[360] $1.99 360 HD-DVD Player

This is a heck of a deal, since you get a free copy of King Kong and a media remote on top of Toshiba's 5 free HD-DVDs offer.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/...ddvdplayer.htm

To be honest, things aren't looking too good for HD-DVD right now, but I think it's still something worth investing in if you have an HDTV, since studios have done a fine job with their releases.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

$50 is nothing. Especially since it comes with a remote, King Kong, and 5 free HD-DVDs by mail. I may be going to pick one up later since you can also use it as a PC HD-DVD drive, and it's loading times are the fastest out of all players (~9 sec).

A lot of HD-DVD titles won't be mastered for Blu-ray in a couple of months anyway, so this is a good deal to tide people over. Personally, I want people to buy it just so they can get a laugh at how many titles on HD-DVD have better quality and features than the Blu-ray versions.

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The 360 HD-DVD player is a terrible upscaler.

And Soluzar, the fact is that both formats are good. One party just happened to have more money to throw around than the other. HD-DVD does in fact have more quality releases, but this is mostly due to studio exclusivity/bias/competence rather than technical capability (ignoring HDi functions for the moment).

In an utopia, HD-DVD would have won. Better releases, finalized specifications, and attractively priced players. But Sony paid off the right people. More importantly, however, is the novelty of the Blu-ray technology, which practically sells itself thanks to the ignorance of the consumer. In most people's eyes, Blu-ray is not DVD technology. It is something leaps beyond of it. Naturally, it had created the curiosity which ultimately drove and secured Blu-ray's place in the market.

I actually read an interesting article today that claimed that Fox was ready to jump ship from BD to HD-DVD, since the BD association was not helping the company out with production costs. Warner, at the time, was biased towards HD-DVD, and decided to wait until a big studio defected from the BD camp, so they too could do the same. Unfortunately, Sony paid big bucks to Fox so they would stay put, and Warner was paid off too, dooming the HD-DVD format.

Many claim it to be false, but it makes sense when you consider the fact that most Warner titles were biased in HD-DVD's favor, and Fox always seemed to have trouble releasing titles on time.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.