By now you all know I bought my family an xBox 360 for Christmas. I bought it for the gaming aspect for the kids (and me of course) and also for HD DVD playback. We will keep this discussion to the media portion of the Xbox as there are plenty of gaming podcasts out there. One that we recommend is the Squad XP Podcast ( http://www.squadxp.com/). They have been very helpful to me and we want to send them a shout out. I'll just say that gaming in HD is fantastic! The Dolby Digital sound takes you into the game. My wife is a bit upset with me now. After trying to play Need for Speed with a joy stick I found it difficult to drive so I went out and bought a steering wheel with pedals. I don't know if this is a no no in gaming but it has made that game more enjoyable. As a result of this unapproved purchase, the finance committee has revoked all buying privileges. Well that's what I let her believe.

So as you have heard many times on this podcast from other listeners the setup is quite easy. The trickiest part was finding out that the toggle on the AV cable needs to be set to HD. I got a black screen on my DLP until I switched it to HD. Next it was time to install the HD DVD drive. The instructions are very clear that you need to insert the install disc prior to connecting the drive. I did this and the install went on flawlessly. So the moment of truth. I pop in the King Kong HD DVD that came with the drive and away I go.  I know I am going to get some hate mail but I was not impressed.  I tried to like it but the improvement was not as dramatic as I had hoped. I have put some HD DVDs on my list at Netflix so I can do some more comparisons.

Next it was time to download HD content. This was much better quality. Both TV shows and HD movies looked better than the HD DVD of King Kong. Quality is where the Xbox market place beats the Apple Movie Store. But only on quality. There are no where near as many titles on the Xbox System as compared to iTunes. The user experience is better on iTunes too. There are two complaints I have with the Market Place.  First, you can't start watching the content while it is downloading. Second, you have to buy points and exchange that for content. You have to do math in your head to see what you are actually paying. But with that said, if they have more content in HD compared to Apple I'll start buying my content from Microsoft. Its all about high quality content. It would also be nice if the downloads went faster. Specially since you have to wait for the entire show to download before playing.

The last thing I want to talk about is Connect360. This cool program allows your xBox to see all your non DRM content on your Mac. Installation of this application was quick. It even will configure your firewall for you. Once it connects to the Xbox you can play your media. I listened to my music with no issues. I was not able to see the album art which I have kind of grown accustomed to. I was able to play WMV HD movies that was stored on my iMac with no issues. In fact I had a copy of a Bikini Destinations left over from my test of the I-O Link player. That looked much better than the version of King Kong that came with the HD DVD drive.

All in all, as a gaming platform the xBox 360 rocks. For HD DVD you can't beat the additional price of $200 to get into the next gen DVD game. I'll hold off judgment until I have watched a few more HD DVDs. HD downloads looked as good as anything I have seen which means that there should be HD DVDs that look good. In my opinion King Kong is not one of them. And for those of you who own Macs and don't want to buy an iTV, Connect360 will get you close.