That's called a stepdown adaptor if you're using 110V in Malaysia. The HD-DVD player is even cheaper than Denon 2930 dvd player. Just can't wait for Toshiba to officially launch it here.

Well, it's not a problem, I import my HD-DVDs from Lasersedge, USA. I have a few with me, I bought the whole collection for Fast And Furious, Van Helsing, etc. King Kong came free with XBOX 360 HD-DVD add on. I know it's not a proper way to watch HD-DVDs but that's better than nothing I guess, hopefully I can get my hands on Cyberlink's HD-DVD software so that I can give the XBOX 360 HD-DVD add on a test drive since it's supported by the software.

Don't worry about Finas, they can't do anything to censor movies imported from the US because it's impossible but as long as you're not ordering Basic Instinct 2 Blu-Ray, you're safe.

Cicak Man? That crap movie, it will be an insult if it's released on DVD IMHO. All HD-DVD titles will be from Hollywood and even Hong Kong movies are not available in HD-DVD yet, it will take time but there's nothing wrong to watch hollywood movies on HD-DVD, isn't it?

FYI, Speedy can order HD-DVD titles for you but they're selling RM199.90 or more so if you're smart enough to do the calculations, it's cheaper to order them from the US, I only paid RM110 to RM130 per title including DHL or FedEx shipping to Malaysia. No taxes so far, I ordered 2-4 movies per order.

It will be many years later when you finally get locally produced HD-DVD titles because the authoring equipment is costly, but not as costly as producing Blu-Ray discs. When there are no players available locally, who would wanna produce HD-DVD titles locally, right?

I think you terbalik liao lah, the Pioneer dvd spots the same components as the Sony player, it's made by Sony, not by Pioneer but finishing by Pioneer of course. Pioneer is using Sony's Blu-Ray transport but if it can play CDs originally, it will be the same as the Pioneer player. I guess Pioneer is not too keen to have their own plant to manufacture Blu-Ray drives yet, if this format flops, Pioneer will stand to loose billions. I'm placing my bets on HD-DVD, it seems to be a better format in terms of picture quality and price. I know Blu-Ray could do dual layer and has more storage space but then, most titles are still on single layer, maybe it's due to cost concerns.

Did you declare it for personal use? I ordered an amplifier from the UK once, I declared it as Christmas gift and it reached me without being taxed but the declared value was around RM800 (not the actual value of course).

Sounds like you're the lucky guy. Any family members working for the customs department? Hahaha. Just joking.

It depends on luck anyway b'coz if the customs officer wanna tax it, you can't do anything about it either. I had been in such a situation before, I told him that it wasn't taxed previously, he told me that officer didn't tax it was his business but I wanna tax it. Argghhh ..... I felt like smacking him on the face. Luckily it was for my personal use, if it was imported for business purposes, these taxes will have an impact on my profit margins.

How does it compare when you stack it up with a Blu-Ray movie running in 1080P?

Not at the moment, maybe around next year, NEC has developed the chip for that so it will be soon. We'll definitely see one but lets start saving now.

I guess it's best to wait than to buy one now, normally if you're the last to buy, you'll get a better price, deal and possibly the player will come with better specs too and of course, faster loading of blu-ray and hd-dvd movies. The current players take forever to start and play these movies.

I remembered paying RM2300 for a Toshiba dvd player last time, it was bare bones, nothing special, just a normal first gen dvd player but look at now, we're getting progressive scan, it plays SACD / DVD-Audio titles and now, it upscales to HDTV resolution via HDMI, it just gets better and better plus cheaper too so sometimes, it's best to wait, you don't really gain to be the first one to own it IMHO.

I prefer to see more brands and choices for HD-DVD players. At least for the Blu-Ray camp, they have players from Samsung, LG, Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, etc to start with.

AP? Not that I know of if you're importing it for your own personal use. Sometimes if the voltage is different, like 110V, they'll require you to get an approval from JBE. Just extra paperwork & $$$ to process the necessary documents.


Well, DVD won't be as bad as VHS lah, DVD has more titles than HD-DVDs or even Blu-Rays and it's still selling quite well, maybe we'll get cheaper original dvds in the future which is a good thing.


Some competition is good but many brands are reluctant to jump into the HD bandwagon yet and frankly, I don't think highly of Toshiba when it comes to HD-DVD players, if Marantz, Denon, Arcam, etc are also interested to make HD-DVD player I'm sure the picture and sound quality will blow Toshiba's own players away. For instance, Denon didn't create the dvd format but they have the best dvd players in the market or shall I say, audiophile quality.

Nah, movie studios can't just pull the plug on normal dvds, not everyone can afford HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays, this is Malaysia, we ain't staying in a foreign country, an original dvd in the UK is like the price of two plates for fish and chips, how about in Malaysia? If an original dvd here costs as much as two plates of fish and chips, then that's a different story. Frankly, original products are cheap overseas and they have those Christmas promotion like buying 5 titles and get 1 free. We don't have such luxury here. That's why dvds will still exist alongside with HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays for a long long time.

Well, only a few titles are combo ones but I'll expect them to disappear pretty soon as you need to pay more for buying combo titles. It's doesn't come free to be honest.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.