If you weren’t lucky enough to snag on of those Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD players for $99 or $149 then a new player set to be released in the US by the end of this month may be your salvation, so to speak.

It would be difficult for any manufacturer to break the $149 barrier in the HD-DVD market, yet but $200 is a pretty cheap price to pay for an HD-DVD player.

The Venturer SHD7001 will go on sale on or around December 29th for a reported price of $199 but that could easily go up or down, let’s hope for down.  T3 reports, it is capable of 720p and 1080i resolutions through the HDMI port with Dolby 5.1 HD audio outputs and video upscaling.  There is also an Ethernet port for accessing all the HD-DVD special features (Internet connection required).

Of course, it can still play standard CD and DVD media as well.  Unconfirmed reports say some of the first players will come with an HDMI cable and HD-DVD copies of Troy and The Hulk (The Hulk?  Honestly, just give people a choice of several movies).

The only bad thing here is it does not appear this will be available for purchase or delivery on or before Christmas.  If you have an HD aficionado in your family that doesn’t yet have an HD-type player of any kind, give them an “IOU” for this player.

Should Blu-Ray win, you didn’t invest a lot of money in the player.  It’s possible that we’ll be stuck with both formats for a while or until the next best thing comes out.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 11:38 am under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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