Sony plans to launch a lower price Blu-ray disc player by the middle of the year, which will offer superior capabilities to its current BDP-S1 and expects to retail for $600. It features native 1080p output over HDMI, ability to send out 24 frames per second to match the standard film rate, Briavia Theater sync for improved performance with its Briavia HDTVs and HD upscaling for existing DVDs. Its audio capabilities include multichannel linear PCM digital audio output over HDMI, Dolby Digital Plus decoding and support for AVCHD content from some HD camcorders.
While Toshiba's HD DVD player, the HD-A2 sells for a lower price of $499, only its higher end player, the HD-XA2 features 1080p output, which retails for $999. However, as Sony's lower cost Blu-ray is unlikely to ship until the middle of the year, there is still a chance that the Toshiba's HD-XA2 player or another HD DVD player with 1080p output may fall below $600 by that time. One feature where the Toshiba HD-XA2 stands out is its use of the Silicon Optic HQV video processor, which gives true 1080i to 1080p deinterlacing and high quality HD image processing and HD upscaling.
