Toshiba Cuts The Price Of HD DVD Players

[Ian]

Well, here's Toshiba's response to the various studios going Blu-ray.. they cut the price of their hardware in the hope that a few uninformed consumers jump on board.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stori ... 440&EDATE=

Taking the holiday season sales based on promotional prices into full consideration, these new manufacturer's suggested retail prices (MSRP) are designed to meet the potential demand for HD DVD players in the U.S. market. Effective on January 13, 2008 the MSRP of the entry-model HD-A3 will be $149.99, the HD-A30, with 1080p output, $199.99, and the high-end HD-A35, $299.99.

I expect this sale to last until Toshiba blows out their existing stock. Then maybe (hopefully) they'll throw in the towel and the war will be over.

[Wesociety]

Ok, I laughed before when Blu-ray fans used the term "fire sale", but this just sounds...

[Grain]

I'd love to get my hands on a cheap XA2...

[dolphinius_rex]

Ok, I laughed before when Blu-ray fans used the term "fire sale", but this just sounds...

I laughed at 'Fire Sale' also until the $99 prices started showing up.

[Wesociety]

Ok, I laughed before when Blu-ray fans used the term "fire sale", but this just sounds...

I laughed at 'Fire Sale' also until the $99 prices started showing up.

Yes, but that was the older, discontinued models, so it could have been seen more as a clearance or closing out of old stock. This new sale is for their current models, which is a big difference IMO.

[Dartman]

Well they were smart enough to release a final spec player cheaper then any BD player right off the bat which forced Sony to sell theirs before it was truly ready for double the money. I think if it wasn't for the PS3 the two formats would be about even, now they even have commercials pushing the PS3 as a movie player. I like my A2 well enough and it is the best upconverting dvd player I've got so it wasn't a waste of money for me anyways, especially at the price they were blowing them out at, only reason I bought one.
Lets hope this forces BD to drop prices a bunch more then maybe I'll go purple, maybe get the LG pc combo drive or burner eventually.
The A2 version has a better audio section as it doesn't downconvert the DD audio stream to 640k or something like that, and my tube tv only does 1080i.
We'll just have to wait and see how long this goes on, and what effect it may have.

[Grain]

The A2 version has a better audio section as it doesn't downconvert the DD audio stream to 640k or something like that....

IMO Toshiba's A2 & A20 second gen players are better than their 3rd gen counterparts for just that reason. The A35 is a much cheaper version of the XA2, it doesn't have the same "hi end" video components, but at least it has some onboard audio decoding. If my A2 had onboard audio decoding(ie 5.1 analog out), I'd be extremely happy wih it.

[dolphinius_rex]

I think a lot of people are in shock that the A4 line wasn't shown at CES... a lot of people with connections inside Toshiba had claimed they were very excited about the new line.

[Grain]

I wonder what the point of yet another line would have been? Too bad they aren't on the Blu-ray team flooding the market with cheap 1.1 and 2.0 BD players !

A big part of me want's this war to get dragged out. If the respective companies would have got together in the first place and used both formats strengths, we could have had an awesome product. Use HD's finalized specs with Blu-ray's extra capacity, and everyone would have been tickled pink! Instead we have HD's that are struggling with space contraints, and BD's that have features that don't work because your player is 2 months old . Both sides played us early adopters as chumps, and as far as I'm concerned, a costly dragged out war is what they both have coming to them.

Prediction: neither format ever gets even close to SD DVD as far as a revenue creator and/or acceptance level.

[Wesociety]

It definitely would have helped the HD DVD camp to have SOMETHING new to show at CES. They could have showed some new online HD DVD features that are in development, some future generation 4 HD DVD players that are still in development, SOMETHING, ANYTHING!

My best guess is that their press conference was going to showcase some really cool HDi and online features that were being developed by Warner. And since Warner defected, they decided to shutdown the show-boating.