Yup, nice price drop here:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/12/04...stoops-to-129/

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index...ductId=2538552

Question! Do any of the X-boxes have a built in true 1080P player?
Just curious as some one at work said they bought one and I said send me the link. LOL

I have both formats now and so far the quality is great on both formats. just noticed that the BR movies were getting cheap for the last two months at Outpost.com. Stocked up on 20 at the last sale.

All of the XBOXs have the ability to support true 1080p. All of the ones released within the last 7-8 months come with it pre-installed and the older ones will do it with a quick update. As for the 360 HD-DVD drive they have figured out a way to hook it up so you can run it through your PC via HDCP setup. There is however no way to play HD-DVDs on the 360 without the drive. Not unless you are talking about streaming digital content from your PC.

Excellent find Jesterrace!!

Soon as I can find one in-stock somewhere at that price I will grab one.

I see amazon.com still has it for $179.99

Your local Toysrus should have one. *EDIT* Nevermind, just noticed that you were in Watertown.

The picture quality is not even near the Toshiba A2. Good for playing XBOX HD DVD games if they ever make games on HD-DVD format but not good as a multimedia player in the HD Era

If you say so. I personally found mine via 1080p to be amazingly sharp.

I second to that , XBox is Game player and there is way that is being able to provide PQ as good as stand along HD player like Toshiba's HD players.

Then you will love the Toshiba Stand-Alone Player even better
No Macros and Vivid Color when upsampling regular DVD, and super sharp on Mitsubishi and Sony XBR Bravia LCD screens

They only support up to 1080i though. If they supported 1080P (which the 360 drive does) at that price I would definitely buy one. As for upscaling, the 360 HD-DVD drive already does that and I also have my Oppo Digital upscaling DVD Player, so no biggie.

Nice find, Jesterrace. I might go to Toys R' Us later and get one to hook up via USB to my laptop. Too bad I already bought King Kong on HD-DVD

But keep in mind that this drive can be connected to a PC so you can rip your HD DVD movies.

You can't back it up though as there's no HD DVD burner in the market yet but at least you can try burning to 2-4 DVDs.

Furthermore, the stand-alones don't give you any option for other high-definition content whereas the 360 add on hooked up to a PC or an XBOX 360 do.

Bought the A2, so i doubt i get this. but great find nonetheless...nice.

I viewed both 1080i and 1080p, I cant tell the difference
what I like about the Toshiba A2 is no macros or crap like that seen in other players from Samsung upconverting DVD player (crappiest player I bought). But I do see a big difference in the vividness of the color, the vibrant color produced by the A2 over the Xbox drive, big difference in playing back HD-DVD movies

So you have a 360 HD-DVD add-on and the A2? Of course you may not be able to tell the difference since you have a 1080i set.

I do see a big difference, the A2 has better Video processor, it produces more vibrant and more Vivid picture quality comparing to the XBox 360
If Toshiba uses Farouja Video processor, then Sony blu-ray can kiss HD-DVD butts and say goodbye
For DVD playing back, I also notice that the picture produces by Toshiba A2 is also better than most upsampling DVD player out there including Samsung and other players.
And A2 is pretty much the bottom of the line for HD-DVD drive. Imagine if you get the A30 and A35

I have a PS3 as well, but not used much since I dont have too many games to play with

What about as a Blu-Ray player (in regards to the PS3)?

The reason I did not include the PS3 in picture quality comparision because I don't have any good movies and it is unfair for PS3 since all the movies I have are not VC-1 encoding. Like other website when they review the picture quality of the initial batch of blu-ray players, all complained about the picture quality because it is darker than the HD-DVD because first generation of blu-ray movies were not VC-1 Encoding format. We all know that VC-1 has better quality

Absolutely. I have seen some of those titles and some of them I would actually take an upconverted DVD version long before it . It was what kinda put me off blu-ray to begin with. I was like $600 and this is all you get? Virtually every HD-DVD title that I have seen thus far has been outstanding. BTW how do the A2/A3 models compare with something like the 1080p 981 model from Oppo for up-conversion?

My PS3 is absoultely the best piece of hardware I have and the recent BRs I bought are very nice indeed. Everyone needs to be aware that unless the movie is shot in HD and pefectly transcribed to the HD disk format it may not be much better than a regular DVD.

So far, the recent BRs I have are outstanding as well as the demo disk for my A2. Of course the demo disk is real HD. I suggest that you buy those cheap demo disks for each format and then do a direct comparison with the same TV and cables. I bet there will be no difference at all.

My PS3, IMHO does a better up conversion than the A2 but that is not a good evaluation at this point in time since I am reconfiguring my stuff. My A2 was a steal for $98 and wish I had bought more for presents. Kinda of a large footprint for what it does. My PS3 stands upright out of the way. The A2 is a beast. But a good beast.

I dont have the oppo, but I bought one for my uncle and thus I dont have a direct comparision. Hard to beat the oppo since it has Farouja video processor, nothing can beat that video processor. If you slap a Farouja Video Processor chip in the Toshiba HD-DVD player, then Blu-Ray camp will disappear.
My impression on the A2 is that when it upsample, the quality is still very good, not like Samsung, I can still see blocks and the color is not as good on the samsung.

Okay, so I will hold on to my oppo for DVD Playback then. As it definitely smooths out the jaggies, blocks ect as best as possible.