Why not? It's not like both sides have players out.

That's not really 'HD-DVD and Blu-Ray uniting' so much as 'Blu-Ray surrendering', though , and I don't think anything HD-DVD has accomplished up to this point would compel Sony and company to give up.

Its a fight til the death I guess.

I dont know who to root for....with my recent investment, I guess im behind HD-DVD now.

Why would they even bother with this article?

In other news, Apple and Microsoft, AMD and Intel, BMW and Mercedes, Walmart and Target, and Iran and the USA are also not talking about joining up and becoming one.

Best Buy is the worst retailer in search for any new A/V technology equipment demonstration. Generally, they just take it out of the box, connect necessary inputs (sufficient enough with for customer viewing) turn it on, and play, without any type of professional calibration whatsoever. I've never rely on any of their displays.

really you think? Actually the BB near my work (Tenleytown NW Washington, DC) set it up rather well. Two TV's, two different demo's - saw the trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and wow! it literally felt I could slip my hand into the screen - it was that vivid and colourful. Again, the higher resolution and clarity revealed all the obvious facial makeup that the IMAX DM'red prints revealed in all it's garishment.

So get this...I just went to the Best Buy here in Chelsea.

Remember my other post? About how they didn't even have it set up right because it was set to 720p? I was wrong.
It's set up right.
They have it attached to a 40" Westinghouse 720p screen.

*sigh*

They also told me that they only got 2 in on sale day, none in the warehouse and none currently being shipped. Absolutely no idea when they're getting them. And there are also none currently their NYC stores at all.

And the only reason that the salesperson helped me is because we had the same tattoo. Before that, he did his best to look away every time I tried to talk to him. What a joke.

I went this afternoon to Chelsea as well and noticed that it was only a 720p set also. They were running Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it looked horrible. I'm still undecided whether I want to get it at hideflifestyle.com or not.

Again, on a proper set-up, it's great. I can't even look at that thing.

There were a couple of people looking at it while I was there and I said to them "don't even bother looking. It's set up wrong."

Netflix has really underestimated the HD DVD response. So far Serenity is the only HD title I've been able to get. All the rest are long wait and the new releases are also all reserved. Guess thinking I could use Netflix for HD DVD was a bad idea.

is it worth getting a HD DVD player if I have a 720p sony 50a10 TV. I am not planning on getting a 1080p set for a few years. I have heard it doesnt downscale very well, will this be better in later gen players?

Sure -- just set the HD-DVD player to output at 1080i and let your TV rescale it.

thanks, I have been dying for HD DVD ever since I downloaded the ICE AGE 2 trailer in 720p on my xbox 360. I am afraid of getting too into it till I know if the format will survive but I dont think I will be able to hold out too long. once I pay off a loan at the end of this month my next check will prob go to a HD DVD player

Exactly...my Sammy 61in DLP does a better job of downscaling the image to 720p than the player does. It looks brilliant!!

Same goes for my HD broadcasts with my Dish HD-DVR 622...the cable guy who installed it told me that in the dish receiver, I had to match my tv rez (720p).

I corrected him and showed him that setting the receiver to 1080i and letting my "more expensive than the receiver" display downscale it gave better pq.

Just to clarify, the HD-A1 does not contain any real scaler at all. The resolution setting in the player is supposed to be set to the same resolution as the disc you are playing, not the TV you are connected to. This is clearly stated in the manual (or was it in the addendum?) that comes with the player.

If you are playing a 1080p disc, and set the player to 720p, all the player will do is throw away the necessary number of pixels to get to the target resolution.

That explains why 720p has reportedly looked so awful. I can't imagine what it would look like if ICT was implemented

What, you are expecting something better from the PS3? Low End players are going to have low end features. The A1 and PS3 will be low end players. I won't be surprised if the results are the same with the Samsung when it is released in June.

720p looks GREAT, if you set the player to 1080i and let the TV scale to its native resolution (as the manual instructs you to).

On my LCD, and for that matter any LCD I tested while looking for an LCD about a year ago, has worse performance using 1080i than 720p. I think I'll just make sure the player I buy has a good scallar (or atleast as good as the $80 DVD player I have upconverting to the LCD right now).

Just picked up an HD-D1 from Wal-Mart along with Doom ($25). Had to call Wal-Mart's 1-800 number to find out which stores they shipped the players to in my area.

It does have a scaler, or clearly it wouldn't be able to convert any resolution to any other resolution at all. It's just that there's something wrong with its conversion of 1080p to 720p.

The upconversion scaling of DVD content to either 720p or 1080i looks very good on the A1, so the chip itself is not inherently awful. I'm hoping that this is something that can be resolved in a firmware update.

Well, I obviously didn't forget to take my stupid pill today.

You are, of course, quite right. What I really meant to say is that the scaler in the the HD-A1 doesn't appear to have a full set of capabilities. Whether that is due to a defect, a poor design, or a corner that Toshiba cut to keep the cost down, I don't know.

For upconverting SD to HD, it does an admirable job. But downconverting 1080i to 720p, it doesn't look like it is resampling the image (as it should), I think it is merely discarding every Nth pixel necessary to achive the target of 720p. When I set the player resolution to 720p, I can clearly see skipped pixel artifacts all over the image.

I finally made it to my local best buy to see a demo for hd dvd. First off, they had the demo in the corner somewhere. Great way to promote it. "No one puts HD-DVD in the corner". I know, that was corney. Like several other Best Buys, mine showed it on a 42" Westinghouse. My impressions: The King Kong trailer looked brilliant. If all movies look like that on hd-dvd, I can't see how you could get any better. The HD vs SD presentation was impressive, but artificial like others have said. I did notice a delay between pressing the buttons and the menu response, but not as bad as I would think based on some postings. The remote wasn't that bad to me. Maybe it's because I once had a Toshiba remote for a standard dvd player that was far worse. The cases for the hd-dvd were cute, but I can't wait to hear old laser disc owner's who already bitch about standard dvd cases and their artwork. If I was rich or at least pulling in 100k a year, I'd probablly buy one, but right now I'm one of those that will buy a ps3 but still wait for a winner. It was still very exciting to see that the next generation is here. It's pretty much official for me, with a few exceptions(movies like Star Wars) I can't see me going to the theaters anymore with hd-dvd or blue ray.

A little off topic, but didn't want to start a whole thread for this:

Went to a local WalMart this morning and they had HD-DVDs in the new release section. I think there were 5 titles. I definitely remember Doom, Serenity, Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby. I think I saw Apollo 13. Samurai and Million Dollar Baby were $19.96. They others were $24 and change.

What was interesting was that they had about 10-12 copies of each of these. I thought that was a lot of copies. I believe the Toshibas may be selling better than they're letting on (no official word on exactly how many they shipped/sold)... why else would they have so many copies of each movie? They must be anticipating high sales volume. No players on the shelf yet, though.

When WalMart gears up, they could really start selling a lot of product.

Has anyone answered why they released the D1?? Is it just for a different face on the player??

Im just curious.