With so much talk about delayed players and formats not being available for the marketplace, Toshiba Corp. released their HD-DVD HD-XA1 player in Japan on Friday.

In an article from Techweb.com, Toshiba says this is "the first player to support the HD DVD format approved by the DVD Forum, the international standards association."

The cost of the player will be about $936 US which translates to roughly $110, 000 yen overseas. Two different versions of the HD-XA1 player are supposed to make their way to these shores around mid-April.

According to The Digital Bits, as no HD-DVDs are currently on the market to watch with the new player, they are bundling it with HD-DVD versions of Resident Evil and Moonlight and Jellyfish.

Some specs on the HD-DVD HD-XA1 player are it "will output video in 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i resolutions, and will play audio in Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1, Dolby TrueHD (2-channel only), DTS-HD 5.1 and L-PCM 5.1 formats. Also, in addition to HD-DVD and DVD-Video (and hybrids thereof), it will play DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, music CD, CD-R and CD-RW format media."