If you own an Xbox 360 HD DVD player, you may want to get ready. we just got word that there's an update scheduled for the device sometime today.

According to a post on the AVS forums by Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Consumer Media Technology Group,

It is my pleasure to let you all know that the HD DVD update for Xbox 360 is slated for release on 5/15 (i.e. tomorrow!). So when you wake up in the morning, you should be able to upgrade your software. And me free from telling you when are going to get it . Hope you all download it and provide feedback on what you think!

We have no word yet on what's going to be in the update, but as soon as we get wind of what's in store for HD DVD player users, we'll be sure to let you know. Until then, check to see if there's an update on your respective boxes, alright?

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Over at the AV Science Forums, we found word from Dr_Know on what will be the updates included for the HD DVD audio come May 15th. Mind you, this list is entirely separate form the Spring Dashboard update that was released last May 7th.

Anyway, why don't you check out the full list so you'd at least have an idea of what we're waiting for:

• Fix DD being stuck in "Night Mode" which is essentially Dynamic Range Compression leading to the sound sounding very flat
• Option to output ALL HD DVD audio as DTS 1.5Mbps (list includes DD+, TrueHD, DTS, and any other audio option offered on HD DVD discs I may have missed)
• Option to output ALL HD DVD audio as DD 640Kbps, (which it currently does, but will be fixed from the Night Mode bug), list includes DD+, TrueHD, DTS, and any other audio option offered on HD DVD discs that I may have missed.
• Option to output ALL HD DVD audio as WMAPro 1.5Mbps, (list includes DD+, TrueHD, DTS, and any other audio option offered on HD DVD discs I may have missed) for those receivers that support WMA.
• Option to enable/disable Night Mode (with the default set to off)
• Fix a number of disc incompatibilities (including DVD Essentials) as well as a number of Lip Sync issues.

Forums have been buzzing regarding the prospect of what HDMI profile the Xbox 360 Elite will support, the standard 1.2 or the higher-end 1.3 version. AVS special member Amirm answered the query quite authoritatively and this is what he had to say:

Xbox 360 Elite supports HDMI 1.2 profile. For audio, you can select DD, DTS (at 1.5 Mbps), and WMA-Pro (Microsoft high fidelity multi-channel codec supported in some AVRs such as Pioneer). Since it is not based on 1.3, it will not support output of DD+ or TrueHD (even if it did, mixing would have been turned off).

Also reported was that come Spring, there will be two very important updates which will directly affect Xbox 360 users. First, HD DVDs will be updated so that they can support a higher level of audio fidelity and second, all Xbox 360 units, elite or not, will get a software update that gives additional support for different video levels and VGA.

The tech-savvy among you will find delight in the many exciting details and specifics talked about in the forum. To get the motherload of all the juicy info and discussions, follow the read URL.

A lot of us here don't know jack squat about transcoding videos for various devices, especially if your a technophobe. Hey, what with a mother-load of codecs that are out there (DivX and XviD just to name two of the most often confused codecs), ripping the hair off your scalp seems like a better idea than going through the whole complicated process of transcoding.

So, for the newbies out there who are thinking of giving this whole gig one more chance, here's an informative benchmarking experiment done by Happy Beggar. If you're not a newbie though, you still might find this worth your while. They reviewed three of the most popular transcoding software out there that lets you bring content into your 360. Their test subjects:

• VLC and my optimized vlcwmv-v2.bat file (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA)
• WinAvi 7.7 (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 64kbps WMA 9.2)
• Windows Media Encoder (WMV8 VBR at 100% quality with 96kbps WMA 9.2)

With these three programs, they used the same file to transcode a video, all with a time of one minute. The results are as follows:

• VLC: 3min 33sec of content (transcode rate of 85.1 fps)
• WinAvi: 1min 40sec of content (transcode rate of 39.96 fps)
• WME: 1min 27sec of content (transcode rate of 34.76 fps)

From that alone, you can see a considerable advantage with the VLC. It was able to complete three and a half minutes of video content with a higher frame rate as well. How about the quality of the converted material? Here's a snapshot of the original video:

To save bandwith, we've put the other pics behind the "Full Article" link. Click below to see the comparison in full detail. Who's the winner? You'll see after the jump...