While Japan received their first HD-DVD player in late March, the first HD-DVD players in America have been shipped these days.

With a few delays thanks to no media content for HD-DVD, Toshiba has released two HD-DVD models: HD-XA1 and HD-A1. The movies that were supposed to be released for HD-DVD were One Million Dollar Baby and Phantom of the Opera. Both titles have a rescheduled release date of April 18th.

Toshiba’s HD-XA1 will have a retail price of about $800 at launch while the HD-A1 model will hold a $500 price tag.

But in summer, Sony will release the BluRay players, which seems that will cost around $1000.

The problem comes in deciding which the best format is: HD-DVD or BluRay.

If the first one costs less, its disks can hold up to 15GB or 30GB double sided for HD-DVD-R and 20GB or 40GB double side for HD-DVR-RW.

BluRay will have bigger disks capacities but will also cost more.

The forums are full of discussions about HD-DVD and BluRay, but no decision has been taken. We will probably see one once BluRay is released.