In a press release from Toshiba today, Amazon has named the third generation Toshiba HD DVD players as one of their top holiday picks this year.

One or all of the second generation Toshiba HD DVD players has held a spot in Amazon's top ten selling DVD players since May. Amazon consistently has HD DVD and Blu Ray titles appear in their top ten of overall DVD sales. Amazon does not release their sales statistics, and Nielsen ratings do not include Amazon's sales.

Usher Audio has introduced a bookshelf loudspeaker to their Dancer series.

It's a small two way design utilizing their top of the line Beryllium tweeter and a 7" mid-woofer handles the low end. Available in piano black or silver, both with attractive birch side panels. A suggested price has not yet been set, although they have said they will sell for about $2500.00 a pair. Usher Audio, located in Taiwan, makes a range of loudspeakers, from reasonably priced up to high end audiophile. They produce nearly all the parts that go into their loudspeakers, and combined with having their production in a Taiwan-based facility, they generally sell for a fraction of what their western-produced equivalents cost.

Stereophile has discovered what HD DVD users already know: that Dolby TrueHD provides fantastic, lifelike sound.

To be sure, adoption of one or both HD disc formats by the mass market is going to decide whether consumer electronics manufacturers and studios ever make TrueHD audio discs a reality, and even then, people are going to take more convincing that they need high definition audio.

Warner Brothers released the movie 300 on DVD, Blu Ray and HD DVD on July 31.

Today Warner announced that the Blu Ray and HD DVD versions have sold more than 250,000 combined units since the July 31 release date. This represents by far the best first week sales for any HD release. They aren't releasing details on the percentage of sales the respective formats accounted for at this time, so neither side can use the good news as a flag to wave around for their format.

What Toshiba has done right

1. The software was ready out of the gate

2. Good discs seem to extract every last bit of performance for the storage limitation. Example:The Prestige looks as good on an HD30 as it does a BD50.

3. Making Dolby TrueHD mandatory in hardware

4. Very consistent in releasing new firmware, addressing both fixes and new features

5. The second gen hardware is solid

6. Lack of region coding, so those titles that are Blu Ray-only in North America, but are available on HD DVD in Europe or Asia, will play just fine on your player.

7. Spearheaded hardware sales by selling at a loss early to get players out there

What Sony has done right