This weekend we got very frustrated by the XBox 360 and DVD playback.  Once the 360 warms up, it refuses to read my DVD-R collection (which is significant, since I don’t want the kids to ruin their original discs).  So we get 15 minutes into a movie and all of a sudden the disc becomes unreadable.  Frustrating.

So we decided to get a new DVD player that would play all of our discs.  I trotted off to the local Real Canadian Superstore to spend some of my cache of PC points on a new gadget (feels better when it’s funny-money) and looked at the selection.  Turns out that the cost of an upconverting name-brand DVD player isn’t that much different from the HD-DVD kit for the 360.  As an external drive, I figured it wasn’t going to be affected by the same heat issues as the 360 itself, so I picked it up.

As to the primary need, something that will play my DVD-Rs reliably, it fit the bill.  As to the secondary cool factor, the ability to play HD-DVDs, of course that works as well but I was fairly unimpressed with the picture quality of the included King Kong disc versus a regular DVD.  I might rent a few more HD-DVDs just to try them out, but until this format war is over I don’t think I’ll be adding anything to my collection permanently