f13.net

I picked up one of these today despite not owning an xbox360. $179 at bestbuy, came with Heroes Season1 hd, King Kong as a pack in, and a mail-in form for rebates of 5 more hd-dvds, which mostly look uninteresting. The guy ahead of me in line was making a huge scene about some 2 free hd-dvds promo that didn't seem to apply, they gave it him, and then didn't charge me for 2 additional discs I'd grabbed (Serenity HD and the dvd of Phantasm. Never seen it and it would have been cheap anyway)

Hooked it up to the pc, let it get a driver off windows update, ran powerdvd, and it looks damn nice. There's an xp driver available too apparently. The menu system seems better than the blu-rays I've watched, but I'll have to wait until I get back home to do any direct comparisons between this and the ps3.

Anyway, seems a fairly cheap way to get hd-dvd, so long as you have either an xbox360, or an hdcp compliant video chain. And Heroes looks nice and crisp, I'm glad I've been too lazy/cheap to pick it up on dvd.

Comes with Heroes Season 1?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn I didn't want to buy this.

So you buy your Microsoft HD DVD (which comes with King Kong) at Best Buy and you get Heroes season 1 along with your choice of two more HD DVD titles. Then, having a store receipt for a qualifying HD DVD player, you get five more HD DVD titles from a list of selected titles:

http://thelookandsoundofperfect.com/_pdf/perfect_hd_dvd_offer_redemption_form.pdf

Smells like desperation by the DVD alliance.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray have both had 5 free movies deals going with the purchase of any HD-DVD/Blu-ray player (including the PS3) for quite a while now.  Coming into the holiday season, I'd say giving away free Heroes boxed sets (which isn't available on Blu-ray) on top of that and a couple extra movies is a fairly sound business decision for pushing HD-DVD.

I was holding off getting involved in the format wars, but if I can find the bundled package with Heroes up here in Canada, I'll be getting this.

You might also have to aquire AnyDVD, and Cyberlinks HD-DVD player...

Brings the cost up a bit to add those.

That being said... I love my HD-DVD setup.

Powerdvd7.3 works okay. It's ugly and sub-par in function compared to mplayer, but it works. I had a problem with Heroes disc 2 not playing, until I figured out it was looking for broken web content. Unplug the internet, start the disc, reconnect intarweb, and everything is fine. I've heard the extras disc from Transformers has the same issue.

As for the 5 free movies, it's a list of 15, in groups of 3, that you choose one from each group. Nothing I would have bought separately except The Thing.

Just finished disc 3 of Heroes. I'd forgot how much fun the show was.

I'm not a big fan of the format war, I think it has the potential to sink both formats. Streamed/on-demand content may be the way it shakes out in the end. In which case, I'll be glad to have a player for the crap that only came out on format-x. Much like I still use and enjoy my LaserDisc player. MST3K: the Movie ftw!

Format wars... seven years on, which has won? SACD or DVD-A? Don't assume that there will be a winner. :)

Oh I wasn't gonna wait for a winner, I was just gonna wait until the dual-format players are cheaper ;)