Who knows who paid for the 5 movies free that are gifted with HD players ? Toshiba ? Microsoft ? The Majors ?

It's definitely not Microsoft. My guess would be Toshiba.

Peter sellers is probably my all-time favorite actor.... I loved strangelove but I probably like the slapstick of the Pink Panther movies more. Some of the scenes in his house with the guy he pays to "attack him" were so funny at the time they made laugh until it hurt.

FYI, just started another thread on this.  Amazon has them for $129.99

 http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7330900-5886462?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1194030604&sr=1-1

It's already over !

Also, you can get the A3 with 9 movies at Best Buy for $199.

With this price difference between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, what are the studios waiting for to do the jump??

Is it about the DRM? If it is, that shouldn't block them either because BD+ has allegedly been broken already. Is it about the regional locking then?

Well, I tried to get Planet Earth, The Jack Ryan collection and an HD DVD player. Had all at the register and expected trouble. The HD DVD player - they had like 10 of them. Wow. But even after talking to corporate, even corporate wouldn't budge. Oh well ... gotta pick your fights.

BR is heavily backed by Sony - and Sony is really, really particular about their format. Case and point - the garbage format their players played. ATRAC3 or something ... foolishness. My dad got a card to download like 20 songs off sonyconnect - but homie didn't have a Sony player - and none of the songs would transfer to his Creative Zen. They really, really urk me sometimes ...

Sony Pictures, MGM and Columbia have ties to Sony so they won't be going anywhere. Fox and Disney like their DRM so thats why they are staying. New Line have problems with HD DVD being region free so they are delaying all their HD DVD releases indefinetly.

That leaves Paramount and Universal (HD DVD), Weinstein (neutral but not doing much), Warner (neutral, looking to decide in Q1 next year) and other smaller studios that just aren't interested in HDM yet. 

Anyone recall the fact that WalMart said they would not be carrying the venture model HD-DVD player. Well here is your explanation. I unfortunately was not one of the lucky ones. However when I inquired about it I got the impression that WalMart was going to support the medium extensively this holiday season.

My local WalMart had only one HD-DVD player on display, and they have never actually had HD-DVDs on the shelf. What I was told though is they were supposed to get a very large shipment to coincide with this sale, and they would be getting in a couple low price models. I take that to mean under two hundred dollars. Hopefully this isn't the last we will see of this price point this year. Seems to have been a massive success for both them and Toshiba.