I went to Sights and Sounds yesterday evening, and I was able to witness someone who was giving a lot of demo and salestalk to a middle age couple regarding the merits of High Definition, in which I heard him describe the WD TV HD Media Player as "Blu Ray in a Hard disc with plenty movies, you just choose"
The sight and sound price was 7.8 K for the WD HD player. I over heard him stating that the couple can have both the Hard Disc and WD for 15K
...and added "I give you free movies".
The WD HD player was hooked on a 50" Panasonic Plasma, and he scanned thru 3 movies and 2 Docu, here's my observation;
1) Plenty of blotch marks evident on a 720p movie.
2) Audio synch on another movie which the demo person immediately stopped.
3) He skipped 1080P files, I don't know why?
4) Dark scenes showed uneven blacks and again blotchy backgrounds.
5) I was wondering why most of his demo(where he stayed long) revolved around those with station id's making me suspect that the source was from HDTV broadcast.
6) I saw some good video only when he showed a segment of Animal Planet but again with a station ID indicating that the source was from another HDTV broadcast.
Surprisingly the middle age couple seemed impressed.
(Not sure if they bought the sale, I left before the demo was over)
For info to those interested.