Could Toshiba’s just released HD-DVD player, the HD-A1, really just be a home theater PC disguised as a normal DVD player?

Sure enough, as seen on this blog and in the video, Toshiba’s HD-DVD player contains an IDE HD-DVD drive, P4 2.5 ghz, 1 gig of RAM, and a flash disk running Red Hat’s linux operating system.

As The Digital Bits noted, no wonder it takes the thing a minute to boot up.

Like the blog author above, I’m waiting for Blu-Ray – sure, it’s Sony’s technology, and their track record isn’t the best, but the compression and size opportunities (for the discs) are better with Blu-Ray than HD-DVD.