HD DVD & Blu-ray Players

It was in September of last year that we first got wind that OPPO was developing a Blu Ray player. Since then we have received a boatload of emails asking us when it would become available. The good news for those who have asked is the answer is it is available today! The BDP-83 can be found online for $499.99 and is available...

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.

It's pretty clear by now that Blu-ray won the high definition video disk war. By the end of this year HD DVD will be a distant memory and those who want to watch High Definition movies will need a Blu-ray player. There are a bunch of options out there for those in the market, and the Sony PlayStation 3 has been talked about as the most capable player available. For a long time it was the least expensive way to get a Blu-ray player. That isn't true anymore, but it's still close. It's currently available in two models, a 40 GB model for $399.99 and an 80 GB model for $499.99. Today we'll ignore the gaming side for the most part and look at how the device performs as a home theater device...

The format battle for HD disc is heating up this year as both HD DVD and Blu-ray push for entry level products under $500 with the goal being less than $200 by the end of the year. Panasonic just released the DMP-BD10A with an MSRP of $599 and one of our readers, Jack Wilson of BAJ Access Security, offered up one for a quick review.

The purchase of this product adds a Blu-ray 5 disc starter pack of the following titles: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Transporter, Fantastic Four and Crash. Limited quantities of players were shipped with the starter pack and promotional blurbs on the outside of box. If not included, this promotion runs until 09/30/07 to be claimed via US mail. Please check the Panasonic site for details.

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.