Need a HD-DVD player to replace my XBox360 HD-DVD any suggestion for me?

Under 500$can if possible.

My system now is a Denon 3905 with 5.1 sound

I ordered the HD-A3 pre-release and received it Nov 1.  I didn't grasp till last week when sending in my rebate form for the 5 discs, i'd been sent the HD-A30 instead!  I  just kept not seeing the extra zero on the box.  I think i was sent the wrong one deliberately because the Amazon packing slip indicated the A3 but was followed by a single line with the model number HD-A30 on it.

Receiving the better model took some of the edge off them reducing the prices just 3 weeks after my purchase.

Like Vega i have component input only so the HDMI (and 1080p) is a to waste at this time.  The picture looks fine but i can't say it's dramatically improved from DVD but i blame the 5 year old HDTV for that.

My biggest complaints with the player are:
1) Boot up time.  Don't know what else to call it.  When i received it it was a good 60 seconds from power on till it started even worrying about the disc in the tray.  I didn't even get a video signal till near the end of this time.  Did a firmware update and reduced this to maybe 45 seconds.

(Some comments on Amazon claim 15 seconds to come up.  I have to think the player is already on and this is the time after the disc is inserted.  I'm considering leaving mine powered up all the time.)

2) Won't remember where you were on a disc if it is removed and re-inserted or if you power off.  I can't imagine what could technologically explain this when i have a 5 year old DVD player that remembers the positions on last 40 discs i've inserted but it's actually worse than the memory on a Toshiba DVD player i bought in 1999.  It at least remembered where you were on the inserted disc if it wasn't removed.

The HD-DVD claims it will remember where you were if the disc is not removed but i've yet to see this happen.

I've had it long enough i probably need to go back and re-RTFM to see if i've missed something on this but i'm amazed that functionality like this from DVD players is missing.  I can only pessimistically assume this stuff is being left out of early models so they have something to add to later models.

It's not a bad HD-DVD player at all, just not as good as would've liked.  It will do till i upgrade the TV in a couple years. 

The price is certainly right, especially if you get the HD-A3.

I think the 30 is a great model, it's what I have. I bought my parents an A3 for Christmas. I have it hooked up via HDMI and I can say that the picture quality is excellent. Far better than any broadcast signal I've seen.

As for any issues not remembering the place on the disc, I haven't seen this yet. Have you guys initiated the persistent storage? Not positive but that might be the cause of the problem. Never hurts to ask.

Start up time is a little on the slow side, I will concede that. As for the 15 second claim, no. Not unless the player is on and it's simply loading the disc itself. No doubt in my mind that nobody has gone from off to full visuals (from the disc) on screen in 15 seconds. Sure, it can be a little long but once the film is going it doesn't matter. The 30 delivers the goods.

Quoting twojayz:

Quote:
As for any issues not remembering the place on the disc, I haven't seen this yet. Have you guys initiated the persistent storage? Not positive but that might be the cause of the problem. Never hurts to ask.

I had to look up Persistent Storage.  It's mentioned twice that i've found in the manual, but there is little explanation.

I must have seen it because it's on the same menu screen where i went to update the firmware but i didn't know what it was so i ignored it.

Don't know if it will help but i've turned it on and we shall see.

Thanks twojayz!

Quoting tweeter:

Quote:
I had to look up Persistent Storage.  It's mentioned twice that i've found in the manual, but there is little explanation.

All HD DVD players (and Blu-ray I'm pretty sure) are required to have 128MB of persistent storage.  This is for storing network login info, bookmarks, trailers, and any other downloaded content from a disc's online features.  So it makes sense that some discs may use this to remember where you last were on the disc.

HD-A3 like a few others have said.

Quoting Ralliart:

Quote:
Need a HD-DVD player to replace my XBox360 HD-DVD any suggestion for me?

Under 500$can if possible.

My system now is a Denon 3905 with 5.1 sound

Back to the original question.

It really depends on your equipment and what you're looking for.  The more expensive models will give you 1080p.  That may or may not matter.  My set is 1080p and it deinterlaces the 1080i from the player just fine, so a 1080p player would have been a waste.

If you have a TV that will playback material at 24fps (most don't), you'll want one of the more expensive players.

The more expensive players can also send the new audio formats to properly equiped receivers for them to decode.  But if you're receiver won't decode DD+ or DD True HD, that doesn't really matter.

You can also get slightly better upscaling depending on which player you pick up.

But really, it all comes down to the equipment you have (i.e. which features you can benefit from) and what you're hoping to get out of it.

Quoting Ralliart:

Quote:
Is all HD-DVD player have that problem?

As far as I know, yes... and Blu-ray as well.  Most reviews I've read show that 30 seconds is about normal and generally another 20-30 seconds after inserting the disc.  Some of the really high end players are probably a bit faster.  I think Blu-ray might have it worse with any discs that have advanced java since java is notoriously slow (I have no experience with any actual BD players, this is just from personal experience with java on PCs and I've read some reviews saying these discs can take 50-60 seconds to load).  I would think that over the next year or so we'll see this time gradually get faster and faster, but for now.. that's about what you're going to get.

-edit-
I guess I'll be finding out myself when I get home.  My A3 just arrived..  Christmas has come early!  I feel like a little kid with a new toy.  Now, I need to come up with a plan to sneak it into the house and hook it up without my wife noticing...