I bought the HD-A2 for $220 new. The output is spectacular in HD DVD and it upscales very well for standard DVDs. My previous player did not upscale so this purchase was an upgrade for my DVD collection as well.
While there is some justified concern about picking the wrong format, this feels like a safe buy for an early adapter. If I purchased a Blu-Ray player it would cost about twice as much. I figure even *if* Blu-Ray prevails in the future, the price for a new Blu-Ray player will have dropped to be the difference in price as it currently stands between the least expensive players from each format.
X2 I'm in the same boat as you and a lot of other people. I've got a sweet 42" 720p sony and a ton of dvds. I had been looking for an upconverter, and jumped on the costco $250 deal. Now, my old dvds look better, and the new stuff looks outstanding on my set. To me, it was worth the extra 100 bucks to throw in for the HD part, regardless of 'the race'.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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I bought the HD-A2 for $220 new. The output is spectacular in HD DVD and it upscales very well for standard DVDs. My previous player did not upscale so this purchase was an upgrade for my DVD collection as well.
While there is some justified concern about picking the wrong format, this feels like a safe buy for an early adapter. If I purchased a Blu-Ray player it would cost about twice as much. I figure even *if* Blu-Ray prevails in the future, the price for a new Blu-Ray player will have dropped to be the difference in price as it currently stands between the least expensive players from each format.
X2
I'm in the same boat as you and a lot of other people. I've got a sweet 42" 720p sony and a ton of dvds. I had been looking for an upconverter, and jumped on the costco $250 deal. Now, my old dvds look better, and the new stuff looks outstanding on my set. To me, it was worth the extra 100 bucks to throw in for the HD part, regardless of 'the race'.