Anyone know if you can get the free HD-DVD's with this player?

Answered my own question...
http://images10.newegg.com/uploadfilesfornewegg/rebate/SH/Microsoft74-103-051Oct0107Feb2808kl09.pdf

I don't get it. Why not 1080p? Is the difference between 1080i and 1080p that great?

[1080i is an interlaced format. Basically you only get half the resolution you do with 1080p. If you ever see live action 1080i next to 1080p, you'll see the one which is visually more desirable. BTW, 1080p spews out about 250 MB/s of video and audio data, requiring big hardware, hence its expense. -Rick]

Target and Sony are gonna get creamed this Christmas season. Do you have any idea how many people are going to go to Wal*Mart to get their sub $1000 720P HDTVs???

A lot! And while there, they are gonna say: "What a great deal... for only $198 more you mean I can watch HD movies too?"

GO HDDVD... GO!

It's a surprise that it is the HD-A2, which is actually a very good player. Don't let the fanboys fool you; 1080i and 1080p on a 24-frame signal are identical unless your TV sucks.

Discs still cost too much. Not to mention all the "one-format-will-die" fearmongers and hatemongers will retard sales. Finally, would it KILL them to advertise?

I looked at the Walmart.com site and it is listed as $279.54. When is this new price effective?

Cost is still roughly 280 at the moment online...is this a "store only" cost?

Hell, I might buy one for the family room, if they are still giving away movies. I will have to do some research.

The very same rebate form is used by multiple retailers and the form itself does not exclude any retailer in the terms and conditions.

This was the sweet spot that i was waiting for. When Amazon a month ago had it for $211 with 8 free DVDs is what got me to buy. I suspect that it will be the same here.

On the assumption that this price point causes a large installed HDDVD player base, i wonder how the movie studios will react. Would more be inclined to release HDDVD movies? I hope so. With the 'Transformers' and some other exclusives, this could be a very strong turning point for the HDDVD camp.

Does this mean the M$ will lower the price of the add-on player for the xbox 360? If it dropped down to around $100-120 I might pick one up.

The Toshi A2 unit is made in China. =)

Sorry but if I'm buying a new HD player it better be putting out the highest quality HD format wich is 1080p.

First off, I own BR (PS3) and HD-DVD (Toshiba A30) so I I’m not biased. But this is another example of some desperation on Toshibas part to get players out there. This model is a cheap unit strait up (as is even my $400 Toshiba). It is ridiculous to sell an HD unit that doesn’t even support 1080p. You get what you pay for. If you want to jump into HD-DVD.. Wait until a cheap 1080p unit comes out so you can sit on it without problems for years to come. I will continue to stand firm on the fact that if you are looking for HD hardware that works well your choice is a $400 Toshiba A30 and a $400 PS3 and the choice between these 2 is simple, the PS3 clearly the best choice. The thing is the best BR player out there, highest quality device. That and to boot you get to play game some it every once in a while.

paid 150 for my old DVD player..this is appealing.

Even normal DVD's look awesome on my HD DVD player, an HD-A2 btw..They do upscaling awesome..makes all your old dvd's still good...

if you have the money for a 1080p capable TV, then I would venture to say that you dont need to be buying the bargain priced players ;)

I bought an HD-A20 last week after getting a 1080p set (JVC 47" LCD). The player has selectable output from 480p up to 1080p, the TV has upconversion for each format also. I intentionally set the TV to no upconversion and tried both 1080i and 1080p with the samemovies (Transformers, 300, MiIII.) 1080p is supposed to be the higher resolution format by far.
That is only partially true. Both formats offer 1920 x 1080 pixels. The differece is that 1080p projects all pixels in one scan. 1080i takes two passes for the same picture and interlaces them (the i means interlaced vs. p for progressive). So the real difference is in refresh rate and supposedly 1080p is better in maitaining cohesion in fast based action scenes.
My little experiment, using about a dozen friends (including 'blind' testing in which I didn't tell the audience what resolution they were watching) resulted in pretty much a tie. Now this wasn't scientific or a large statistical sample but it did show that either format is supurb. Of course I was unable to run two images side by side inthe different resolutions but most of the AV expert statements I have heardsay pretty much the same thing. So I might have "wasted" a couple of hundred extra bucks on 1080p, but I'm still happy so who cares?

Ha. The only part about 1080p that really matters is the 1080 part. Any decent tv is going to interlace signal well enough you aren't going to be able to tell. Not to mention, the vast majority of people with HDTV's have 720p sets. So this is an excellent development. Period. Oh and have a ps3 and an A20, so I could care less who 'wins' the format war. Content is king and this could tip the scales a lot more than Target selling blu-ray devices. Blu-ray needs to get their act together, 1.1 profile anyone? BD-j? There's a reason Disney hasn't released a whole lot yet, they are waiting reality to catchup on the specs.

I have a 30" SONY CRT that does 480i/480p/720p/1080i. I can barely tell the difference between 720p and 1080i, and that's largely due to comparing text. I wouldn't say one looks better...just different.

1080i looks amazing for games and HD-DVD & Blu-Ray. How much better can 1080p look? I've seen it in stores at 40 or so inches, they could probably swap the set labels and people would be none the wiser.

So, does it really matter if the HD player is outputting 1080i vs. 1080p? 1080i is just 540 lines (even alternating with odd) at 60 frames per second vs. 1080p with 1080 lines at 30 frames per second (for TV, anyway). Maybe it makes more of a (noticeable) difference for LCD's and their slower refresh rates. If your TV set is native 1080p, won't it automatically de-interlace a 1080i signal to 1080p (i.e. the final stage de-interlacing chip missing from the Toshiba A1-A2-A3 is in the television)?

Seriously... the GREAT majority of people that own HDTVs do not have ones that support 1080P. That is not the price point the mass market wants.

I for one have had a 1080i plasma display (720P native) for 2 1/2 years. I bought a cheap 42" Maxent and I have loved ever day of viewing. One day when I move it to the bedroom to make room for the 60" LCD/Plasma when the price is right.

You audio/videophiles go spend $500 to watch movies if you want.

The rest of us will buy our cheap electronics at Wal*Mart while you watch the price drop drastically on your equipment.

BTW elsewhere on Tom's there is s rumored "integrated" HD DVD model coming for xbox.
Havig said that I suspect that Blue-Ray will eventually win this war. From past experiance I hate Sony which is why I will tend to buy anyone elses first.

So does Blu ray players. Like someone mentioned, if your jumping on the HD bandwagon, learn from you past mistakes, dont compromised. If the best resolution available is 1080P, get a 1080P player. You will regret it later if you dont. I know i do with my current TV only being 1080i with DVI not HDMI.

How come there are so many unsold A2 units available?

So there is some added value because you can just as easily plug it into your PC to play the same HD movies. That way you can get more uses out of the drive other than just watching movies on your xbox.

I'm not sure what some folks are talking about with not noticing much difference between 720p and 1080i. There is, visually, a pretty significant difference especially on video games. To me 1080i is a lot more crisp, now I don't have a 1080p capable TV, but I've seen it in stores and it looks even better than my 1080i. The moral of story is if you truly want HD or next gen. go with 1080p, that way in the future when TV's get even better (OLED, or whatever) you at least have decent player to go with it.

You boys and girls keep talking about 1080p like its nothing. I project 1080p to a 10 foot wide screen (133" 16:9) and yup... it matters (vs say 1080i HD Comcast and such). So, just because it looks right on your 32" screens does not mean it’s ok. I.. more then anyone know how crappy it is being stuck with 1080i since I also have a Sony SXBR 1 60" TV that was advertised as 1080p. It’s simply a pain in the arss to have 1080p hardware and be forced to drop it all to 1080i.

So.. you should all set your PC monitor resolutions to 1080i instead of typical 1080p and sit in front of it for 10 hours and then come back with a new opinion.

The moral of the story for a lot of tech equipment is BUY CHEAP AND UPGRADE OFTEN. I do it with computers and I do it with TVs / DVD players.

No device has everything you want... why spent 2x-3x on something and have buyer's remorse. Buy a $200 HD DVD this year and upgrade next year when $100 buys you twice as much.

http://www.circuitcity.com//ss...m_ven=PAID SEARCH&cm_cat=ADVERTISING.COM&cm_pla=CATEGORY - VIDEO HDWR->CLASS - DVD PLAYERS&cm_ite=184878 PURCHASED KEYWORD-HDA2&cm_keycode=451165#promotions

I'm amazed at the lack of knowledge about this topic. One can only blame the marketing idiots at all ends of the spectrum. Every plasma and lcd tv displays a progressive signal. Whether it be 720 lines or 1080 lines. No such thing as watching a 720i 1080i picture. THEY ARE ALL PROGRESSIVE.
Your tv will scale the signal to its native resolution.
Secondly, if you have a TV that does a POS job of deinterlacing the signal from the cheap 1080i dvd player, get the one that outputs a progressive signal! On top of that if your sitting more than 5 feet away from a

"but I've seen it in stores and it looks even better than my 1080i."

This makes no sense what so ever. No such thing as a 1080i TV. You obviously have a 1280x720p television, so even if you are being fed a 1080 line signal, you're still only seeing 720 lines. The only way you are going to see 1080 vertical rez is if you have a 1920x1080 native rez tv AKA 1920x1080P AKA 1080P!

Like I said, my TV is a 30 inch SONY CRT. I keep my XBOX360 and PS3 set to 1080i, even though many "experts" have sworn up & down for the past couple years that 720p looks better and is technically a higher resolution. I've had this TV for 2 years set to 1080i -- if someone came along and switched my players to output 720p, I can't say that I would notice, for sure. As far as 1080i vs. 1080p, I think that would be even less of a perceivable difference, even though people make a big hullabaloo about it. (Different TV sizes and technologies may exacerbate the difference.) And again, a native 1080p TV should de-interlace the 1080i signal and voila, your Toshiba A1/A2/A3 plays in 1080p.

I bought my 1080i CRT in 2004. I love it and it still does the job with satelite. $200 is usualy my price point before I jump into a new format. Why do I want to pay more when a new format like media PC's could be around the corner?

Seriously... you know damn well most you guys/gals touting 1080P with any decent size screen went out and did it cheap buying a DLP projection TV.

A PROJECTION TV... it's freaking 1970's technology. What... "it's in the mirrors!!!! You say??? Big deal.

It is funny to hear you guys bitch about image quality that might be suffered with 1080i and a $198 HD DVD player.... when you dopes who bought a DLP machine have to sit precisely in the center of your screen to get a decent picture. Heaven forbid you stand up... you lose 3/4 of the image brightness. And forget about walking to the kitchen during a big play... everything fades to black.

Just go out and buy that $198 HD DVD player, sit in the exact center of your couch and watch some Transformers already!!!

Is that even possible J? a 1080i image is only 540 lines of resolution being interlaced to create the "illusion" of a 1080 resolution. The reason you can see interlace is because it has to cut refresh rates in half due to drawing two images in the same time a native 1080 image would. I guess it could buffer the image and just delay the stream, but I am not sure all native 1080p displays will upscan the image as it would be an expensive add-on.

If your screen is larger then 50" or 60"s 1080p is important. However 50" and less your not going to see a huge difference. It's hard to tell the difference on a 42" between 720p and 1080i let alone 1080p and 1080i.

For some early adopters of the FULL HD 1080 marketing spin, you may be sad to hear that even though your tv may indeed have a native 1920x1080P DISPLAY resolution, it may not ACCEPT a 1080P signal! Hello Sony! This means that even if you spend top dollar to get progressive output on an HDDVD player, your TV will internally take the p turn it into an i then back to a p! An excellent site to learn about all this stuff is hdguru.com or
http://www.hometheatermag.com/hookmeup/1106hook/

"And again, a native 1080p TV should de-interlace the 1080i signal and voila, your Toshiba A1/A2/A3 plays in 1080p."

In a perfect world that would happen. Unfortunately alot of displays, I mean alot, do not do deinterlace correctly. Your Akais, wal-mart specials, Insignias. All garbage that skimp on processing. Just got my HT Mag in the mail yesterday, and Gary Merson has done another test this year, and quite a few more models cleaned up their acts this time. That doesnt help those that already forked out cash for bs marketing info and uninformed sales staff.

Full HD is a joke. 1080p is garbage give 2160p. I won't by an HD player until the support Quad HD.

That's what some of you fools sound like with the 1080p bable.

I HAVE AN 52" XBR3 1080P, WITH DIRECTV HD/DVR AND
NOBODY
IS SENDING A 1080P SIGNAL AND DONT EVEN TELL ME THAT COMCAST IS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT, ALSO I HAVE THE TOSHIBA XA2, AND SAMSUNG BDP-1400.

Newegg has a 42" 1080p LCD display for $999 shipping ($99). It requires a media box that is "free" in a combo (at least as of today 10/26/2007).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...824112180

With 1080p this cheap would you spend $400 on a stand alone player? If this player did 1080p then this player would be a great deal.

No... I would never spend $400 on a stand alone player when I can get a 1080i player for $198.

I wouldn't spend $200 on "magic cables" for my system either.

I don't happen to consider myself to be one of chosen few that can hear ultra high and low frequencies that dogs can't, see artifacts and subtle shadings mere normal humans cant detect.

Just give me adequate, cheap HD and 5.1 surround.

You audio/videophiles make me sick, always have always will.

And when 2160p HDTV's are available, an even higher resolution will be in the works, call it 4320p if you want. Are you gonna hold off on 2160p then for an HDTV that will support 4320p?

I’d take the PS3 every time. HD DVD knows there in trouble that's why they have to give away there players. The Toshiba is only 1080i and the PS3 is 1080p/24/60 with HDMI ver. 1.3a and all the latest toys and gaming to boot. Easily with the $800 it used to sell for. Besides, HD DVD has only managed to sell 150,000 of players altogether world wide in over 2 years and Blu-ray has sold 7 million in less than a year with most being sold in the last 6 months as there was no stock Jan., Feb., and most of March 2007. The first week the PS3 came down in price it sold 64,000 units in Europe alone. I saw the original 60GB PS3 selling for $479.00 today at HMV in downtown Toronto. That being said I'd take the PS3 at $399.00 over any HD DVD player especially the cheep one, no contest.

Isn't it funny how it's the ones who don't have a quality 1080p 24/60fps TV with HDMI ver. 1.3a and a Blu-ray player with the same features as the TV that are making all the noise about what a waste of time these features are. Well I'll tell you why. They've been sold this BS buy a minimum wage salesmen at the Future Shop or Best Buy or something and to complete the sale they probably displayed their argument on equipment which typically is never installed properly and worse used improperly to begin with, not to mention the lighting that some of there places have. It’s like watching TV out side on the beach on a sunny day. After they made their purchase it made these people feel smart and thrifty because they didn't spend any money for nothing. And now we come along and start telling them no 1080p is better, and that’s what’s happening here. However, that being said it does change the fact that they are 100% incorrect regardless of what they think they bought or know. The fact is the latest LCD and Plasma TV’s with 1080p.24/60fps with ver. 1.3a HDMI and 10 and 15 thousand to 1 contrast ratios along with a matching Blu-ray or HD DVD player will give you a far superior picture. I wonder if that was clear enough for some. Without a doubt I've now offended someone here. The fact is selling TV's today without 1080p and HDMI ver. 1.3a is very difficult as most people won't shell out thousands of dollars for a TV with out it. So what these people that say 1080p24/60fps is a waste and 1080i is just as good are really saying were is all stupid and they are the smart ones

No one here has discussed the 1080i vs. 1080p controversy correctly and properly discussed all aspects of it.

First of all, let's be sure we understand what we're talking about. Interlaced scanning (1080i/60) shows 30 1920x1080 frames per second, each frame as two fields, updated every 1/60th of a second. This is the style of HD that is broadcast over the air, and provided to you by most cable and satellite providers. This is the signal produced by most HDTV cameras.

Most movies shot on film are not filmed like that. They are filmed an entire frame at a time, and are meant to be shown at 24 frames per second. Ideally, this would mean you would view the film at 1080p/24, which means 24 frames per second, all 1920x1080 pixels of each frame shown on the screen at once (i.e. not broken up into 2 interlaced fields).

Now, there is a standard that is supported called 1080p/60, which is 60 frames per second, each frame the full progressively-scanned 1920x1080. There is NO CONTENT filmed like this. No broadcast, satellite signal, cable signal, HD-DVD, or Blue-Ray DVD contains such a signal. So ignore its existence.

A TV that is capable of "1080p" in marketing terms just means that it can accept a 1080p/24 or 1080p/60 signal on its inputs. It says nothing about how the TV will actually display these signals or any other signals. The fact is that many current model TVs (LCD, DLP, LCOS) ALWAYS display a progressive picture, no matter if the input signal is natively progressive or natively interlaced. Only older technology TVs (rear-projection CRT, Plasma) actually display an interlaced signal using interlaced scanning.

Let's assume we're using a modern TV that always displays progressive pictures on the screen. If the input signal is an interlaced signal (1080i/60), the TV must convert this signal to progressive by a deinterlacing step. Deinterlacing involves intelligently recreating intermediate scan lines of the interlaced fields. The quality of the deinterlacer can have a huge impact on the resulting picture quality.

If the input signal is progressive (1080p/24), like we would get from a high-end HD-DVD or Blue-Ray player, the TV doesn't touch the signal, it just displays it in it's native progressive format. This is the best possible situation.

Now, let's suppose we have an HD-DVD with 1080p/24 film content on it, but are playing it on the Toshiba HD-A2, which can't output a 1080p/24 signal. What happens?

The HD-DVD player will perform a process on the film called telecine, which creates 5 interlaced frames out of 4 progressive frames. This technique has been used for years to show film-based content on NTSC televisions. The HD-DVD player now sends a 1080i/60 signal to the TV.

However, what TV manufacturers don't tell you is that most modern TVs have a circuit in them that will automatically detect if an input 1080i/60 signal contains film content. If it does, then the TV, instead of applying the generic deinterlacing algorithm, will instead perform INVERSE telecine, which will recover the 4 progressive film frames from the 5 interlaced frames, and result in a 1080p/24 signal. The TV will then display that.

A properly designed TV with a proper inverse telecine circuit will display the film on the screen in 1080p/24, and it will be IDENTICAL to the film if it was received from the DVD player in native 1080p/24 format. This is because there is no algorithm used to guess at any pixels ... All the pixels are there in the interlaced telecined signal, they're just moved around. So the TV moves them back where they belong using frame buffer memory, with a net loss of nothing.

Therefore, you do NOT ever need to worry about having a 1080p-capable DVD player until there exists 1080p/60 content. Your modern TV will give you exactly the same picture from the Toshiba HD-A2 as it will from the HD-A20.

In fact, better TVs will even detect the film content in 1080i/60 signals from over the air, cable, or satellite providers, and recover the 1080p/24 signal from them and display it.

The catch in all of this, as someone alluded to in an earlier comment, is having a good TV. Cheap HDTVs made overseas won't do any of these neat tricks, and display an inferior picture because of it.

So now you know the truth. And now you know that "1080p" is mostly marketing hype -- it is NOT synonymous with "better picture".

RockHop, so what your saying is just buy another cheep peace of crap because you already bought a crap TV. I'd be trying to improve the picture by making a better choice on a player not make it worse with a cheep player, don't you think?

Blu-ray players do an even better job at Up scaling your old DVD's. There amazing!

J, with only a standard CRT TV you probably couldn't tell the difference between standard broad cast television and 1080p movie play back as the TV isn't capable of displaying the difference anyway. Buy a new TV. I think if you had a brand new LCD or Plasma TV with 1080p/24/60fps and an HDMI 1.3 input you'd be singing a totally different tune, yah think?

What most folks here don't bother with is the fact that any interlaced signal going to the vast majority of HD tv sets is converted to progressive before it even hits the screen. Their method of display doesn't even "scan", it just shows each individual frame. So interlaced doesn't amount to a hill o' beans in the end.

Bottom line: it ain't worth any worry. Period. It's all good.

The lossless audio formats available with both formats are stunning. Try listening to a movie using the DTS-HD Master Audio codec. The sound is far better than anything you can get at a theater. Unfortunately, if your player does not output HDMI 1.3 you can not decode this sound.

When George Lucas created THX certification, he did not look at the picture, only the sound. This is because sound has far more impact on the movie experience. Sound is everything.

with SomeJoe7777, except for one thing. 3D films are/will be stored in 1080p/60 format (30 fps for each eye). These do not exist on the market yet, but I'm guessing that within 2008, we'll be seeing the first ones (probably on Blu-Ray only, since they will require nearly twice the space).

My advice would be to wait another year. Nobody needs HD films RIGHT NOW. Besides, in two years, you'll be mad at yourselves when the double-dip "remastered final cut" of every film already released comes out. So, save yourself some pain, and wait it out (both types of players WILL be < $100 eventually, and all things HD will drastically reduce in price around Feb 2009 AKA digital day, so just be patient).

To those who said 1080i looks the same as 1080p: Get real, Stop lying to yourself.

To those who said that Blu-Ray over priced: You get what you paid for, Quality or Price, Pick just one.

To those who said 200 Dollars HD-DVD will kill Blu-Ray: Stop Dreaming, HD-DVD knows that they're in freaking trouble now. what happen to Michael, you know, the Transformers director said what???? come again ?

To people like Rockhop: enjoy your cheap pathetic life. Without people like us, do you think your sorry ass will even have a chance to get your *200* dollars player? I dont think so. Kiss my ass ok ?