Toshiba has officially launched their first two HD DVD players today and you should begin seeing these units in stores sometime this week hopefully. As we’ve mentioned before, the two new HD DVD players are the Toshiba HD-A1 which will cost around $500 and the Toshiba HD-XA1 which will list for roughly $800. These are the first ever commercially available HD DVD players and they’re 2 months ahead of the first Blu-ray players (the first of which will be a Samsung BD-P1000.

So the stage is partially set now – the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD but as most people would say – it will probably boil down to content. Which platform gets the most titles will pretty much decide the fate of these two standards. , seven studio houses have already lined up behind Blu-ray while three have lined up for HD DVD. Of course, early sales of HD DVD players may dictate whether additional content providers jump on board so it’s still possible for many others to come out in support for the standard.

Oh yes – while the players themselves will be fairly expensive (is this any surprise? They’re version 1.0 products), the content will also be expensive – at least when compared to DVDs. Warner Bros. is supposedly pricing their HD DVD/Blu-ray content at $28.99 for catalog films and $34.99 for newer films.

 

Finally, I did a quick glance over at OneCall.com and noticed that they had the HD A1 in stock now.

[Check it out]

No Tags