There are a number of interesting articles at AV Revolution relating to the new format war. Not only are there reviews of both the
Toshiba HD-A1 and
Samsung BD-P1000 (which note strengths and weaknesses for both players and some fairly wide variation in video quality from disc to disc with both formats), but there's also a rather unhappy
HDMI evaluation and a bit of news about
the possibility of a transport from Ricoh capable of handling both formats (which is the critical first step in developing a universal HD-DVD/Blu-ray player).
It sounds to me like Blu-ray's going to be a bit weak until the Sony, Pioneer, and Panasonic players arrive - the Samsung works, but isn't the most feature-laden and according to Bill Hunt it suffers from some iffy HDMI video output.