash at any moment forcing you to re-download it if when you get your swop out unit.... Did I mention that living in SA you are going to be paying around R55 to R70 a GB and if they drop the quality to 720p and compress it quite a bit, we are still taking a lot of money and time to download an HD Movie.....

I'll sleep better tonight knowing that my console is for now future proofed and living in SA will not cost me an arm and leg to watch true 1080p movies without the need for another standalone HD player or the need to cap myself 10x over just to download a single 1080p movie. ;)

My question to the SA XBOX fanboys.. Why stick up for a company that released a console knowing it had issues from day one, have no interest in supporting SA with XBOXLive at all and now look to be trying to starve you of using your XBOX to watch affordable 1080p HD on your 1080p capable console with 1080p capable LCD/Plasma's..... Affordable Full Digital 1080p downloads are a long way off and for this country even longer......

Just my 2c.....
 
@MaXiM, I would rather pick up a standalone Blu-Ray player for R2500 so that the wife can watch movies and I can play games.

I have never agreed with combining a gaming console and movie players. I think the Wii has it right, that doesn't even have DVD playback :p

Oh and Xbox Live continues from where the download crashed so you wouldn't have to start again but I agree the cost of downloading them is insane.
 
Well for starters because I bought a games console not a movie player, and because they offer far better support for the South African community than Sony ever did.

1. They have named persons we can talk to even if we don't get all the answers we want
2. They service and support grey imports even though they're under no obligation
3. They launched at surprising low prices compared to Sony who are just milking South Africas on Hardware and games.
4. Even "piggyback" UK Live in SA is still orders of magnitude better than PSN.
5. RRoD sucks, but SA has better replacement policies than the US! It took 1 hour from failure to me having a brand new Xbox.
6. Content content content

If 1080p is that important to you then you have my pity. A good upscaling DVD player goes a long way and doesn't cost R4500 and R300 per disc, and once again, a c@rp movie in 1080p is still a c@rp movie and vice versa. If your dot pitch is more important to you than your drama, you've already lost the plot.

In terms of Downloadable movies? We're getting IPTV for the 360 from Telkom, probably some time this year, which is capless VoD and TV streaming, thanks, I take that over R300 discs any day.

EDIT: Oh, did you notice a small thing called "XBL Community Games" It's revolutionary, it's mind blowing, and I'd buy a second Xbox for it if I had to.
 
Last edited:
doobiwan said:
5. RRoD sucks, but SA has better replacement policies than the US! It took 1 hour from failure to me having a brand new Xbox.
Click to expand...

Took me 30 minutes, including travel time to the store and the time spent on the phone to microsoft, to have my xbox replaced... got to love it :D
 
MaXiM said:
Instead of buying a Blu-Ray movie for around R200-R300 for your HD Content (Price will come down)
Click to expand...
You'd be silly to be buying your HD movies in South Africa.

MaXiM said:
I'll sleep better tonight knowing that my console is for now future proofed
Click to expand...
Are any current blu-ray players future-proofed? Is the region lock on the PS3 easy to hack? If not it isn't a good choice as a player. Why would I even want to use my console as a player?

MaXiM said:
Why stick up for a company that released a console knowing it had issues from day one
Click to expand...
Sony? Thought you were talking about the PS2 for a moment. Or some Sony LCDs of the fairly recent past.

I'm one of those crazy people that bought my console to play games.
 
Sony gambled on BR being the victor, this could have swung either way.
There is still no guarantee that it will pay off.
For all we know, a new solid state player/writer might come out at 1/2 the price with 100's gigs more storage space. ;)
 
Unless it's the same price or cheaper than the HD-DVD drive I don't see it being a more appealing product for Microsoft nor it's customers.
 
@ doobiwan: It is not fud. It makes perfect sense.
@ scotty777: I do.
@ Fudzy: Well, MS would get the right to manufacture I guess. Royalty should not be extravagant enough to make it too expensive compared to PS3 option.
 
Antowan, I disagree completely.

As Sony are the first to point out, they are not the only manufacturers of BD drives. As a matter of fact, Sony's biggest competition and current manufacturer of the cheapest Standalone BD player on the market is Samsung, a company Microsoft has an existing relationship with as a component supplier for the 360.

And on a completely catty and flamebait note, of course it's FUD. Every time a Sony exec decides to speak it's FUD ;)
 
@Antowan

I posted the original article and the one after that.
Please see the follow-up post from me regarding the same subject.

I agree with Doobiwan, it doesn't make any business sense.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X