When prices have gone down and the market is flooded with choices for the player & disks.
Actually, that's the same response I read from conservative posters in some AV forums on a similar question. And I share the same. But if I can afford, I won't sit it out.
Accrdg to HD gurus out there, there's no reason to sit it out and wait for the format war to settle. If you look at it, the launch Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player has a street price of around $490 - cheaper than most upsampling DVD players from Denon and other mid-priced DVD players. Rather than get any of those expensive upsampling DVD players which are said to be garbage compred to HD, get the HD Tosh.
And compared to the Samsung Blu-ray player, the Tosh got better reviews in terms of price/performance. And you get pictures on an appropriate HD display that are simply awesome to say the least, according to those HD gurus who have seen it. None of the finest DVD players upsampling a 480i DVD material to 1080i can match it. To start with, the discs are already encoded at 1080p. They cost around $30 each at amazon, but surprisingly there are already a few on SALE like The Last Samurai, Sleepy Hallow at $19.95, and Bourne Supremacy at $24. It's not that much more than most SD titles out there. Still, $490 today gives you the best possible picture that simply makes the finest upsampling SD DVD player display not worth looking. And the sound, well, compared with compressed lossy DTS, the lossless DolbyTrue HD and DTS HD outputs at an uncompressedd 5.1 LPCM via the same HDMI cable. It's like having DVD-A for your audio tracks. So if you already own a High def LCD display which I believe you already have, what's $490 for a player and a dozen $24 titles to start with?
According to many early takers on the Tosh player and titles, it's the best d**n thing that ever happened to their HT experience since the introduction of DVD in 1997.
Only problem is, the Tosh model is in short supply with a huge demand for it at the moment. HD has only been introduced in the US and HT enthusiasts in Europe and Japan can't get enough of it.
Surprisingly with such a demand, the prices on the Tosh and the titles are actually falling.