Toshiba HD-XA1 HD-DVD Player Is Up For Grabs

Here we go. Today Toshiba marks it as the day first HD-DVD player ships. HD-XA1 HD-DVD player hits the shelves in Japan as you read and the early bird special, that consists of complementary "Resident Evil" and a Japanese film, "Moonlight Jellyfish" HD-DVDs, will last until April 27th.
The technical highlights of HD-XA1 are:

• Support for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD 5.1 Channel audio. Latter 2 are newest lossless additions for Dolby and DTS. Audio signal can be routed to the display via HDMI output.
  
• Playback support for prerecorded DVDs, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM with the ability to upscale to 720p or 1080i on the HDMI output.
• Picture in Picture that can display supplementary video over the main program, allowing viewers to watch bonus content, such as a superimposed director's commentary or a documentary about the making of the movie, while the movie plays.

Unfortunately, HD-XA1 does not support 1080p output which means 1080p native recordings will be downscaled. With Blu-Ray camp announcing delays in their product shippment, Toshiba can mark its HD-XA1 as the winner of the initial game.


Read the press release at Toshiba Japan