R.I.P. Xbox 360 :-(

Well, today, after having told my wife that my Xbox 360 had been working perfectly and was the only one out of all of my friends and family that had one to not experience any technical difficulties it died (I just bought Virtua Fighter 5 and had only played about 10 minutes before this happened!) Well, not died per say, but one of the cooling fans in the intake vent on the back of the console stopped working. This causes the GPU to overheat and thus freeze up after only a few minutes of the system being on regardless of whether or not it's playing a game, watching a DVD/HD DVD or just sitting in the dashboard. So now I need to send it back to Microsoft for repairs. That also means I need to buy a stand alone HD DVD player because my current device was the Xbox 360 add on player. I'm looking at some HD-A35's on eBay and they are still going for over $250 it looks like. Are the A35's the best way to go? They were the last ones released by Toshiba weren't they?

Depends on how much HD DVD player you need. The A35 was Toshiba's final top-of-the-line HD DVD player. I own two of them, and I find they work beautifully. They output a great HD picture, a fine upscaled SD picture, and all the higher audio codecs. However, since Toshiba no longer makes them, the players are becoming more and more scarce. Thus, the price on them is going up. I see some being sold for $450 and more. (I bought my two for $187 and $205.)

If you don't need DTS-HD Master Audio or 1080p, the little A3 is a great deal at well under $200 (I think it retails for $149). It will output 1080i and do Dolby TrueHD 5.1, which ain't too shabby and is all most people need.

John

The A3 and A30 will suffice most of your needs. The A30 has the identical video hardware that the A35 has. The bonus with the A35, Just like John said, It has the all the on-board audio decoders. If you need 1080P you need the A30 or A35. The A3 does a good job at playback. It is a bit slow but, the picture quality is pretty damn good at $99 or less on eBay.

I was able tp get the A35 at Tiger Direct for $169 several weeks ago. I do not know if that price is still available or not. The other thing I have found interesting is that the HD-DVD's remaining in stores have not been really put on clearance. Best Buy is 30% off reg price, but it is still more expensive then online places, and the Target stores seemed to have removed all the older titles and are only selling the newer titles, at some discount but not really a good deal. It looks like online is the best place to buy the discs.....

The discs themselves are easy enough to find still, it's the players that are getting so hard to find, even after such a short time after production has stopped.

was it one of the early consoles?

like not elite and not the premium with hdmi?

It was an Xbox 360 Elite. But it wasn't one of the newer "Falcon" models. Those are the Xbox 360's manufactured after August 2007 I believe. They have cooler CPU's, but that's not the problem, it's the GPU that over heats due to insufficient cooling. Also a major problem is the PSU not regulating the current correctly to your Xbox 360 from the wall outlet. So even if you have a "Falcon" model Xbox 360, you will still likely encounter some sort of RRoD (Red Ring of Death). The GPU over heating and the PSU not regulating power correctly are the main reasons for the RRoD. I didn't experience the RRoD though, but my 360 was still under it's initial year warrenty. So I just have to wait it out until I get it back. I just hate the waiting... No HD movies, not even SD movies till I move one of the other SD DVD players from another room in the house to the living room. Now I really wish they did include DVD playback on the Wii.

Go buy the A2, they are going for 74.00 at some Wal Marts.

i promised myself i would not flame today.

Good. Keep your flames to yourself.