To my knowledge its just an all black A1 and they did it to give Wal-mart and exclusive player I believe. Maybe someone that has purchased one can let us know if there are any other differences.

for those who already bought the Toshiba players how long do you think you'll keep them before upgrading? will you buy the 2nd gen. players when they hit or are you planning on keeping your current player for awhile?

I'm not buying another unit until either the format war is resolved or HD-dvd players hit the $200 mark with improved load times.

If things are anywhere near the pattern we saw with DVD, there could be faster, cheaper players with better features available in 12-18 months. As soon as those criteria have been met, I'll be upgrading.

I tend to upgrade way too much, but I'm going to try and hold on to this one for a few years if possible. If anything my next purchase will probably be a Blu-ray player when those fall to a better price range.

Well, im not planning on upgrading at least for the forseeable future. The only way that I would is if a 2nd gen player just blows this one out of the water with pq and aq. Functionally, I dont care if the others are better.

The A1 has a wonderful upconverting player and obviously displays HD-DVD well. The only drawback is the long load time, but it isnt worth upgrading just for that. It has replaced my Oppo for all dvd watching. As far as the crappy remote, I have a logitech Harmony that works just fine for my setup.

The 1080p limitation of the A1 doesnt really hurt me either since my tv rez is 720p and Im NOT upgrading that anytime soon.

Within a five years or so, I will build a media room with a projector and so on. At that point, I will get a new player (whether it be hd-dvd, bluray or both), but I can keep this player with my DLP tv whereever I have it (living room, bedroom or so on).

I also have not ruled out getting a Bluray player. Yes, I am invested in HD-DVD and love it so far, BUT Im not stupid. I know that BD will be around a while too and some movies will only be on it. So, I will probably be one of the people who has both (at least until one of the formats emerges as the winner or takes a sizeable lead in the format war).

I'd like to get at least a year out of this player before I get something else. I'm wondering how long it will be before we see a firmware update.

I think the load times are highly exagerrated. It's not like it takes 5 minutes to load the movie. We're talking about a minute or so. I think because we're so used to the latest and greatest dvd players loading movies so fast that we expect the same from a different type of player. I'm sure the load times on early dvd players weren't exactly lightning fast. The same should be accepted for these entry level ones.

Not to derail the thread, but how do you like the logitech Harmony? I was looking at one at Sam's but wasn't sure how well it actually intergrated into a home theater setup.

Funny, I was going to ask the same question! Which model is Sam's selling?

It was the 628. Not up on all the differences between them though.

I was at Best Buy yesterday and they had HD-DVD on their main display, featuring a Sony 60" something or other. Unfortunately they were only playing some HD-DVD marketing disc, showing the differences and trailers and such. It looked pretty cool, but it was a little bit underwhelming. Underwhelming in the sense that eventually I'll get into high-def, but not until it's more established. Don't get me wrong. There's definitely a noticeable difference, just not enough to make me rush out and dive in.

Some of the articles out there about the format war are down right stupid. I get lines like "remember VHS vs Beta?", but when they break out "remember Laserdisc vs DVD" I have to question if the person writting the article remembers. LD came out in the late 1970's and by the time DVD was released was at the end of its life. It was hardly a battle royal between the two, but I guess it can spun that even though LD beat DVD to market by 20 years it still wasn't able to win the war. What's next, "remember AM radio vs Satellite radio?"

I don't see myself buying another player until LG releases their combo BR/HD-DVD player.


As far as i know the only difference is the black face and the buttons are shaped different. But i haven't used an A1 to be able to compare beyond that.

There isn't going to be one.

LG *did* announce a combo player about a month ago. They even stated that it would be available this Fall. But since that time the BD camp has put the clamps down on that idea. They want the marketplace to decide between HD and BD and they feel as though a combo player would just confuse the issue. There will therefore be no combo players available for the forseeable future.

I have the 688 and got it pretty cheap (at the time, it was about $100...not sure how much they are now)....It works great with everything that I have.

Once you set it up how you want it to work, it's great.

There was a negative review at amazon because some guy didn't want to put any effort into setting it up so he complained that it didn't do what it was supposed to do.

I've compared the A1 to my Oppo for standard def and while it upscales well, it is NOT as good at deinterlacing. Actually I'd say it is in the mid-range in this regard.

crap on a stick, I got my player today and they shipped me the wrong one. I ordered the XA1 and they shipped me the A1. now I have to wait until they get my correct player sent out before I enjoy me some HD-DVD.

FYI...Laser VideoDisc's came out in the late 1970's and LaserDisc came out a few years later. Laser VideoDisc's had the quality of a VHS movie or about 240 lines whereas LaserDisc had about 425 lines.

Just wanted to add that my D1 blows away my previous upscaling player for regular DVD's. I watched Final Destination on it last night and could not believe how great it looked.

What you're thinking of is called CED (or SelectaVision), which was released in 1981 and was discontinued in 1986. They were not called "Laser VideoDiscs"; they didn't even use a laser.

www.cedmagic.com

Exactly. But it's not hard for people to get confused, considering how many times the Laserdisc format was "rebranded." First it was called DiscoVision, then Laser videodisc, and then LaserDisc, which soon changed to Laserdisc (without the InterCaps), and then for a while as LaserVision (but only by Philips).

I forgot about DiscoVision.

I'm going to do some checking tomorrow and see if any Best Buy's have it out yet. I'm hoping they do. This is ridiculous.

Anyone see "new" ones at their Best Buy?