Got to Wally world at 6:40AM, already 5 or so people outside in 32 degree weather... so I stood there too in line for 20 minutes (then I was happy I wore my thick fire dept winter coat). About 15 people were in line when the doors opened; I was third through the front door, and everybody was walking to the electronics dept. I picked up the pace w/ my long stride (OK I jogged at the end...
) Got to the players first, stack of 8 of them. Grabbed two, one for me and my father. That first stack went fast, then they slowly brought more out, but other than the initial rush to get in the front door, the electronics dept was pretty calm (heck only 20 people in the whole store!). More players were brought out and slowly picked up; a few just sat there for a while, so I got on the phone and started calling friends to see if I could get anybody else one, but everybody was at work already I guess. One guy saw me and asked how much the player was because he didn't know about the it being on sale, I told him and showed him where they were, so he bought one. HA! Most people didn't know about the rebate either so I told them about it too. A couple people were heading for HDMI cables, so I told them to get the cheapest ones, don't know if Wally world had $50 HDMI cables or not. The store had about 20 players I would guess. The last one was just sitting on the shelf when I was leaving (at 7:45, they didn't wait till 8AM to check people out at sale prices). I'd have been happy to picked one up for anybody and shipped to them; I offered Andrew that yesterday, but he made other arrangements. I almost bought that one for whoever here didn't get one, but thought it best not to since the rebate is one per household I thought maybe if the same receipt or credit card being used might be problematic. I had my girlfriend with me to buy the second player, so we could each file for a rebate.
Bought one HD-DVD (Batman Begins) while there, so I'd have SOMETHING to play; it'd be torture otherwise! Hooked up the player when I got home, watched a few scenes from Batman, and it looks good.
I was concerned, but I did not have either of the two issues Clint had in his review model which were problems with firmware update via ethernet broadband connection and general player noise.
Again, neither problem exists with my first unit, haven't opened the second one. The HD player is quiet, slight low fan noise but not loud; overall it's quieter than my old Pioneer DVD player actually. The firmware updated successfully without any problems on the first attempt; downloaded fine via the broadband connection. I ran an ethernet cable from my router which is in the basement up through the floor and into the wall behind the TV this morning, wasn't as bad as I've had to do before, so I was relieved (30-40 minutes).
The audio output of the TrueHD and DD+ audio track via the HD-A2 HDMI to my Denon 3806 (which has HDMI version 1.1) was converted to PCM 5.1 channels and output at a 48kHz sampling rate.
