Wonder if you'll be able to get Best Buy & Circuit City to price match on these???

Most pricematches are limited to stock on hand. So they'd call the store, and if they have it in stock, they'll do it. If they're out, they won't pricematch.

Blu-Ray deals ay?? Wonder if they're going to be on par with the $98 HD-DVD player. I'd pick one up then!

$99? Yes. I'll buy that. And I'll see about the price match too.

Update: Circuit City shows it at $197 as of right now. The Toshiba A2 doesn't even show up on Wal*Mart's site.

I don't think it'll be online. The ad said not available in all areas, so I assume this is in-store only.

I think Toshiba simply wants to get rid of this player...it is being phased out. No 1080p support? This is crap.

Are you kidding me, dc_audiofool? It's a hundred fucking dollars. What do you expect? Some people are so caught up on 1080p. It's not that big a deal. Yes I have a 1080p television, yes I have an HD-DVD player capable of 1080p playback. But guess what. Ninety percent of what everyone watches is 720p or lower. No one is even broadcasting in 1080p yet as far as I know. YOU ARE CRAP SO THERE!

:)

I was there when the same thing happened with VHS! This is the beginning of the end for Blue Ray. Exactly the same thing, identical in it's meaning to the masses. BAM! So go buy one, sit it on top of your Blue Ray player because you are going to need it soon. :)

I think I just will not decide to enjoy super high quality dreck out there until there is a format winner.
Corporations should have decided on a format and let the market build around it. Commercials for this movie or that movie in only one format - no thanks. I will not buy two machines (or more) to catch a movie only in that format.
Original DVD is good format - only one. Yes, it took a while to develop, but still, not differing versions for consumers.

anyone know if this includes canada?
does it have dvd backwards compatability...dumb question i know, but for something that cheap, it wouldn't surprise me if it had something like that missing.

@johnwilliams713: And no one ever will broadcast in 1080p, at least not under ATSC. ATSC only provides for 480i/480p/720p/1080i. But 1080p sets are great for 360/PS3 and HD-DVD/BRD, and for displaying 1080i signals without a whole lot of downsampling/upscaling wackiness. There's also something to be said for viewing distances and screen sizes, but...

If you're down with HD-DVD, this is a pretty good deal. It's definitely got the logic side of my brain workin overtime to combat the "Me want pretty" side.

@johnwilliams713: As much as I hate his scores as repetitive and treacly, I agree with John Williams.

1080p is great, but what about people who bought a TV two or three years ago when there was a premium for 1080p? Despite Sony's TrueHD marketing campaign, many people bought 1080i because it cost several hundred dollars less and delivered much of the same quality. A 1080i player is, for many people, good enough because that's the maximum resolution of their TVs.

WK, as I said, at $99, you might as well take the plunge. Maybe there's a rebate offer too for free movies.

btw, i am only considering it because i was going to buy a cheap dvd player anyway...i think blu-ray will win...in a year and a half.

curious to know what the BRD deals are????

Ohh, this is a tough one.

I've been firmly entrenched in the wait until there is a winner camp, but damn! $100 is a helluva a deal. I've been thinking of buying an upconverting DVD player for a while now. It almost seems foolish to go with an upconverter instead of this.

This is a good player too. The folks over on Av-forums say this one actually has better sound output than the A3.

People, people you don't really need a 1080p player if your tv has decent video processing hardware. Your tv will do the deinterlacing of the 1080i signal.
The A2 has all the features of the HD-DVD spec. None of the 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 BD player crap.

This would be huge news for the format wars if Wal-Mart was able to get more than 2 units for each store. Regardless of the hardware price, I am waiting for this thing to be decided over the holidays (I hope), cause I will spend way more on software. Also, I am waiting for players with uncompressed Dolby and DTS. Looks like I will continue buying laserdiscs until late 2009.

Oh yeah, good 1080p (reality) information for all the fanboys at [www.carltonbale.com]
"most consumers will not be able to see the full benefit of their 1080p TV"
I'm waiting for 1440p and a 110" SED.

Toshiba: We just gave up on this stupid format war ... It's over, we're getting rid of what we got left. Who cares! I'm getting one!

@DC_Audiofool:
The people who won't pay more than 100/200 for a HD-DVD player likely won't cough up the cash for a 1080p TV. If they do have that sort of cash, they'll likely go after the A20 instead.

100 bucks eh! It's so tempting, but as many others I rather wait to see who wins the battle. Maybe, I just say, maybe on the real thxgvng will be the same deal and a couple of free movies with it. It has to be. The only good reason I can think of not buying now is because Shakira will have Blue Ray Disk on her new album, damn it, My 2 cents goes to DVD-HD.

It's kinda expensive; don't you think? I can get one of those brown plastic doorstops at the hardware store for $1.98.

Thanks, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitresses!

I am getting one, but more importantly did anyone look at the Sanyo 50" Plasma for under a grand? That seems like a pretty sweet deal as well, unfortunately no model number. Anyone know anything about the TV?

[www.bestbuy.com]

Best Buy has already met the price and added online purchasing. The only problem is that they are sold out online and have limited instore availability. Why bestbuy will be better is that they also give you two free hddvd's in store ontop of the 5 free. Ill be stopping by tonight to check this out.

[www.bestbuy.com]

1080i requires a 1080p TV to display it on. There's very few 1080i-only TVs out there, so all TVs capable to displaying full-res 1080i have to be 1080p.

As for doorstops - $100 for a kickass upscaling DVD player is a steal. The PS3's upscaling is crap compared to the upscalers Toshiba's been putting into their HD-DVD players (future proofing? If HD-DVD fails, you still have a damn nice upscaling DVD player that'll rival the more expensive ones).

Actually, make that when HD-DVD fails. HD-DVD is too consumer friendly - what with its region free design, no protection other than AACS. Studios will never go for that - they want to make sure their content is locked up better than Fort Knox. And they'll want region coding that manages to bypass all those pesky laws that allow region-free DVD players...

Only Blu-Ray offers that sort of DRM... (after all, see all the Transformers HD-DVD torrents out there now? (25GB...))

@Worf: "1080i requires a 1080p TV to display it on. There's very few 1080i-only TVs out there, so all TVs capable to displaying full-res 1080i have to be 1080p."

You sir, have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The vast majority (like 90%) of HDTVs sitting in living rooms right now are either 720p or 1080i. Only VERY recently have 1080p televisions begun to gain mass market acceptance. Get your facts straight before you post a bunch of BS and try to pass it off like you know anything about this topic.

i wonder if it will be available online as well at that price? Fortunately I still live in a wal-mart free zone.

As someone in the Blu-Ray camp (PS3 owner), I may pick up a $99 HD DVD player just to have one. For that price, it's worth it.

Of course, who's the say if the format goes away when Blu-Ray wins the format war, that players won't be less than $100.

I think HD DVD is simply pouring money into getting players into every home possible and hoping that saturation helps them win the war. Personally, I don't think today's consumers are that naive about tech specs vs. the consumers back when VHS overtook Beta.

@Earthslide:

Toshiba: We're willing to take a hit now, write off the losses on our earnings reports, and then reap the benefits from royalty payments later after we've used market saturation to win the format war. We're looking 5 years down the road, not 5 months.

@chillywilly: VHS/Beta wasn't about naivete. It was about price and the ability to record an entire movie on one tape. VHS gave the consumer both.

The fact that porn came out on VHS, not Beta, helped too. Porn, to a large extent, drives technology.

@chuckwrona: I'm not sure about that. I've seen an awful lot of "1080i" TVs with 1366x768 resolution -- meaning you're, at most, getting 768 lines of signal, interpolated from the 1080. To display 1080 lines, you'd need a display with 1080 lines. Most (if not all) 1080-line displays are 1080p.

@CHUCKWRONA

I'm glad you beat me to it because I wasn't going to be as polite as you were.

There are tons of 1080i HDTVs out there.

Is holiday.RI-walmart.com really a Walmart site or just a fake?

Ri-walmart.com is registered on godaddy with a Bentonville, AR address. the email is a Brian Vaeth (bvaeth@resource.com). It was created on 25-Sep-07. Walmart.com is registered through Network Solutions to Walmart with a address in Brisbane, CA using dns@WALMART.COM.

Knowing cooperations, dns@walmart is the logical point of all contact for websites so why not use it for this one too? And the fact that is was created just a week ago?

never the less, i'm thinking i'll check out my local on the way to work tomorrow

What's going to piss people off is when they drop $100 on this player and then go, dang, let's see I can get Transformers for this one and...

@chuckwrona:

Here is what Worf was trying to say (although it didn't come across as clearly as it could). The FACT is that while, yes, the vast majority of consumer displays ACCEPT 1080i as a source, they must DOWNSCALE them to their native resolution (generally 720p or 768p for plasmas, LCDs, and DLP RPTV's more than a year or two old).

Hence, "all TVs capable to displaying FULL-RES 1080i have to be 1080p" - in other words, the only TV's capable of displaying 1080 horizontal lines of resolution ARE 1080p TV's. There is NO current display technology that displays 1080 (or any other) interlaced video natively. The only exception to this real are old-school CRT's, and when was the last time you saw an HDTV using that tech?

That said, on 1080p TV's, with film-based material as a source, 1080i/p is irrelavant as long as the display can correctly de-interlace a 1080i signal. Check out Geoff Morrison's article on the subject at hometheatermag.

Next time you want to jump on someone about being uninformed, perhaps you should inform YOURSELF first.

Jackass.

Didn't you hear? The format war is over and HD-DVD won. The nail in Blu Ray's coffin was yesterday when K-Mart announced they are going HD-DVD exclusive. R.I.P. Blu Ray.

@CruJones: You're suggesting that HD-DVD lacks movies compared to Blu-Ray? That's silly!

Both formats have a lot of support at this point. Heck, a lot of the best HD stuff is available in both anyways. There's a few decent exclusives on both sides, but there's hardly a lack of good HD-DVD titles available.

Porn won't drive this war, it's found it's download future.
VHS vs Beta was a different situation, in a different time.
Blu-Ray, designed a a data storage medium first, has more flex,
more space and more content. The cheaper burners will close the gap.

Is this price good today, or only in the stores Friday morning at 8:00 AM? Wanted to see if I can go in today and pick one up...

BTW, Bestbuy.com is sold out, as well as most stores....

@ggraves82: First off assbag, I took issue with the fact that he said there were "hardly any 1080i TVs out here" which is absolutely incorrect. His argument mentioned nothing about downscaling. You can pick bits and pieces out of that moron's post all day to give the impression he wasn't totally talking out of his ass. What, is he your little brother or something?

"Next time you want to jump on someone about being uninformed, perhaps you should inform YOURSELF first."

Next time you want to bust someone out for correcting misinformation, try picking someone who's not in the right, TOOL.

I just stopped by Best Buy to see if they were price matching. At least here in Tinley Park, IL, they most definitely are NOT. Guy I talked to confirmed that at about $100, the HD-A2 is definitely selling at a loss, and there was no way his Best Buy location was going to do that. So for all of you hoping to snag this deal at other retailers, beware. Walmart may be the only store that delivers on this price.

Is it just me or is it really really sad to get into a fight over who knows more about 1080i/p? Yikes.

So with all this pissing into the wind at each other I've not been able to establish, will this player play my VHS tapes or only my Betamax tapes?

Does it have RCA composite out (& I need mono audio for my 14" TV)?

@designaked:

Haha I have to agree with you on that.

@chuckwrona:

Had I left the last word or paragraph out of that post, it wouldn't have seemed nearly as angry as it did. I posted in haste, and went back to change it, but alas the Giz won't let one do that. My apologies for coming off as the true jackass.

I just get irritated when people jump on others for being "uninformed", then don't bother to back up their burn. The fact remains that there are, in fact, very few native 1080i TV's out there, as he said. We're agreed that the post was essentially worthless. My point was simply that yours didn't contain anything particularly more substantial.

As someone with a 46" 16:9 1080p LCD, Blu-ray, HDMI setup, how is it that so many Blu-ray movies list that they are 1080p on the box only for me to get home and find the signal is still in letterbox and no clearer than the 720p signal of my HD cable (and below the quality of the over-the-air 1080i HD broadcasts).

Is there no agency or industry organization to monitor movie studio resolution stats and require them to be truthful?

How can I find which movies are truly processed at 1080p?

ill wait for the blue ray price. take the time some day go to you best buy. look at the displays for blue ray and hd dvd and tell me which has more film grain. and if you tell me that doesnt saything because it's a demo. what idiot of a company would half has their product demo to push their product.

@Vagabum:

The letterboxing isn't going to go away. Most films are not filmed in a 16x9 aspect ratio.

@Vagabum: What he said.

Many films are in the 2.35:1 ratio, meaning you'll have letterboxing on your TV. Another common aspect ratio is 1.78:1. The aspect ratio is listed on the back of DVDs in the lower left corner.

Also, check the settings of your player. Perhaps it's outputting at 720p.

@johnwilliams713: If you really were a videophile, you would see the huge difference between 1080p and 720p. And FYI, you don't broadcast cable to an HD DVD player, you use this thing called a cable box, DVR, PVR, etc. I'm really sick of you guys claiming there's no difference between the resolutions. There is, and it's clear as day. Not to mention that if I were to buy any HD equipment now, I'd want it to be relatively future-proof for the next 2-3 years, and that means 1080p.

Phoenix-
Bethany Home and 35th confirmed to be having a sale on this model HD DVD player tomorrow (Friday Nov 2nd) but would not tell me for how much. Sale would start at around 8-9am and that I could call at 6am-7am for pricing.

Bethany Homes and 19th didn't seem to know what I was talking about but did conform they will be having a Black Friday sale tomorrow and every Friday through out the month, but didn't know what those items were yet.

I'm still happy with my regular DVD quality. I can see the scars on the actresses quite clear when watching my non-family videos. Why would I need it any clearer??

I picked one up this morning at a Wal-Mart in Richmond near Short Pump mall. They had 25. I got there around 7:30 and I was 10th in line. They sold them all.

I picked one up at a Wal-mart in Landover Hills, Maryland (closest Wal-mart to downtown Washington D.C.). I got there at 6:50 am. I was 5th in line. For the 1st hour, I was the only person on their sign-in sheet for a Toshiba HD-DVD. By 8am, there was about 10 people in line for it. They still had plenty when I left at 8:15 am.

Wisconsin had about 20-30 ... too bad nobody in the store saw the *WI prices may vary. Yea, the sweet $98 price tag jumped to $185 ... no go for this guy.

@robinandtami:
@omg-ponies:

Thanks. I do understand the aspect ratio. But I was surprised that I still did not detect any visible improvement in quality between a 720p HD cable signal at 16:9 and the allegedly 1080p signal at 1.78:1 (my PS3 is set to HDMI/1080p). I still wonder if the movie output is really 1080 lines.

What is a good 16:9 1080p movie to test with? Any suggestions?

Thanks again.

@GGRAVES82:

You are still wrong. 1080i doesn't have 1080 vertical lines. It has 540. So you are right that there are few "native 1080i" televisions. That barely makes sense. HDTVs almost always support up to 720 vertical lines, where 1080i is either UPSCALED or shown in "native 540".

I got the HD-A3 at Best Buy in Myrtle Beach, SC yesterday with two movies in the box three off the shelf and the rebate form for five more....that's a great deal however you look at it! as for it being a region free player I am not so sure as I put a regular region 2 disc in and it came up with the region error message! maybe it's only Region 2 HD-DVD's that work, did anybody else try anything other than a reion 1 disc? anyway movies look great on my 73" Mitsubishi 1080p tv... blah,blah,blah.