When I worked at Circuit City all those years ago, you couldn't purchase them if you wanted to. If you tried to checkout an item that wasn't released yet, a screen would come up and say it couldn't be sold yet. Obviously Best Buy has a different system or they have the wrong date on them. Who knows?

i was planning to go with HD, but would have liked a combo player.

and yea i happened to be there anyways when the guy walked by with it.

by the way, i just put in an audio cd- MUCH MUCH better sound than any other DVD-player i've ever used.

by the way my previous player was a toshiba upconverting sd-5980.

I think the biggest reason is that BB has them in their ad for next week. I am sure they were told to have them available for the ad by corp.

Here's a question...what were you planning on buying when you went in? ;) Be kinda amusing if you go in looking for a $15 cd and come out with a $500 player.

Do you have any DL +R discs? I'd love to know how these handle the dual-layer recordables.

Couple of quick pics of mine. Notice the Region 1 label on the back. This is a really high quality player. All metal, nice remote and very heavy. I will spend some time tossing in every disc I can think of and comparing its upconverting ability with my Denon and report back what I think of it.
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a2...e/DSCN0549.jpg
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a2...e/DSCN0542.jpg
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a2...e/DSCN0548.jpg

went in for a memory stick and to browse the dvd's. best buy is about a 1 and a half minute drive from my house so not a big deal.
no dual layer recordables at all. i tried a few dvd-r's (single layer), played perfectly.
this dvd player is nice, don't know yet if it's worth the $500.
i browsed through some scenes on the Serenity HD disc, the movie actually seems like it might be good... the picture quality is what you'd expect, but not any more or any less (let's just say the picture quality didn't exactly cause me to lose my breath)... it's not an improvement over an HBO-HD broadcast as far as video quality, at least on my setup.

pros:
video quality
much better sound quality, even on SD-DVD and music CDs.
nice quality player and nice-looking remote
usb ports (hmmm... can i hook up my ipod and digital cam through that?)
1 HDMI cable is included
easy to setup
nice interface

cons:
$500 may be steep
no 1080p (not that my tv supports it)
not exactly breathtaking if you are used to HD tv broadcasts.
takes over 1 minute to get to the DVD Menu to play the movie
there seems to be a lag after you hit a button the remote
the directional arrows on the remote just flat out suck
limited support, limited software, high priced software (serenity was $27.99)

how are the extras? are there some? are they in 16x9?

btw...i fell asleep during Serenity. And to be honest, NONE of the HD titles released interest me.

Aargh. I was hoping to find a copy of Serenity today just to make sure I'd have a copy when my player ships (hopefully early next week), but even though Best Buy had a placeholder for the players (didn't physically see any, tho'), they didn't have any software. Oh well.

the extras are 4x3 standard definition. WOW.
it would have been nice if they included some HD trailers or something.

is the trailer for the movie in HD? It pisses me off that even on SD-DVD the trailers aren't in 16x9.

the setup menu:
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e8...6/IMG_2490.jpg

cd player:
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e8...6/IMG_2491.jpg

the player... yeah i had to put my cable box on top. and yes i know my center speaker placement sucks, but i dont have much room to work with:
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e8...6/IMG_2493.jpg

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e8...6/IMG_2497.jpg

that's the thing, they didn't include ANY trailers (even the one for Serenity).

in my opinion, there's no reason that special features even on a standard DVD should not be in anamorphic widescreen.

Looks like the regular dvd didn't include it either.

Plus it looks like the regular DVD didn't get high marks for quality. Perhaps this isn't the best example of what the player can do ;)

good looking out...

i want The Last Samurai- the guy in the AVS forum said the quality is great.
i think ill just keep this player. it seems to be ok for what it is.

And i love your TV too.

Is that your house?

can we get married? ;)

Probably will pick up Last Samurai as my first HD DVD title.

I played DVD+Rs in it and they played just fine. I mention that only because the manual only claims DVD-R compatibility.

The bad news is my Denon kicked this players ass with DVDs. I don't even think it was close. I tried scenes from Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia and the Toshiba player had more noticable artifacts especially mosquito noise and the color also looked slightly better on the Denon. I tested it on 720P and 1080i through HDMI and the Denon was better on both. I will probably try out 480p through component as well just to see later. To be fair my HDTV was calibrated for the Denon with Video Essentials, but still I thought the Toshiba should have done better. The HD-A1's DVD playback looks like a run of the mill $99 upconverting player to me.

Granted I bought it for HD DVD, but I definitely won't be using it as a DVD player.

Well, I figured dvd playback quality on this unit would be an after thought. they need to convince you to buy more Hd-dvds. :)

I went to BB this morning and couldn't find a player. I'm actually quite proud of myself because I didn't give in and preorder, or buy, anything yet. I think I want to save the cash and see what happens with both formats first, though, I'll probably have a HD-A1 by the end of next week.

For some reason the player has gone back to pre-order status on BB's website so you can't check store inventory for it anymore. I wonder what's up with that.

can anyone verify if the SD playback is region free? The initial reports prior to the release was that it was going to be on these first two units from Toshiba.

Nope. It's encoded...for DVD's. HD-DVD's are a different story.

I'm really looking to find out about the dual-layer ones.

When is Europe getting these bastards?

This thread has made me want a player real bad now.

EDIT: To the dude who brought the player, can you take a pic of the tv with the hd-dvd playing?

What does this setting do? Does film output 24fps (I'm guessing for projectors and compatible TVs) and video 29.97fps? Or is it just some gimmick effect that alters the picture in some way?

Also, does it playback wmvHD discs?

Probably after all of the bugs have been been ironed out and the format war is long over :p .