The problems come when you get to the HD DVD support, where the "sluggish HD DVD menu navigation" get points docked off. There are some other quirks as well; you can't manually select the 1080p/24Hz mode if you know your display can handle it, it doesn't display 10-megapixel images (though it does 7-megapixel ones) and you can't update the firmware via ethernet like other models. But all in all it's a fairly decent player for the price ($600-$800ish). That said, with HD DVD all but deceased, you should probably just buy a Blu-ray player at this point and skip out on these dual-mode machines. [PCMag]

We hit the stopwatch first on a Blu-ray disc, and the time from tray insertion to first video was an eventual 31 seconds. For HD DVD, it was a bit quicker, at 29.7 seconds. We'd rather see this time shaved to under 10 seconds.

And oh yeah, the 1080p video coming out of the player was just perfect, in both Blu-ray and HD DVD trim. And, looky there, it's the official HD DVD logo sitting there, absent in the first-generation player because of alleged Microsoft recalcitrance. Word is that the Redmondians didn't want to see some crazy idea like a dual player hitting the market, making consumers' lives easier. Apparently all is forgiven. [No, the original LG player didn't do true HD DVD because it couldn't handle interactive menus. -B.Lam]