I found an HD-A1 on clearance today..

[Ian]

I was out and about this morning and stopped at a Shopko store. I usually don't go in their electronics deptartment but I figured I'd check and see what HDTV antennas they had. On the back of one of the aisles, I found a Toshiba HD-A1. The thing was still sealed, sitting there in its giant box. Price? $117. Now, this is pretty good considering the original price was nearly $500, but don't the employees know that HD DVD is dead and that no one in their right mind is going to buy a first gen player? Heck, they should have paid me to take that big mofo off their hands.

[SithTracy]

Check the garbage bin behind the store in a months time... you may be able to get it for free

[Grain]

The ONE nice thing about the A1 was it's internal audio decoders if you don't have an HDMI w/ audio receiver. But it is an ugly, slow, loud and big unit. $30 would be a fair price.

[Morpheus]

A few days ago at one store, they had two A3's that were open boxed and selling at $100. I went to another store and they had a A3 and D3 on display and I asked about the A30. It turns out they had a brand new A30 (in the box) for $220. I was thinking about getting it but decided to do some research first. It turns out there's an A35 which is better than the A30, so I would prefer to get the A35 instead. There's 2 resasons for me to get one:

1) HD-DVD players make better standard DVD upconverters than regular DVD upconverters

2) I made the mistake of buying the Star Trek: Remastered First Season box set (combo discs - HD-DVD on one side and regular DVD on the other side). (It's still sealed in the box, it's never been opened).

After doing some reading, I found the upconverting does not work on the DVD component connectors (still 480P) , only on the HDMI connector. This sucks since my monitor only has DVD component and no HDMI, so I can't get the upconverting feature. Then there's the Toshiba article that they're going to manufacture "Super" standard DVD upconverters to give near HD quality. This elimates reason one.

Paramount was to release Star Trek: Remastered season 2 around May which looks like it's got canned. I'm sure Paramount will release Season 2 on Blu-Ray and probably Season 1 on Blu-Ray. They should have released Season 1 on standard DVD - this would have been what I wanted to buy in the first place. I'm hoping to build a new pc by the end of this year, so I thought about getting the LG Blu-Ray writer/HD-DVD Rom drive for that (so I should be able to watch the Season 1 discs on my pc). (I'm hoping this LG pc optical drive will still be available by the end of the year). This elimates reason 2. So in the end I have decided not to get the A30/A35.

[Grain]

After doing some reading, I found the upconverting does not work on the DVD component connectors (still 480P) , only on the HDMI connector.

It'll display HD-DVD's at 1080i over component, and burned DVD's (or bot ones with no CSS) also at 1080i, but your right, no bot DVD upconvert over component.

[Ian]

I stopped at another Shopko this morning and found not 1, but 3 HD-A1's stashed in the corner. Still $117...

[Grain]

Probably the cheapest you'll find a new player for that has on-board hi-def audio decoding though.