For those of you who may own or are familiar enough with this firmware update can you tell me specifically what it will do for the A2. I have dial up so I would hvae to disconnect and do the update at a friends house which would be a pain. I wouldn't bother going through the trouble if it has nothing to do with possibly improving picture or sound quality. Thanks

Depending on what version of the firmware you have presently, I know that there was at least one firmware update that I installed to allow a disc (one of the Planet Earth discs) to play properly. You can do the update off of a CD-R (get a friend to download it over broadband and burn it to a disc if you don't want to download it over dial-up). Try this link for access to the firmware. Here is some information on the update, and here is the general HD-DVD firmware page.

Thanks for the info Gonk. As usual you go above and beyond with your assistance. I gave my dvd player to a friend who has will take care of the firmware update for me.