This is the beginning of the entry of other HD DVD manufacturers to this market.....and Onkyo is a very good quality product.

This one isn't aimed at the bottom or mid-range this is a high spec machine - and for not a vast amount of money either.

That's the thing with HD DVD, you get up-to-date specs and a range of options.

Blu-ray is basically all about the (still) expensive PS3 (which isn't compliant with the latest BD spec......but they're keeping that pretty quiet for now) or some wildly expensive and underspec'd stand-alone
(non of which except for the $2000 Denon or expensive Samsung dual format player are 'profile 1.1 compliant - nevermind 'profile 2.0).

Shame there's no SACD or Divx/Xvid in this Onkyo cos aside from those 2 elements it's got everything I'd want in my high def player to directly replace my existing DVD player.

Onkyo has always been good with adding features in later models. One can only hope that this device and its future revisions also gets better with age.

I would spend less on a new HD DVD or Blu-Ray player. For that price it would need to have a lot of features.