What Will I Need?

[tombraider]

My main question regarding all of this is whether or not I need a new television in order to play HD-DVDs. All everyone ever says is "You need an High Def TV in order to watch HD-DVD." Well, just how High Def does your TV need to be?

Here's my situation: I can't afford one of those $800+ TVs that have the words HD READY printed grandly on the front. However, I recently got a $200 TV that has component jacks (something my previous TV didn't have). With it, I was able to hook up the HD cable for the XBOX 360 and noticed an astounding improvement to the graphics/picture quality. Since the 360 HD cable doesn't seem to need anything other than component jacks to hook it up into a TV, I'm wondering if this is enough in order to achieve "High Def" (it certainly seems to be enough as regards my 360 games), or is a pricey HD READY TV indespensible to watching HD-DVDs?

What I'm ultimately asking is this: if I buy the yet-to-be-released HD-DVD player add-on to my XBOX 360, will I be able to just stick in, say, the HD Serenity and watch it no problem, or will it not work at all because I have the wrong kind of television? Or will it be some sort of middle ground (i.e. it'll play, but won't look any better than standard DVD so why bother)? Because the bottom line is: I cannot and probably never will be able to afford a $1200 HD Plasma thingy or whatever. Does that mean I'm screwed, or will I still be able to watch something, even if it doesn't look as good as it would on a genuine rig?

[admin]

My FAQ covers some of the questions you ask, in particular section 4.10:

http://www.digital-digest.com/highdefdvd/faq.html#faq410

If your TV is a standard resolution TV, then it doesn't really matter if you use component or HDMI - you will still be limited to the resolution of the TV (which will still look better than DVDs, because the source resolution is much higher). I would say games on the Xbox 360 look better because the component connection means less noise compared to S-Video or normal composite A/V. The same would apply for DVD playback.

As for the Xbox 360 add-on drive, it will have HDMI output support, but I'm 100% clear as to whether component output is supported (I would be very surprised if it isn't). Best to wait until it's released and check to make sure.

Basically a TV with component input should be enough to watch high def DVDs, but if you want to get the best out of high def DVDs, you need a high def display (not just one that is "HD Ready", but one that is actually rated as "HD", preferably with a native resolution of 1080i/p).

For me, I probably won't bother with high def DVDs until I get a HD display - DVDs are cheaper and you won't see too much improvement if you playback high def DVDs on a standard def TV. Save the $200 or whatever the HD DVD add-on drive costs and wait a year or two - by then, standalone high def DVD players will probably be $100 or less and high def LCD TVs will be cheaper as well (there are already 22" high def LCD monitors that costs less than $350).