A20 will only be out in April right? So tempted to get the A2 now since HD-XA2 is a bit too much. probably i should wait and purchase this player after paying my income tax.

Well, it's true, once the price of HD formats slightly differ from the standard dvds, nobody will buy them, everyone will get these HD ones instead since they also play on normal tvs and they're of course, more value for money. We have to wait for a few generations before we get to buy affordable HD players, I believe in 2-3 years' time. The HK film industry is not supporting any of these formats yet, the same goes to the film industries of other countries too. The transition will take a few years before all movies are eventually in HD format and I of course, hoping to watch Star Wars and Jurassic Park in HD. I know these classics will on HD format one day but they're holding them back because they want the HD market to have a larger customer base first. Most special edition movies are still being released for the standard dvd format, you can't get the King Kong Special Edition version on HD-DVD as of now, maybe later when Toshiba manage to squeeze in more space for their formats, they have finally managed to squeeze about 51GB of space, that should do the trick, of course, 100GB will be better especially for movies like LOTR with tons of special features and deleted scenes.


Alamak ...... why worry about income tax I'm more worried about the availability of the softwares here. No point buying a player when there are no softwares available locally. Of course we can order online but it will be good if we have those cheaper imported Asian version movies. At least we have a choice like standard dvds, we have Region 1 and 3 to choose from.

oh .. good one .. not only the price of the player has been dropped. Toshiba just pump steroid to their the FREE HD DVD offers for every purchase of HD DVD player. Toshiba were offering 3 free hd dvds for every HD DVD purchase until 28th Feb 2007. Starting 1st March til July 31st 2007, they are offering a whopping 5 (Five) FREE HD DVDs for every HD DVD player purchase .. that is like another $125 off the player. so basically the price is like $399-$125= $274

http://thelookandsoundofperfect.com/_pdf/p...ffer_advert.pdf

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Added on March 2, 2007, 3:23 amthat is what they are saying. anyhow - if you are going to use it on a 42in display from 8 feet, the A2 would be sufficient ..

This post has been edited by g5sim: Mar 2 2007, 03:24 AM

DVDs are barely ok for me now. I'm very used the HDTV rips, and even so the quality is not really on par with true BD/HD DVD. I'm spoilt...dvix now looks like poo....

the offer is only valid for US resident only right? Is there anyway, for them to send it to Msia?

Tempting, I see the future as having both players.

I prefer a combo player instead for convenience sake but sadly, LG made a crappy combo player. Hopefully, there are other brands who are interested in making a combo player.

yes. but i bet it will be extended to Canada as well as the previous 3 free HD DVD offer. anyhow, just get just some to from the States to do it for you.

If Toshiba launches their player here, I wonder whether they will give us 5 HD-DVD titles or not? Maybe got lah, maybe movies like Cicakman, Sepet, Puteri Gunung Ledang, Scenario The Movie and Remp-It.

Sure heboh seluruh malaysia. its better to give us Bollywood movies .. HD DVD is launching in India very soon. when that happens, expect to see Bollywood movies in HD DVD .. Malaysians will be very happy about that. Imagine Amitabh Belacan in HD DVD !!! all the makcik makcik jumping around

Yeah, Bollywood movies in DTS-HD and it will sound better than Casino Royale.

more good news,

just wanna point out that HD DVD has reached the street price point of $2**.

yupe .. HD DVD's cost affective advantage is showing.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-D1-DVD-Pl...3576403&sr=1-10

and the gen2 A2 player is $33* after Amazon Visa discount ... that is like $31 away from the $2** price point. And this is a model that is currently in production

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IJV4B...3576403&sr=1-10

Well, I do hope some to see more HD-DVD variants from other brands besides Toshiba b'coz currently, Toshiba is the only brand marketing HD-DVD players aggressively. From the price point, Toshiba offers the best bang for the buck with their players and the HD-DVD softwares are reasonably priced and offer better picture quality than Blu-Ray. Their MPEG 4 AVC coding for all HD-DVD titles have an added advantage against the Blu-Ray format whereby most Blu-Ray titles are still using MPEG-2 compression even though they're able to use MPEG 4 AVC coding for their movies. A very strange move by the Blu-Ray camp. Totally unexplained.

actually right now, only IP holders in Blu-ray and Toshiba are producing the standalone players. Sony/Pana/Pioneer for BD and Toshiba for HD DVD. The rest is just not interested in investing into something that is not certain that they have have no 'interest' in

I believe if other brands like Denon, Marantz, Cambridge Audio, Pioneer, etc are interested in making a HD-DVD player, we can expect even much better quality than Toshiba's current high end models in the market. Of course, the other companies are probably waiting to see which format is more feasible. I think chances of combo players appearing will be very unlikely since only LG is interested to do one, the rest are keeping mum on it.

hmm The XA2 is selling at $58* now ... hehehe

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Added on March 24, 2007, 11:56 ambhphoto is now selling the player at # $ 369.00

This post has been edited by g5sim: Mar 24 2007, 11:56 AM