HD-E1 vs Xbox 360 HD-DVD Add-On
I’ve had the advantage of owning the 360 HD-DVD add-on so it’s easy for me to do a comparison, albeit a slightly unfair one. After all the 360 HD player is only an add-on player, and thus relies on the console itself to do all the intensive processing and decoding, whilst the HD-E1 is the opposite having all the necessary hardware onboard. I have also used the add-on for a good number of months now, and I have had the HD-E1 for just two days.
Visually I cannot see any difference in picture quality between the two, and I do watch HD-DVD’s a lot. You’ve got to bear in mind that the picture coming from the 360 HD player is being passed through the 360 itself, which is connected via Component (an analogue connection) yet I see no difference when compared to the HD-E1, which utilises HDMI - a digital connection. This is also backed up by the fact that users of the new Xbox 360 Elite, which uses HDMI cannot see any difference when they compare it with a Component connection. At the end of the day, a pure digital signal is always better, and HDMI carries video & audio data down a single cable, you can’t argue with that.
I cannot compare or make comments on audio as both players are using the exact same connection methods (RCA Analogue) to the exact same audio hardware that I have, a high quality Altec Lansing 2.1 setup.
Lastly, I’d like to mention HD-DVD menu interfaces and the player software itself. Some titles use navigation menus that appear on the left of the screen, and expand to the right, others use a simple menu that sits at the bottom of the screen and expands upwards. These menu’s can be slightly sluggish to appear on the 360’s add-on, yet smooth and fluid on the HD-E1, most probably because of the fact that the hardware can simply handle it better.
Every player has its own OS that controls how the user interacts with the media that it plays back. Right now, even though it’s obviously early days I find the HD-E1 quite finicky when I wish to access subtitles from within a film. As an example if I was to hit the Subtitle button on the remote up pops a box telling me that the button allows me to change the subtitle language with each press, but upon trying this nothing happens at all. The only real hassle free way is to go to the menu and do it from there, however upon playing back DVD’s the subtitle feature works as described. I guess this is something that will be resolved in future firmware updates.
On the 360 add-on, it takes just two button presses to access the subtitles display dialogue on either HD-DVD or DVD and choose English subs. Forward and rewinding through films is a lot smoother on the 360 HD player too, whereas the HD-E1’s forward/rewind motion is done in jerky chunks, which ended up making stop at the wrong location in the film.
Both players have their advantages. I know more about the 360 HD player at the moment as I’ve used it heavily over the past months so I can give a better opinion of it. The HD-E1 is hard to comment on as I have used it for only two days. Any flaws in its OS can be simply rectified via a firmware update, which Toshiba seems to be working hard on. The 360 HD player can also receive updates via Xbox Live.
Conclusion
Am I pleased? Well yes. For a shade just under £200 I am more than happy with what I have here. I have a player that will receive future updates over Ethernet, it can handle HD-DVD’s up to the maximum resolution supported by my HDTV. The player itself looks great if a little fat and I can access web enabled content on future films since it is connected to the Internet. It does a great job of displaying razor sharp, vivid video at every resolution bar the highest, which is 1080p and lastly it supports the new TrueHD and DTS-HD standards for surround sound.
Toshiba do need to improve on some key areas though, and I hope they do the following for their third generation players due over the upcoming months. Focus on start up times because 30 seconds will not impress your average consumer who has just bought a HD-DVD player thinking that he/she has just ‘upgraded’ from DVD. A 30 second wait upon switching a unit on is enough to make any normal person question their ‘upgrade’ decision. Lastly, provide a decent backlit remote! Luminous directional keys are just not good enough, especially when I want to stop and eject a movie but can’t see a thing on the remote in a darkened room. The 360 HD remote is superbly lit up with big green backlit buttons. Time to wake up Toshiba because you have a lovely solid, future proof product on your hands.
