Audio Video News

Starting April 1st that shiny HD DVD player might look a little shinier still. $100 to $200 shinier, to be exact. On that date Toshiba is dropping the price of its entry level HD-A2 HD DVD player to just $399 and cutting the upscale HD-XA2 from $999 to $799. The 1080p-capable HD-A20, which is to be released this Summer, gets an in vitro price drop too, going from $599 to $499. On top of that, if you buy any of these players by July 31st you can still send in a form to receive <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/news/30807hddeals/">five free HD DVD movies</A>, according to TWICE.

HD DVDs are going to continue to trickle into stores over the next few months from Warner and Universal in particular, and French distributor Studiocanal has announced it will release 20 movies on the format this year. There's a surprising lack of coordination on the part of studios and retailers regarding the release dates of the titles.

The Los Angeles area will be a hotbed of high-definition activity in November, with an HD camcorder and editing workshop early in the month to be followed by the HDTV Forum confab a week later.