Matrix fans queue all night to take the red HD DVD pill

Last week, we mentioned that HMV Oxford Street was the place to go this morning if you were a Matrix fan and wanted to pick up a free HD DVD player -- the Toshiba HD-E1 -- with your purchase of the box set.

We were expecting this to be a popular promotion, but we were blown away by exactly how many people were prepared to queue all night in a filthy alley just off Oxford Street in order to snag a free player.

The queue was full at 5am, and then it was just a matter of the fans standing around for another 3 hours before they were able to part with their £60 and walk away with a big, high-definition grin on their faces. -Ian Morris

Here, a sign warns people that the queue is much longer than it looks. We took a look where the Matrix fans had spent the majority of their Sunday night and early Monday queuing and were horrified to see...

...this is where they stayed all night. The photo doesn't really do it justice. It was an incredibly dank, horrible alley that even the most cider-addled tramp would go to considerable lengths to avoid.

Once inside, in the warm, it was all much nicer and everyone seemed to be having a good time. There were plenty of happy people keen to cough up their £60 and get home to sleep, watch the entire trilogy on their new HD-E1s or jump on eBay to sell the whole lot for a massive profit.

A happy group are more than willing to pose for a photo with their new Toshiba players.

Once punters had secured their copy of the movies, they were invited to be photographed with one of the many 'look-alikes'. The green screen was then removed by a man on a computer and replaced with a suitably Matrix-y background.

With all the 150 players gone, that just left the HD DVD demo -- designed to entice people to stump up full price for a player if they weren't lucky enough to grab one for free.