What's Toshiba replacing the Toshiba HD XA2 with?

Knownothing: Sour Note? I bought a HD-DVD with all the future Sony Bluray features 1.5 years ago for the cost of the cheapest bluray player currently..... Progress is suppose to make things get better and cheaper... Sony did neither.... Now the consumer is going to have to pay and I'll have to wait another year to buy a HD bluray player that has these features... My HD-DVD player is a great SD upscaling DVD player so I have no regrets about buying my player or movies. I enjoy it with my extra large SD DVD library.

Sorry that I like the fact that you could buy dual layer HD-DVD's that could be played in a factory car DVD system or my old laptop with a DVD drive... when do you think a bluray factory car system is going to come out to watch Disney's latest movie for the kids??? No they want you to buy the movie twice!!

Bluray and HD-DVD video quality is a toss up depending on the implementation and the mastering.. So the consumer wins with either..

$500 players don't benefit the consumer industry for early adoption...I hope Oppo kicks out a Bluray player and doesn't get killed by Sony's licensing costs..

As far as video processors I think HT buffs are more so agonizing over which receiver can pull off the HD soundtracks over HDMI 1.3a without having pops, clicks, and incompatibilities with video display devices... The whole HDMI HDCP copy protection scheme has really left a bitter taste in the mouth of the consumer... look at all the DVI input TV's that can't accept Bluray or HD-DVD because the HDCP isn't compatible... NOT COOL!

Like I said in other threads I'll just buy a Playstation 3 for bluray and at least I can upgrade it to the latest standards versus all the doorstop bluray players that have been sold for the last 2 years that can't be upgraded to the upcoming 2.0 spec, much less the recent 1.1 spec. It won't be the best of video or audio but it will be good enough to play rented bluray movies while I look for who is going to win the online movie playing..

Make fun of the Onkyo at $899 when you can buy a top sony BDP-S2000ES bluray for $1299... That top sony es unit will not be upgradable to the new bluray 2.0 spec because it doesn't have a ethernet jack for network connectivity as required by their own spec...

02-27-08: Unsound
Sony has recently announced the next generation of Blue Ray players, and all of the above issues seemed to have been resolved, with the curious exception of SACD support.

As someone who's worked in the computer industry since 1980, I have seen time and again ad nauseum that there is a big difference between announcing and delivering.

Companies like IBM and Sony "announce" to freeze the customer base from drifting to another solution. For them, an announcement is like a Tom Brady pump fake.

Case in point: Look how Sony's announcement of their dodgy 2-layer 50GB technology kept customers from embracing Toshiba's 30GB dual-layer disc for the elegant solution it was.

Johnnyb53, a very valid point. FWIW... http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9877956-1.html

I see your point Cyto but if HD DVD was so good why did so many of the first ones not work? Yes, they were cheaper to build but that's because the technology was dated. As far as SACD support it would be nice but a separate laser would probably be needed. And would drive the cost up. HD DVD players didn't play SACDs either.

Rwwear: you don't give up? The first ones had issues just like the first bluray players (which were released months later) 1.5 years ago, the differences were that the first HD-DVD players were software based with a P4 2.5Ghz intel chip in them and 512meg of ram, so Toshiba could upgrade them over the web as different manufactures of HD-DVD disc implemented these newer features. They were not cheaper.. Toshiba lost $400+ for each player they sold so they could further the technology in the consumers hands.. instead of waiting to perfect the technology and create dedicated IC's for the player which is how the 2nd generation HD-DVD players were and the first gen Bluray players.. The difference was the first gen Bluray players can't be fixed... Profile 1.0.. Samsung is getting a class action suit about profile 1.1 disc's that won't play. The first gen bluray disc's used Mpeg2 compression and looked awful but the early Bluray players couldn't do the more advanaced compression so they actually need the whole 50gig blueray just to fit a movie because of the poor compression... Artifacts from Mpeg2 caused early movies and players to look barely better than SD DVD's. Look at the reviews.

My reference to SACD was another SONY technology that they killed by keeping such a tight reign on the licensing of the technology to 3rd party's to include in players and more importantly to master the SACD disc. Sony limited both once again... And once again if Sony hadn't developed the SACD different laser requirements instead of adopting DVD-A which held more and could do video also... then there wouldn't be a need for another laser... nice of you to make excuses for Sony.

My point is yes HD-DVD lost because Sony paid Warner 400-500 million dollars to go exclusive Bluray, and everyone else filed suit and dumped HD-DVD.....
Brilliant marketing on the part of Sony and Bluray.

Great so lets move on and see if Sony will invest in Bluray technology as Toshiba already did years ago.... Sony is playing catchup.........

Sony makes money on the licensing of SACD and Bluray and that's why they have fought so much! They could also control copy protection schemes to protect their movie inventory from being copied (That lasted a couple months..) On the other hand Toshiba has been making that licensing money from DVD because they founded that technology. Sony only released SACD because their patent on the CD technology ran out and therefore they couldn't collect licensing on each and every CD manufactured...

Meanwhile the Joe average consumer is confused on the sidelines waiting... some will adopt others will say DVD is good enough and cheaper..

Back to the original Posters question of what's Toshiba's follow up SD upscaling player??? I haven't seen anything on the rumor sites so who knows at this point..