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Right, before going any further it appears to be necessary that I declare myself free of any fanboy console bias. I own both PS3 and Xbox 360 games consoles, enjoy using them both, and certainly am not on the payroll of Microsoft or Sony (more's the pity!).
So my findings regarding the relative talents of the PS3's Blu-ray playback and the Xbox 360's HD DVD playback are simply based on my love of movies and home cinema, no more, no less.
Having got that out of the way, it's worth saying as a jumping off point that in terms of their relative impact to date on the whole HD disc format war, the PS3's Blu-ray deck seems far more important in terms of sheer numbers sold. The latest figures we could find for this article show 7 million or so PS3s in circulation around the world, compared with just 269,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD drives.
But of course, these figures don't necessarily reflect the public's greater taste for Blu-ray, since they are seriously skewed by the fact that the PS3's Blu-ray drive is built in, while the Xbox 360's HD DVD drive is an optional extra. In other words, such figures shouldn't necessarily influence you - or us in this feature - towards one HD format over the other. So far as we can tell right now the HD format war is not going to end any time soon, so with the Xbox 360 plus HD DVD drive coming in at pretty much the same price as the 40GB PS3, our conclusions for this article are going to be based purely on the sheer performance quality and features of each rival unit. We'll leave the philosophising over which HD format is inherently the best/most likely to win to others with more spare time on their hands…
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Sony PS3
Obviously the PS3's Blu-ray player is built in rather than an optional extra. In some ways, of course, this is a good thing. It makes for less clutter, less cabling and generally just a more convenient solution.
However, it also means you're forced to pay for the Blu-ray playback whether you want it or not - a definite problem given how many people have been put off buying PS3s by their relatively high price.
Also, should HD DVD ultimately 'win' the HD war and Sony was humble enough to ever make an HD DVD external drive for the PS3, you'd be left in the same two-unit boat as you are with the Xbox 360. Only you'd have paid more for your console in the first place.
In terms of features, the PS3 does reasonably well. Probably its single most impressive coup is its new compatibility with the latest Profile 1.1 Blu-ray standard, which became mandatory on all new Blu-ray players sold after November 2007. Recently delivered via a downloadable firmware update, the PS3's Profile 1.1 compatibility makes it able to handle picture-in-picture features likely to be introduced on future Blu-ray discs. This brings Blu-ray much closer to the existing HD DVD specification, and gives the PS3 the distinction of being the only Profile 1.1-capable player currently available in the UK.
More good news comes from the fact that the PS3's Blu-ray pictures can be delivered directly to your HD TV via HDMI, potentially keeping them more pure than they can be with the Xbox 360's approach (more on this in the Xbox 360 section).
The PS3's HDMI is a v1.3 affair too, meaning it's additionally compatible with automatic lip-synch technology and the much-talked-about but never-seen Deep Colour system for producing a richer image on compatible TVs.
On the audio front, the PS3 can decode the new 'lossless', high bandwidth Dolby TrueHD audio format carried by many Blu-ray discs. Though please note that you'll only be able to take advantage of this feature if your AV receiver can receive high-bandwidth multichannel PCM audio via an HDMI input. Otherwise you'll have to stick with vanilla Dolby Digital delivered via an optical digital bitstream output.
In action, the PS3's audio talents prove very decent. Dolby Digital soundtracks are clear and punchy, and if you can manage to check out the decoded Dolby TrueHD audio, it really does sound richer and clearer than the normal Dolby Digital mix.
The star of the PS3's Blu-ray show, though, is its picture quality. For despite being the cheapest Blu-ray player around, it produces truly stunning HD images possessing outstanding sharpness, remarkably little video noise, extremely rich and natural colours, an expansive contrast range, and detail levels to die for. The only minor blemishes, really, are that you can get slightly richer colours and slightly smoother motion handling if you spend (considerably) more.
Blimey. Microsoft is really going to have its work cut out to emerge triumphant from this particular scrap…
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Plus points
Impressive visual performance, good audio performance, direct digital output of HD pictures, one-box solution
Minus points
Makes the PS3 expensive, only outputs Dolby TrueHD in PCM form, minor motion judder issue, will become redundant if HD DVD wins format war |  |
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XBox 360 HD DVD drive
Microsoft decided to make its HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 an optional extra rather than include it in the console as standard in order to make the console more affordable. Which is fine, except that it does mean you have to suffer two boxes linked by another messy cable - an inelegant situation exacerbated by the HD DVD drive's rather chunky, odd design and the fact that the white finish matches neither the creamier colour tone of early Xbox 360s or, of course, the black finish of the new Xbox 360 Elites.
One benefit of the Xbox 360's add-on route, though, is that if Blu-ray wins the HD format war, Microsoft could simply launch a Blu-ray add-on instead. Something it has, in fact, said it would do.
As an add-on drive, the Xbox's HD DVD drive features no direct-to-TV outputs of its own. Which is, of course, a shame, since it means all that lovely high quality HD video has to first pass through a pretty feeble little cable into the belly of the Xbox 360, before being handed on to the main console's TV output. Cue lots of potential for noise and interference being 'added' to the picture quality as it undertakes its journey.
There are issues with the output to your TV too. If you've got an Xbox Elite you should be okay with your HDMI output, but if, like the majority of people, you only have an 'original' Xbox 360, you'll only be able to pass the HD pictures out via a component cable, meaning they have to be converted from digital to analogue inside the Xbox 360. The results of this process will likely struggle to match the crispness of the PS3's HDMI route. Hmm.
The Xbox 360 does at least support 1080p output like the PS3, though, and will upscale your old DVDs to that level too.
Sonically the Xbox 360 option falls short of the PS3. The add-on drive is capable of handling the Dolby TrueHD format, but since the add-on drive itself features no audio outputs, your only way of getting sound off an HD DVD and into your receiver is via the console's own audio outputs. With the original Xbox 360 most of us own, your only audio output option is the optical digital output, and this is only capable of outputting Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. So all that lovely Dolby TrueHD audio data has to be downmixed to the much lower Dolby Digital Plus bandwidth before being output. But even on the Elite, the HDMI socket can't output Dolby TrueHD either, in its raw digital form or a decoded PCM form. So again the TrueHD audio is downmixed to Dolby Digital Plus 5.1. Boo!
Obviously this means the Xbox 360 is simply incapable of matching the PS3's (albeit fiddly) Dolby TrueHD talents. But aside from more distracting fan noise, it did at least seem pretty much identically decent to the PS3 at presenting a straight Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
Certainly not identical, alas, is the Xbox 360's picture performance. On the upside, images certainly look every inch 'HD', with notably more clarity and detail and way less noise than you see with even the very best upscaling DVD decks. But the Xbox 360 HD DVD image clearly lags behind that of the PS3's Blu-ray deck for two main reasons. First, the image just isn't as pin-sharp, to the point that pictures can even look slightly soft at times - especially if you're using a component connection. And second, its motion looks noticeably more stuttery - even though the PS3's motion is hardly world-beating itself. If I was being really picky I might even say that the HD DVD drive's colours don't look as rich, either.
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Plus points
Impressively cheap, and good enough to deliver an HD experience
Minus points
The picture quality isn't as sharp or smooth as the PS3s, the console runs noisily, no digital TV connection on most of the UK's Xbox 360s, no support for next-gen audio formats on most of the UK's Xbox 360s | |
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When the Xbox 360's HD DVD add-on first came out, its stunningly low price versus the then competition made it pretty much a no-brainer. But the PS3 with its latest lower price point, newly updated (to Profile 1.1) Blu-ray capabilities and clearly superior HD playback capabilities have exposed the Xbox's HD DVD frailties in rather uncompromising fashion.
