I do not think I really like the player much for a number of reasons.

1. Blu-ray disks were out selling HD DVD by 10 to 1 or better. (This is one of the reasons studios dropped HD)

2. Blu-ray movies cost less to duplicate than HD DVD. HD DVD had a price advantage early on. new processes brought the cost of a BR disk down quite a bit. Layer per layer, HD DVD had a small advantage, however with BRs extra space, most movies could fit on a one layer BR disk, but required two layers for HD DVD (Adding layers almost doubles the number of rejected disks, doubling the cost)

3. Even with Toshiba selling each HD DVD player for $200 or more below cost, Blu-ray players were outselling HD DVD.

4. Space. Because of space limitations on HD DVD, long movies like LOTR Extended Cut would need far too much compression to make them look good. It will be hard to fit LOTR on one BR disk. Fitting it on an HD would be silly.

bkm645 wrote, “The only problem I have had is with Dolby TrueHD audio because you have to have expensive equipment.”

No worries, If your receiver can not decode TrueHD, your BR player will default to, “Core Audio”. Core Audio is quite a bit better than what you will find on a DVD.

I had been waiting for the HD-DVD vs. Blue Ray war to play itself out before buying a high def DVD player but trueview’s posting now leads me to ask: What’s with Blue Ray 2?

I’m sure there will be incremental improvements to Blue Ray, just as with all technologies, but now I want to know: Is there definitely a new item coming to market soon by the name of Blue Ray 2? If so, what features/capabilities does Blue Ray 2 have that Blue Ray (1?) does NOT have?

I have heardf of several who are waiting Blue ray 2 before spending their money for a player.

“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices.

The move would make Blu-ray — backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios — the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago.

Nishida said last month’s decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable.

“That had tremendous impact,” he said. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”

Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.

Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs.

HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity.

Only one video format has been expected to emerge as the victor, much like VHS trumped Sony’s Betamax in the video format battle of the 1980s.

Nishida said it was still uncertain what will happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Toshiba’s pulling the plug on the technology is expected to reduce the number of new high-definition movies that people will be able to watch on HD DVD machines. Toshiba Corp. said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers will be reduced and will stop by end of March.

Sales in Blu-ray gadgets are now likely to pick up as consumers had held off in investing in the latest recorders and players because they didn’t know which format would emerge dominant.

Despite being a possible blow to Toshiba’s pride, the exit will probably lessen the potential damage in losses in HD DVD operations. Goldman Sachs has said pulling out would improve Toshiba’s profitability between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($370 million-$460 million) a year.

The reasons behind Blu-ray’s triumph over HD DVD are complex, as marketing, management maneuvers and other factors are believed to have played into the shift to Blu-ray’s favor that became more decisive during the critical holiday shopping season.

Once the balance starts tilting in favor of one in a format battle, then the domination tends to grow and become final, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

“The trend became decisive I think this year,” he said. “When Warner made its decision, it was basically over.”

With movie studios increasingly lining up behind Blu-ray, retailers also began to stock more Blu-ray products.

Friday’s decision by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. retailer, to sell only Blu-ray DVDs and hardware appeared to deal a final blow to the Toshiba format. Just five days earlier, Netflix Inc. said it will cease carrying rentals in HD DVD.

Several major American retailers had already made similar decisions, including Target Corp. and Blockbuster Inc.

Also adding to Blu-ray’s momentum was the gradual increase in sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 home video-game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player. Sony has sold 10.5 million PS3 machines worldwide since the machine went on sale late 2006.

HD DVD supporters included Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game machine can play HD DVD movies, but the drive had to be bought separately, and Nishida said about 300,000 people have those.

Worldwide sales of personal computers with HD DVD drives total about 300,000 worldwide, including 140,000 in North America and 130,000 in Europe, he said.

Recently, the Blu-ray disc format has been gaining market share, especially in Japan. A study on fourth quarter sales last year by market researcher BCN Inc. found that by unit volume, Blu-ray made up 96 percent of Japanese sales.

Sony said it did not have numbers on how many Blu-ray players had been sold globally.

Toshiba’s stock slipped 0.6 percent Tuesday to 824 yen after jumping 5.7 percent Monday amid reports that a decision was imminent. Sony shares climbed 2.2 percent to 5,010 yen after rising 1 percent Monday.

Also Tuesday, Toshiba said it plans to spend more than 1.7 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) for two plants in Japan to produce sophisticated chips called NAND flash memory, which are used in portable music players and cell phones. Production there will start in 2010

Toshiba Japan says they are going to discuss a “new strategy” for HD DVD; not holding my breath. There is nothing encouraging since dropping it might be a “strategy.” I thjink the meeting “is as soon as Tuesday.”

They have now lost so much ground it will be even more difficult for Toshiba too move forward with them.

Walmart did not mind selling HD DVD layers hand over fist through the holidays and into Superbowl but suddenly told those same paying customers thank you by anounceing they will not support it with discs. And what of those who bought Toshiba tvs for a free HD DVD player with the prospects of the discs drying up once they are all sold.

I know the feeling having once bought a CED player because it was priced right and RCA was a large company so how could it go wrong? Well it did not take long to discover that the discs played badly, the resolution was poor so I wished I had gotten Laser which I finally did after a pile of CEDs and the rug being pulled out from under the thing. But the laser discs were not that good until Pioneer took it over and the quality shot up. Have losts of them and no player since an electric storm delt it a death blow. I wish I could still play them.

You know I am surprized there never was a class action law suit to force both disc to be releasebut there was none. Will there be one to force compensation from Toshiba? It must weigh on their mind. I asked them if they were going to replace the players with dual disc but there was no reply.

As long as I can get a HD DVD version of a movie I will but what regrets I may have later remain to be seen.