Well I went out and purchased the HD addon for the 360. Nice sleek looking. I also purchase MI-III with it. Movie looked great. I liked it alot.
However, when I put KK in I was not impressed at all. I thought it looked basically like the regular DVD to me. So I did just that. Put both in at the same time and for the life of me i don't see a difference at all. I'm not running 1080p but am running 1080i and I just don't see anything spectacular. Anyone else in the same boat? I waiting for I, Robot to come out. I HOPE that gets the full treatment. I think we're gonna have to wait till studios start recognizing they need to step up production for HD-DVD when they are filming their movies.

Hey dude, I have not watched my copy yet.. Universal has put out some of the best HD-DVD movies with Riddick, Serenity and DOOM. Nevertheless your feedback is good as you aer not the first person to complain about the image quality. MI3 is good but wait till you see others .

Later..

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Ok since this post I have done some things. The first post was with everything hooked up to my 51" Sony RearProjection HDTV. I've since moved everything to my 32" Sony LCD and have noticed this:

LCD and normal DVDs DON'T MIX!!! LOL, at least no on the 360. It was painful to say the least. However HD-DVD and LCDs make sweet sweet love. Very good image. Still MI:III takes it for me but KK look a ton better on LCD in HD over regular DVD.

Now here's the kicker. On my rear projection I'd have to say that the set, 360 or something seems to be upconverting regular dvds and doing a DAMN GOOD JOB of it. The LCD I'd have to say beat out all in HD-DVD but the rear projection did a good job with it as well and did an OUTSTANDING job with normal DVDs over the LCD. What does this all mean? I have no clue but I just thought I'd update you guys on what I've been seeing.

Just for FYI the rear projection is 1080i native (at least to the best of my knowledge since Sony was kinda tightlipped as to actually what they sets were a year ago and more) the LCD is 768p native.

I disagree. While the original KK DVD was excellent, the HD version is noticeably clearer and with more color depth.
Viewed on 60" RP in 1080i with Xbox360 HD-DVD vs 480P (with Faroudja DcDi upconversion to 1080).

I point you to several scenes to check.
1. the filming on the ship scene - in the DVD, the sequins on the dress are discrete only in close-up, in HD they remain distinct in all shots. The sky too seems to have more colors in it. Quite pretty. Look whenever the camera pulls back, the DVD goes soft and fuzzy while the HD stays sharp (except for camera focus errors, which show up in the HD)

2. Kong on the mountain with the girl/sunset "beautiful"... again, in the HD version, kong's hair can be seen individually moving in the wind in the wide shots, not just the close ups. Also, the color depth between light and dark is higher. Sky colors are quite nice.

3. The night time NYC Empire State scene. In HD, the windows in the far away buildings are distinct, as are the head lights of the cars below. In the DVD, the far building lights are blobs and the streets show no details of cars.

All in all, my wife and I thought the difference was quite apparent.

After viewing the movie it is HD for sure and a definitely improvement over SD. Two things though:

Due to the length of this movie it is definitely encoded at a lower bit rate than most of Universals movie. By my math they are using 18 to 20 Mbps instead of the usual 25 to 30+. This does make a difference in facial features and other areas where I expect to see extreme detail. Color separation is excellent along with the lighting. Film grain may also throw people off, but the film grain look is intentional.

Check your viewing distance. Hometheatermag.com has an excellent article on optimal and recommend reviewing distances. Sitting beyond the recommend viewing distance for an HD movie will affect how you perceive the movie.


http://www.hidef.com/news-items/367-...eed-1080p.html

Late..

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"True adaptability involves changing ones self to meet ones environment, not changing ones environment to meet ones needs" - Species8472

I am not sure if it is the "vintage" look that they tried to give the film cinematically, but I too was unimpressed by the King Kong HD DVD. This included general lack of sharpness and coarse looking transitions during pans. By comparison, Chronicles of Riddick is stunning visually through out. I believe even those luk3 warm on sci-fi will be mesmorized by the image quality of this movie. Viewed here on 32" LCD with xbox HD drive.

The HD version is an improvement over SD (as I noticed the same improvements as you and more), BUT it does NOT measure up to Riddick, Serenity, Batman Begins and others... The problem is the movie length and the bitrate. Unforunately the birate had to be lowered to allow the movie and extras to fit on the 30GB disk (45GB disks in the future should resolve this). The result is some scenes do not have the bang effect (that you notice in the scenes above). Color separation is good but the lack of other details such as "facial features" (pores in skin, etc) are not present. Also, the lower bitrate brings out the film grain effect used in the movie. Film Grain is done on purpose, but at lower bitrates, Film Grain looks bad. Microsoft should have used a better movie for the HD-DVD release. That is why I used Riddick to review the 360 HD-DVD drive.

Later...

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I was pretty underwhelmed by a lot of the effects in Kong and am afraid that seeing it in high def would only make the bad spots look even worse. I'm not saying that's the actual case, just a concern of mine.

Maybe they will release the extended cut on two discs. I am liking this trend in how they throw in free movies though.