Correct. The Toshiba players will only do it through HDMI and the 360 player will do it through VGA. None will upconvert through Component. Using that as a reason to not buy one means you wouldn't be buying any HD-DVD player.

for $130 its been a great investment so far

If you have an HDTV, won't the TV upconvert anyway?

Again, the "problem" is not that they cannot upconvert via component, is it that VGA does a piss poor job, and HDMI is not available.

Ive heard that (if you have a good TV) its better to let your TV do the upconverting from the source.

Ok, I'll bite...how did YOU get it for $130? I know I paid $160 with coupon at CC.....

If you consider $30 for King Kong, the PLAYER itself was about $130

My price breakdown is practice for when I have to convince a female partner to let me buy tech toys someday.

I would count the universal remote as another $30 but its useless to me as I have a Harmony remote that controls it fine.

I'm surprised you didn't use the old "a standalone player is $600 and I already have an Xbox 360... what a deal" line. Of course, what you have to hope they gloss over the hundreds of dollars you're going to now spend on an HD-DVD collection, many of which you probably already own in DVD format.

Just do it the hipster way, man.

hahaha
SF, did you ask your hairdresser girlfriend if it was OK to buy this?

we're not there yet

OH yeah....I guess once I sell my remote the price will be less...who knows if I'll keep Kong, then it will be $100 HD-DVD player

This is a sweet product at a decent price, but does anyone feel like it'd be smarter to wait until the Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD format shakes out?

It could easily take a few years to sort out the mess. I don't see Sony backing down from BD anytime soon and the same goes for Toshiba/Universal/Microsoft regarding HD DVD. I ended up with both formats because I didn't want to be limited on movie selection. Nothing wrong with choosing one side either. But if you have a HDTV and you don't choose either side, it's only going to make the war go on longer. HDTV sales are strong, so if I owned one, I would want a HD home video format to go with it.

If you have a HDTV and a 360 already, then the add-on is a great choice. I got one even though I already had the Toshiba HD-A1. It's a very sturdy, well built drive. King Kong looked incredible on it using component. Sure, the sound may be a bit lower than a standalone unit, but they invented a volume knob for a reason. With HD DVD, you do get Universal's exclusive library and Warners and Paramount also support them. New Line will support at the beginning of next year.

I don't know if it is "smarter" to wait out this format war... it is really a personal preference thing. Some people are all about picture quality so jumping in now makes sense. And at $200 for this add-on, it is really a good deal.

Me, I'm all about having the films and shows that are meaningful to me on a durable media, so DVDs are just fine for me.

That was a great thread....

Got mine at CC, but I was in Best Buy today and saw about 8 of them sitting in the cabinet... with all the hype this week over the Wii and PS3, and the lack of a solid build up for this unit, these may go relatively unnoticed until everyone goes crazy after Thanksgiving...

So, my player finally shipped from WalMart.com today. For some weird reason they sent them out today.

Anyways, I'm glad I pre-ordered it there because they are out of stock now.

what's the hipster way?

I was just watching DL.TV, and Robert Heron (resident HD guru) mentioned the X-Box 360 HD Drive he was testing out in the lab. He said it was horrible when playing back regular dvds, he suguested picking up a $50 dvd player instead. He will have a full review on Thursdays show. I really hope this is not true since I was looking forward to picking one up this week.

does he mean for upconverting? People have said the VGA cable isnt so good for that

for just regular DVDs with no upconverting, the regular 360 drive does quite well

He didn't go into detail, but he did say about upconverting dvds. I don't know what kind of cable he was using. I guess I will have to wait till tomorrow to find out.

well for the 360 you have to use the VGA cable and some people really dont like it.

Wait, you can upconvert from the regular xbox 360 drive (with the recent update)... so is he saying that it's actually worse than that?

Thats what it sounded like, but maybe he was using the component input which you cannot upconvert with.