well, if you can pick it up for around 500 its not too bad. I just don't see paying over 1K for any of them.

No 5.1 analog outs, no advanced audio decoding = no sale for me.

What was th point of this entire thread? To find out that Josh still doesnt have a HD player? This whole Josh debacle is rediculous. HDMI 1.3 this HDMI 1.3 that, Now HDMI 1.3 isnt important at this point and he will buy one without it. Sony this Sony that, Now he isnt getting the Sony. The whole thing makes my head spin. The entire Josh debate is completly rediculous. I try to avoid all of it and just not say anything but I will say this.

Josh, do yourself a favor and just stop. Stop with all of the Sony fanboyism, Stop with all of the Blu-Ray, HDMI 1.3, PS3 speeches. I have never seen someone with such little first hand knowledge claim to know so much. Just stop with all of it until you at least get a player in your house and thus get a somewhat informed opinion on what your talking about. As it is right now you make yourself look like a total fanboy whose only knowledge comes from reading internet posts and company press releases. I havent seen someone this bad since my Gamespot days on the Sytem Wars Forum, whuch happens to be the biggest collection of people that think they know everything on the face of the planet.

Looking back on all of the Josh posts only one word comes to mind, rediculous!

PS..

Thanks for your kind words, PS.

HDMI v1.3 is still very important to me, but waiting is no longer an option. The Panasonic is a better option than the Sony. Its that simple.

PS,
You keep using that word. I do not think it <s>means</s> is spelled what you think it <s>means</s> is spelled.

To be fair, lack of owning a BD player doesn't seem to have any affect on HD-DVD owners from drawing conclusions on BD over here.

But the HD DVD side at least has fantastic reviews on its side. That's the big difference.

And regardless of the spelling/grammatical mistakes made above, I think he speaks for a lot of us.

Unless those reviews are soley based on Universal titles, I fail to see how those fantastic reviews don't support both sides.

True, the reviews of recently released BD's and an actual viewing were what prompted me to finally jump into the hi-def game after sitting it out for six months. I'll just leave it at that.

And they've still been mixed...and without extras.

HD DVD set the bar very high. All we're doing now is watching and waiting to see if they can match it. Going beyond it is a pipe-dream, for the moment.

At the very least, we've seen many titles on HD DVD that have been praised unanimously for their quality. BD hasn't.

I'll just leave it at that.

This is true. I remember reading posts how Tomb Raider was reference material on HD DVD, only to find out the equivalent release on Blu-Ray was rated somewhat poor. As they are identical discs, it is truely amazing the difference a little positive thinking will get you.

I am waiting for the winner of the war to become clearer. This will not happen until after the PS3 is released, so my guess is that either HD-DVD or Blue Ray will start sweating about March 2007.

I hope to Pickup an HD-DVD, Blue Ray or PS3 box next Spring/Summer.

Some reviewers/message board-faithful genuinely have no clue what they're talking about. The Perfect Storm is the example I always point to, but if someone claimed Tomb Raider is reference quality, that's pretty baffling. For what it's worth, I wrote a mixed review of the presentation (I'd probably give it a lower score now than I did then).