HD DVD Players

In case you hadn't heard, the HD format war is over. The Blu-ray camp struck a huge win just before CES when Warner Brothers announced they would be moving exclusively to Blu-ray by mid year, tipping the scales majorly in Blu-ray's favor. Then, in February 2008, Toshiba announced it would discontinue the development, manufacturing and marketing of HD DVD, officially ending the format war. They did, however, confirm that they would honor the warranty of all HD DVD players.

The Toshiba HD DVD players featured in this review were the latest (and as it turns out, last) generation to be released. While it may seem an empty effort to review them now since HD DVD has removed itself from the race, these third generation players from Toshiba have a performance response at crazy low prices to be reckoned with and deserve the full story.

You can find some great deals on the Toshiba HD-DVD players right now, especially the HD-A2. They've had the 5 free movie promotion going for a while, and it seems like the price just keeps getting lower. Is the player so bad that they need to practically give it away to get people to buy it? Why would Toshiba go to such lengths to get these into your home theater? The answer, of course, is the format war. In the end, whoever can sell the most movies wins. And for someone to buy or rent a movie, they have to have a player to watch it on. If more people have HD-DVD players, more will buy HD-DVD movies and the rest will be history.

One of the biggest complaints with the Blu-ray and HD DVD disc format war is the need to buy separate players for each format. If HD and film is your passion you have a difficult choice because not all movies will be released in both formats. A large portion of the potential "high definition disc" consumers are waiting for one of two things before investing their hard-earned dollars in another format: 1) a clear winner in the format war, or 2) a universal player. When LG unveiled their universal player at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES)...