The rout is on for Blu-Ray

Johnny 53, you need to look up any pro review of the first two hd dvd players which would randomly freeze movies or lock up completely for no reason at all.
Audio buzzes in certain channels via analog, lip sync issues ect

My two hd dvd players both asked which side of a dvd I wanted to view...SD or HD.
The fan noise was too loud, and these two players had the slowest load times known to mankind.
Anytime you pressed menu or stop ect on the remote, the player would have to re-sync, which is something they didn't do too well to begin with.

After you search first HD-a1 reviews, do a google search for second gen reviews and boiling combo hd dvd's in order to get them to play new out of the case.

I bought my first hd dvd player 5 days before launch, and my first BD player the day they went on sale, and have since had one other hd dvd player and two other BD players as well as the PS3.

At CES every practically every room that was demoing home theater that tried to use a Blu Ray player froze up. The ones demoing Transformers for instance on HD-DVD worked flawlessly.

How will prices for REAL DVD Player VALUE in the market rise? HD-DVD player prices have been artificially low as Toshiba tried to dump players and flood the market in one last desperate attempt to build interest in their format and clear inventories. But how is that "low price" people paid going to feel when they can't get any new titles to play on their machine in 6 months? Was it really such a good deal?

Many manufacturers were sitting on the sidelines waiting to see which format was going to win, and now one has. When multiple manufacturers come out with BluRay units, the price wars will start for those as well. We may not be able to get them for $129, but the format and utility of whatever we purchase will survive past July.

For example, how much are decent SD DVD players now? Unless you want a high end Denon or Arcam (you can still buy an upscaling Denon DVD5910CI for $3800 new - LOL - bet they are flying off the shelves at that price right now), you can get a very decent unit for sound (OPPO 980H) or video (OPPO 981HD) for a little less or a little more than $200. Yamaha and Denon (and Toshiba) also make serviceable SD DVD players for less than $300 on the street. Once all these manufacturers join Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and LG in a price war for your BluRay dollar, prices WILL FALL from where they are now for a mature product with a reasonable shelf life (say, two years instead of two months).

Even Toshiba will throw their weight behind BluRay, and they too will make money as all the manufacturing giants race to get your $$$ and allegiance with the new format. But how would you like to be their HD-DVD Program Manager right now?

I own the toshiba and 2 bd players. While the load time on the tosh. is slow---CONTENT-- drives the marketplace.btw; issues w/ each bd player.

I sold my Marantz DV9600.I demo'd a Toshiba HD player and then looked at what I could rent with video(zero).I researched and bought a Samsung BD-P1200 on Amazon.Called Amazon and asked for a firmware 2.3 update.I am now in audio/video heaven.For $200 spent on video,I will now search for a A+ CD player.