If you grabbed a copy of Knocked Up on HD-DVD and are having troubles with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and getting this disc to even load, you’re not the only one. I spent a good hour tonight trying to get this disc to play, including a return trip to Best Buy because I thought I got a crap disc. I finally found a solution over at AVS Forum. The people over there are amazing.

1. Go to the System blade
2. Go down and select Memory
3. Go down and Select HD Player (NOT Hard Drive)
4. Go down to the bottom entry. More than likely, it will be the largest entry in the list. When the cookie is fully downloaded, it will be 11 MB in size. When I checked for the cookie, it was 1MB in size (at the time i stopped the download). [for me, it was the first in the list, but I deleted all entries in the HD-DVD drive]
5. When you have found the entry, DELETE IT.
6. Retry starting the movie and wait for the loading screen. When you see it, you will know you have succeeded.

Once you do that, the disc should load up fine and come to a loading screen where it will sit for about 10 minutes. Do NOT hit Cancel, because that will just mess up the cookie download, which will bring you back to the same point of the disc not playing.

Seriously, if either of the HD disc formats wants to win the format war, they need to stop making things so damn complicated for the average user.

Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360’s HD-DVD will be updated sometime in 2008. The news was revealed at Microsoft’s 25th hardware anniversary party in London.

No word on exactly what we can expect from this update, but I’m assuming it will just be a faster drive. If it’s anything else, I think Microsoft will have a lot of angry customers on their hands. Not only have they redesigned the Xbox 360 during it’s life cycle to add new hardware features (HDMI ports), but now peripherals might be outdated within 2 years on the same console life cycle?

Here’s to hoping that’s not the case, but this editor is skeptical.

During Comic-Con International 2007, Microsoft announced it will lower the price of their Xbox 360 HD DVD by $20 to $179 as of August 1. Microsoft looks to sweeten the deal and try to lure in more Xbox 360 users to make this purchase by adding in an offer for five free HD DVD movies for anyone purchasing the HD DVD between August 1 and September 30.

Microsoft also announced that coming to HD DVD are 300 and Heroes Season 1, both great pick ups. So if you were on the fence about grabbing an HD DVD player here is $20 in your pocket for some popcorn and 5 free movies to start your HD DVD collection.

From the press releae:

To promote the HD DVD versions of “300” and “Heroes: Season 1,” Microsoft unveiled exclusive content for Xbox LIVE® Marketplace. Xbox LIVE will offer “300” on demand in HD starting Aug. 14, and is working with Warner Bros. at Comic-Con on a Bringing It Home campaign featuring “300” and other Warner Bros. properties. In advance of the street date for the “Heroes: Season 1” HD DVD boxed set, Xbox LIVE members will be able to download for free the show’s pilot episode in high definition for a limited time. Members will also be able to download trailers, teaser scenes and other promotional materials highlighting the “Heroes: Season 1” boxed set on HD DVD.

Hit the jump for more…

It looks like Blockbuster is putting its faith in SONY and its Blu-Ray technology and stocking their shelves with Blu-Ray discs. In an article recently Blockbuster says they will be boosting their stock of Blu-Ray discs by Mid-July over HD DVD rival.

“Blockbuster said Blu-ray has proven to be more popular with its customers than HD DVD, the competing high-definition format. The company will continue to offer both Blu-ray and rival HD-DVD titles through its online rental service.

Of some 8,000 stores worldwide, about 250 of them carry both formats, and Blu-ray rentals are “significantly outpacing HD DVD rentals,” the company said in a statement.“

I wonder if this will help impact the race between the two formats, in this digital world there can only be one. Check out the whole story here.

There’s a new update available for the HD-DVD addon drive for the Xbox 360 today. Most notably, it improves compatibility with newer titles that are using advanced copy protection schemes, such as Digital Video Essentials, which didn’t play in the 360 drive until today.

You can now also select 2 channel linear PCM as an audio output option if you’re using the Elite. Great, but why give up surround sound for a movie so you can hear crystal clear sound from only 2 speakers?

Hit the jump for more…

Even though I said I wasn’t going to, I picked up a Xbox 360 Elite today. The black beast is better than I anticipated.

The first thing I noticed was the Elite is very quiet. Much more so than my older Premium console. This is when idle, playing movies (both standard DVD and HD-DVD), as well as playing games. It’s a treat to not have to hear the fans spinning like crazy. The new Hitachi drive helps too.

The HDMI video connection looks fantastic. There is a noticeable difference in colors and black level on my 50″ Samsung 1080p over component video. Don’t take this to mean the HDMI connection produces a much better picture… it’s a known thing with my model of HDTV that HDMI looks way better than component.

I’m waiting on my transfer cable, so I can’t comment on using the 120GB hard drive yet.

Overall, it’s the best 360 console I’ve had. Is it worth the upgrade for most users? I don’t think so. But if you’re looking to replace a broken console and you don’t have warranty, or you just want to pick up a 360 for the first time, definitely take a look at the Elite.

On the heels of the new Elite 360 comes rumors of the next iteration of MS consoles already. Many are skeptical if the Elite will catch on and wonder when MS will drop their real “Elite” system.

Some speculate that this machine will have functionality to link up your Windows Mobile phone, MS Zune, your laptop and even your existing 360 to a master console at the heart of the network, allowing them to share all their files. Perhaps this magical machine will be the much rumored 720.

The current 360 Elite can’t handle 5.1 – 7.1 channel uncompressed Linear PCM audio, reallistically it can only handle 2 channel. This is REQUIREMENT for all hd-dvd movies, unless you don’t value quality. You need hdmi for linear pcm audio, and not including it in the Elite is a mistake by MS. I believe it’s a hardware issue and the 360 doesn’t have enough audio pipes to handle it, while the ps3 does it out of the box with both games and blu-ray movies. Resistence is true 7.1 channel linear pcm. 360 needs to step up their game and skip this silly Elite system and move on to bigger and better things like the 720!

Not only do we get the crazy keyboard controller, but we also get some crazy new features in the Xbox 360 Spring Dashboard Update.

Of particular note, H.264 and MPEG-4 Part 2 (read DiVX, XViD) support has been added. I am ecstatic over this! This is something people have been begging for with the Xbox 360 for a long time. No longer do we need to use Transcode 360 over Media Center to watch these videos.

No official word on having a VGA output level select in the dash with the new update, as was rumored by an HD-DVD insider. I hope that makes it into the update, since I’d love to get full 1080p without having to drop $480 clams on the Elite.

Full details after the jump.

Hit the jump for more…

So I’m debating getting an Xbox 360 Elite for the HMDI connection for true 1080p, but I still have some unanswered questions…

What HDMI version is the 360 Elite going to use? I would assume it’s v1.3, but you know never know with Microsoft.

Will the 360 Elite be able to send uncompressed Linear PCM audio over HDMI from HD-DVD sources? This is the big question for me. If it can’t do this, I’m not buying one. After hearing LPCM audio from my PS3 on Blu-Ray movies and comparing to Dolby Digital, it’s like night and day. I want my HD-DVD’s to sound like this too.

We’ve contacted Microsoft but have not received any official word either way. Hopefully they’ll come out and answer these questions. I’ve seen hundreds of forum posts, comments on official Microsoft blogs, etc. asking these exact same things. My question is, why no answer? To me, the lack of comment from Microsoft on the issue means the only thing the HDMI adapter is going to give you is a single cable connection for digital audio and video, but no next-gen audio signals.

We’ll see what happens…

We all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time. In Game Informer’s April issue, they confirm that there’s a black Xbox 360 with HDMI and 120gb hard drive coming in “late April”. The new version of the console will retail for $479. The console won’t have a built in HD-DVD drive because “format’s not proven.” The console will also include an HDMI cable.

Kotaku got in touch with Matt Helgeson, senior editor over at Game Informer, who confirmed the story is true, and they don’t include fake “April Fools” stories in their April issue.

No official word from Microsoft, but Game Informer seems fairly certain with this story. They wouldn’t have gone to press with it unless they were, especially with a date and price.

I know I will for sure be picking one of these up. I’ve been wanting good 1080p output and uncompressed audio from my Xbox 360 ever since I got my 1080p set and new receiver. The PS3 does it very well, now the 360 will too. I just wish there was built in HD-DVD so I wouldn’t have to still use the white add-on drive. That, and built in wireless. A guy can dream, can’t he?