14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, I've been paying a lot more attention to the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war. But it seems that so did the manufacturers. While the conflict itself should last at least until the end of 2007, the producers from both sides have launched several players which are getting cheaper all the time. In the last 30 days, Toshiba came out with HD-A2 and HD-XA2 players. The first has a $499 price tag and supports 1080i/HDMI 1.2 while the later sells for $999 but supports 1080p and HDMI 1.3.
Samsung managed to turn some heads with its new $799 BD-1200 Blu-ray player that also features 1080p, HDMI 1.3 and the new Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processor which is able to enhance the image quality. The launch of this rather inexpensive Blu-Ray player coupled with LG's announcement that they will mass produce a hybrid-player capable of reading both Blu-Rays and HD-DVDs seems to have produced an effect on Toshiba because they have just announced that they have readied a new product.
The new $599 HD DVD player has a well defined place between the low-end HD-A2 and the high-end HD-XA2. The new HD-A20 supports full 1080p resolution, but at the same time features only the old 1.2 HDMI interface. And that can be pretty annoying if you are somehow affected by the lack of the following features: Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio support and automatic audio syncing. Moreover, the 1.3 spec adds 10.2Gbps single link bandwidth and supports the xvYCC color standard.
Leaving the sound and image enhancements behind, this is currently the cheapest player that offers 1080p support. Toshiba said that the HD-A20 will first become available for the U.S. market in the spring. We can only hope that the price will stay below the $600 mark.