RCA HD DVD Player Ships to Retailers

Toshiba's HD DVD players finally have some company: RCA announced Friday that it started shipping its HDV5000, with a suggested retail price of $499. The HDV5000 doesn't seem to offer much more than Toshiba's similarly priced HD-A1, aside from S/PDIF output and MPEG-4 playback. One hopes it takes a little less time than Toshiba's players to get started once your disc's in the tray.

[ Emru Townsend, Digital World ]

Dan's Thoughts: We've covered David Pogue's extensive review Toshiba's HD-DVD player, which took notice of the slow startup time Emru alludes to. And of course, this player will likely be burdened with a nice load of DRM, as we discussed just the other day.