I went for the Toshiba D2 from Costco. At $249 and 5 free HD DVDs its hard to pass up.
I will say that price points like that add a new factor to consumer's decision-making: The "why the heck not?" factor. For $249 you can throw caution to the wind and take the format for a ride
Agreed, however, at $249 + 5 free movies, I assume the player is selling for about $150 (almost as cheap as the cheapest DVD players). This is disasterous for a new technology - it means the technology is essentially worthless - selling it at costco implies it is low tech too (cool image factor/pride of ownership is very low).
People said the same about Apple iPod...when the iPod came out late to the market, the experts said "nobody would pay so much money for a portable music player that has copy protection!". And then "experts" realized that it was all about listening to music, ease of use (iTunes store) and a certain "cool" or exclusive factor rather than price.
Blu-Ray owners have the pride of owning a slightly better and more expensive technology with more disc space and, more importantly, having access to far more of the latest hot movie releases from the studios (remember it is often about content and protecting content providers copyrights and NOT the widget itself - this is the same factor which drove the iPod and drives game console wars).
I see no future in HD-DVD without major defections from studios supporting only Blu-Ray (something HD-DVD supporters must be desperately praying for and strategically pushing by flooding the market with cheap low cost players everywhere...the MP3 player makers tried the same thing to fight Apple). I may be completey wrong but this is my hunch.
