I've never thought of the HD format war to be Sony vs the world. I've always considered it as Sony vs Toshiba. Given that, I've rooted, whether under my breath or not, for Toshiba. When I finally made the leap of faith toward either format my choice was based on price alone. I bought the HD-A2 for $100 vs what? A $400 ugly as sin PS3? Yeah, OK, so I jumped on the wrong boat going nowhere. A hundred bucks later... I'll live thru the trauma.
With my 57" RP 1080i Toshiba, the differences between a standard up-converted DVD vs a HD-DVD are noticeable, Not drop dead "holy crap" I'm glad I spent that $100 noticeable, but noticeable.
Take note I've mentioned my TV's specs for a reason; I don't feel I'm in the minority owning a TV with what some might consider to be yesterday's technology. I feel this might be the reason for the indifference observed by some.
Seriously, how much of the selection of inputs is dictated by the real estate of the rear panel? My take on it is how much do Yamaha, Onkyo, Pioneer, etc... want to give for free before forcing us the "buck up" to the next level and spend that extra $300 to get that extra HDMI input?
Denon's choice of HDMI only?
Arrogant & short sighted. I believe I've said that before, somewhere.