Change has certainly been one of the few constants in consumer electronics, but I really doubt we'll see a wireless HD audio/video connection scheme in just 18 to 24 months that will actually supplant HDMI. After all, Google doesn't even know what HDWF is at this point. There is this Wireless HD plan that hopes to begin to appear on the market in 2008, but I have my doubts about that time table. Besides, aside from projectors and remote equipment racks, how many people are really inconvenienced by a single cable? This seems more like a niche product, at least in the near term, even if they can pull off that much bandwidth without any loss of quality or performance problems.

Thanks for the hd-dvd info mm_half3. And I think your right gonk. I dont think well see this WIHD(the official initials) used in recievers and prepros until atleast 2009 or 2010. And one cable definitly doesnt bother me. I imagine when widh becomes available it will spark all sorts of discussions on what sounds better, cable or wihd making your future hdmi 1.3 equipment purchases good for years to come.

The WiHD (Wireless HD) standard apparently may be finalized in the next six to nine months , assuming licensing for the frequency range it uses doesn't hamstring the entire concept (a minor detail). It'll be curious to see where this notion goes. There's nothing real specific about what its role in the market would be - there might be an opportunity for this to be used in conjunction with HDMI, as a way to pipe video or audio and video from an equipment rack to a remote display or from a surround processor to individual powered speakers almost like we use wireless routers in computer networks. Picture an HDMI cable from surround processor to transmitter and an HDMI cable from receiver to projector (assuming the transmitter and receiver don't have to be integrated into the processor or display). I doubt it would be anything that standalone, but it's a novel application for this sort of wireless tech...

It would certainly be nice if Outlaw could come out with a new fully HDMI-compliant pre/pro at or about the time that the format war gets either settled - or called a draw. Then I'd be ready to buy both it and a truly universal player to boot! Oh yeah - throw in a new 1080p projector as well. I would really like to be able to connect player to pre/pro to projector - all with HDMI cables - and be passing both the highest resolution audio possible and 1080p video at the same time.

I read that the hd dvd players only send dolby true hd in 2 channel, is this true?

Not anymore - Toshiba released a firmware update for both players that expanded TrueHD support to multichannel.

What players and is it worth it?

Both of Toshiba's players got the firmware update (the HD-A1 and the HD-XA1). I think that the HD-A2 and HD-XA2 will also support it, although the HD-A2 won't have a multichannel analog output. I'll leave it to the folks who have some TrueHD material and an HD-DVD player to say how it sounds, but from what I've heard it's certainly nice. Personally, I'm waiting for the format war to shake out a bit more and for a couple generations of hardware to come and go before I dip my toe in the HD optical disc waters.

Gonk, Well said. One thing I am in no hurry to get AV equipment right now my thought is to wait unil the "format war" or maybe some generations down to get AV equipment. Would you agree with that reasoning?

That's very much in line with my own reasoning. If we had a single HD format, the hardware supported all of the features included in the format, and HDMI hardware were already solidly mature in the marketplace, I'd probably be saving pennies to pick a player up (probably a second gen model). With two competing formats, no hardware for either format that fully supports either format's capabilities (although Toshiba's players are getting close these days), and no HDMI v1.3 hardware yet on store shelves, it just feels right to sit back and enjoy my DVD's on a nice DVD player for another year and a half or more before actually investing any money in either new format.