Onkyo USA has announced the DV-HD805 HD DVD player, marking Onkyo's first foray into the high-definition optical format war.

Coming as something of a counterpoint to Denon's own recent announcement of Blu-ray support, Onkyo's HD805 will provide consumers with a more upscale option for HD DVD playback relative to the present and upcoming offerings from Toshiba. Based on Toshiba's HD-XA2 design, the HD805 will retain the Silicon Optix Reon chipset that has gone missing in Toshiba's third generation players, ensuring top-level noise reduction and upscaling capabilities.

In addition to the Reon, the HD805 will feature HDMI 1.3a for bitstream output of TrueHD and DTS-HD MA losslessly compressed audio to an external receiver. As one of the few companies to have HDMI 1.3a compliant receivers presently on the market capable of decoding both codecs, Onkyo may be well positioned to enjoy synergistic sales as a result. Deep Color is also supported in the HD805, though it offers no benefit to HD DVD playback

The DV-HD805 will be available this fall for an MSRP of $899.

From Beyond3D