If you currently own a Xbox 360, chances are you have a relatively good TV (possibly HD) that accompanies the powerful brain that sits inside your gaming machine. While the Xbox 360 does a great job itself of playing DVD's at 480p, the HD DVD player allows you to view even sharper and clearer movies in true high definition.

Since there are a ton of blogs out there as well as details on xbox.com detailing the product's great features, I will try to write this review from a non-biased consumer's perspective.

The Good:

If you're one of the early adaptors of this unit, you will find included with your HD DVD player: a universal remote from Microsoft, and the King Kong HD DVD. (The King Kong promo HD DVD will be taken away at some point in the near future.)

The package comes with a really long power cord (great!), a somewhat short USB cord to plug into the back of your XBox (decent), and a installation disc that you can use to put into your Xbox to re-program the button settings for your on screen blade to differentiate between the regular DVD player and the HD DVD player.

I would imagine the included disc is only for users who may not have an internet connection or a subscription to Live but if you do have a Xbox Live subscription, I have heard that you can just plug and play the HD DVD player without using the disc to update your system.

While some people may not like the idea of having the HD DVD player permanently take up a USB slot from the back of the Xbox 360, the HD DVD player actually comes with 2 additional USB slots itself if you ever feel the need to add other peripherals such as the Live cam or any future additions. There is also a slot for you to plug in your XBox WiFi adaptor to the back of the HD DVD player if you're not one of the lucky people that can pull a ethernet cable all the way to the Xbox 360.

The universal remote looks cool, but having 4-5 remotes in my house already most of which claims to be universal except they all fail to do at least one thing that requires me to keep the rest of the remotes, I will probably opt out of replacing my remotes with this new one. The cool thing about it is that all the buttons do light up brightly when you first press a button so for movie settings where some people prefer their room to be completely dark, this is VERY useful.

While most people talk about how this item looks on the outside, not too many people have reviewed the quality of movies that this player can play. Let me just first say, the potential of the quality for movies can be great but ultimately it does depend on how the disc and the movie itself was released.

For King Kong, I did not notice a huge improvement from watching my regular DVD in the XBox 360 vs. watching the HD version in the new player. I currently have a DLP HDTV and I'm using component connections so your mileage may vary.

The one thing I did notice when comparing the two versions of the movie is that the color contrasts are more noticeable. While I thought I had true blacks with the regular version of the DVD, I now realize that even with the DLP mirrors, the black portions on the screen are not as dark as they should be as shown through the HD version of the movie. I've also heard that you can tell better with movies such as Batman Begins than with the King Kong film (so I will be testing that soon).

Oh, while I have not personally confirmed this but I hear you can connect the HD DVD player to your PC running Windows.

Also, you can play regular DVD's in the HD DVD player.

The Bad:

While overall the experience was good, there were a couple of things I've noticed that can be improved.

The included USB cable was really short and with the way my entertainment system is setup, I actually thought I may not be able to connect the two devices together with the reach. I'm not sure how much an extra feet of wiring would have costed but that would have been nice.

The HD player is always on like every other device that is connected to the 360 via USB. It would be nice if I know how much resource this thing is sucking up just being on but I don't; however, the conservation side of me thinks it should have the option of being turned off unless the drive is being accessed. I guess since the unit is also doubling as a hub for the potential wifi unit and up to two other USB attachments, sending power to the player is a necessity. I do hope that they can update the software via Live or something to put the extension into sleep mode when its not in use cause it feels like a waste just having it sit there generating heat.

The Ugly:

There really isn't anything terrible or ugly about this device seeing how it's just a simple HD DVD player that is currently about 1/2 the price of all other HD DVD players in the market.

Overall if you are a huge movie fan, I would highly recommend you pick this up as an accessory for the 360. I am by MS's definition an average gamer and I actually spend about 1/2 if not more of my time using the Xbox to watch movies. While the selection of movies is currently limited in the market, I don't really think that would be an issue for early adaptors like yourself.

As things develop and I test with more movies or find out more information on this player, I will update it here. Also, if you get this now with the bonus remote and bonus movie, the player will actually only cost you about $140, which is a GREAT deal.