You"ve got to love competition, price slashing is great.
Originally projected to have a price tag of $599 after shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Toshiba HD-A20 HD DVD player will actually debut at a price of $499. Toshiba"s HD-A20 supports full 1080p resolution unlike its cheaper HD-A2 brother which only supports up to 1080i. Unfortunately, the HD-A20 doesn"t feature the HDMI 1.3 interface and instead relies on HDMI 1.2. Without HDMI 1.3, the HD-A20 misses out on xvYCC support, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio and automatic audio syncing. In order to get HDMI 1.3 on an HD DVD player, you"ll have to step up to the $799 HD-XA2. With the rare $499 USD 20GB PS3 now discontinued, the only other Sub $500 HD player which supports 1080p is Microsoft"s $199 HD DVD drive when paired with a $299 Xbox 360 Core.
Toshiba also announced that is has sold over 900,000 HD DVD titles to date and promises that 70 more titles will be released between now and July 2007. The company is also talking up its promotion where anyone who purchases a new Toshiba HD DVD player can receive five HD DVD titles for free. Despite the excitement from Toshiba over HD DVD, it looks as though the Blu-ray standard is putting up quite a fight.