Toshiba cuts HD DVD player prices
Toshiba may have taken a huge hit recently, but the HD DVD supporter is striking back.
Barely a week after Warner Bros. announced it would no longer put out movies on the HD DVD format, of which Toshiba is a primary supporter, the company announced it is lowering the prices on all three models of next-generation DVD players.
Toshiba will now sell its entry-level HD DVD player for $149.99.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The entry-level model, the HD-A3, now goes for $149.99, the HD-A30 for $199.99, and the HD-A35 for $299.99. That's about $150 to $200 worth of discounts on all models.
The new pricing from Toshiba is well-timed, according to Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research for The NPD Group. Holiday promotional pricing is essentially over for all the major manufacturers of rival disc format Blu-ray, as well as other HD DVD makers.
"For them to drop MSRPs now couldn't come at a better time," he said. "It was a gap Blu-ray was able to close down upon during holiday sales."
In the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, HD DVD's primary advantage from the very beginning had been cheaper prices on players. But Blu-ray has responded, lowering its prices and offering popular promotions, like Wal-Mart's giveaway of 10 Blu-ray titles with the purchase of a Sony PlayStation 3 this past holiday. But preferences over one format or the other aside, price is and probably always will be the determining factor in sales.
"The larger challenge for both camps is twofold: getting the hardware into people's homes. Toshiba did very well selling $99 and $199 players (during the holidays), but that didn't necessarily translate into a big jump in movie (sales)," said Erickson. "Unless there are serious promotions going on...people aren't going out and buying in explosive numbers on the Blu-ray side either."
"Even if we promote a single format...people are still not going to pay three to four times as much for a player, they're not going to pay double the price for movies," Erickson said, "just because they're accustomed to much cheaper pricing on standard-def DVD."
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
Jeremy P lesser studios are on HD now :-( ~~~~
People, please just buy Blu-ray so war can be officially over and we can all be high def!
I've owned both a BluRay player and HD DVD player for some time now. I'll admit that my preference is HD DVD because for some odd reason, the experience I get from HD DVD just seems to be a level higher then BluRay. But anyway....like many people out there, i've been following this format war almost on a daily basis ever since HD DVD came out. I'm beginning to think that we consumers have all been suckered into giving Hollywood extra profits. What if.....Hollywood knows that the future of home enterntainment is via internet. Lots of people feel this way. I'm sure Hollywood eventually wants it to go this way, but will never admit to it based on the fact that the format war is still going on. So if this is the case, that the future is about downloadable movies, then would it be a stretch to think that the Movie Studios knew that they would begin to lose a little money as the current preferred choice, standard DVDs slowly transitioned to internet downloads?? Pretty much how record labels were reluctant to move on into the future of music via iTunes and other internet outlets. Record labels did lose money in the beginning of the "music download age", much because of Napster and illegal downloading but also because of the legal downloads as well. It's cheaper to buy most albums from iTunes than to buy a CD. So with that said, maybe Hollywood wanted this format war, which is why they were split on which format to follow, then once the outcry for one format was loud enough, they decided to go with one format, even though they know it may be replaced sooner rather than later by downloadable movies. But by having people buy into one new format or another, even though the mass market is still all about standard DVDs, it would still give them enough profit to stomach the eventual profit losses they would've gotten from a direct "standard DVD to Internet" transition.
Anyway, there just seems to be lots of articles suddenly coming up, once the dust settled after Warner bros. chose BluRay, that BluRay may not even make it. And this to me, just sounds fishy....or maybe a well designed plan.
I, for one, never can trust Sony on ANY standardizations.
Don't forget, the Toshiba base unit (A3) supports upconverting standard DVD, so if you still want that WB movie, it is available on DVD at nearly the same quality as the Blu-ray disk. It is not a case of choosing either-or and doing without if you buy one format.
Bottomline - as long as there is competition at the early stages, the consumer is going to reap the benefits.
Even the Blu-Ray Disc Association said that HD-DVD's release to the market in 2006 'forced' them to launch prematurely. The ever changing profile is not helping BR one bit.
I don't know if BluRay is better or HD DVD is better. I know that with HD DVD I don't have to replace my current DVDs unless I really feel the need. I guess that's why the movie studios have chosen BluRay. And that's the problem - the studios have chosen. The consumer really hasn't made a decision and it looks like he/she won't.
These blue rays and high density (pun intended) were a flop from the start.
The features of HD-DVD make it a much more consumer friendly format than Blu-ray. Managed copy, region free, combo discs compatible with DVD players, just to name a few.
Just another example of a very uninformed public.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEED71E39F932A35756C0A961948260
do you work for sony?
FYI, holding grudges for things that happened 20+ years ago really isn't good for you.
Blu-ray discs have consistently outsold HD DVD by a 2-1 margin for the last year, but last week's numbers reflect the greatest disparity yet in the format war.
Even worse for HD DVD, Home Media Magazine writes that the top 10 high-def disc sellers were all Blu-ray. The best-selling HD DVD, The Kingdom, sold just 10 percent as many discs as the best-selling Blu-ray title, 3:10 to Yuma.
http://www.tvpredictions.com/hddiscsales011708.htm
Wow...those price drops did alot. Not.
it keeps getting knocked down but still gets up.
when you think what a great upscaling dvd you will get at this price hd dvd is just a bonus
even on standard with no upscale it beats my £299 sony dvd player hands down.
with all these people jumping ship you will kick your self when you realise the ship is still sailing and your left in the water holding your blu to way you down.
Regular SD upconverter just upconverts, comes with no free movies and does not play either HD format.
So $70-80 for an okay upconverter or around $100 (yes I fully expect the HD-A3 to drop to $100 at retail in the next 3 months.) for an upconverter that also plays HD-DVD with at worst $105 (7 movies times $15 each) worth of free HD-DVDs.
Oh and the combo discs work in the mini-van too.
DVD, they should look at lowering the prices of the disks to around
15 dollars a disk. They should do that while Warner is still around.
Or they are really doomed.
expensive. I would have no problem paying for a good HD disc
player otherwise. My Sony XBR 46 upconverts SD DVD's just fine for
now.
These media companies play us for fools, but they are shooting
themselves in the foot on this one.
If they aren't going to restock and all the media buzz is around Blu Ray, that's what people buy, regardless of quality of the media, better format, etc. People buy what the media tells them, and the media is telling them Blu-ray.
Since my regular DVDs upconverted look SOOOO GOOD on this TV, I'm in no hurry to buy a HD player.
I didn't buy an HD DVD or Blueray player because: I wanted to wait for prices to come down, I wasn't sure if the format I chose would disappear in a few years, there was no 1080p player available at the time, and the movies were WAY too expensive.
There are four good reasons (five counting how good the regular movies look upconverted). Now, cudos to Toshiba for trying to get the price down. I would prefer if Toshiba won the format war anyway because I grew tired of Sony's proprietary tricks years ago.
I'm sorry to say the two machines at the most attractive prices are (IMAO) not worth buying for me and perhaps anyone with a newer 1080p capable TV.
If your TV maxes at 1080i (which most do), then that HD-A3 for $150 is a great deal. Go buy one.
If you have a 1080p TV, read on.
The HD-A30 only uses 1080p 24 which is only 24 frames per second, as opposed to 60 FPS from better (more expensive) units.
Why would anyone buy a 24 fps unit? You know the flicker you get from interlace? That's a 30Hz flicker, and it's noticeable. Especially if you watch sports and see text superimposed over the screen.
Why would you go out and buy a HD DVD player who's framerate is even lower than interlace? What's the point of buying 1080p if it's not 60Hz?
For those people with 1080i TVs, this would be a good time to go buy a HD-A3.
For people who have a 1080p TV, wait a little longer for Toshiba to bring a 60Hz 1080p HD-DVD player to around $150-$200.
Even then, I'm not paying $30 or more for a new movie. When I see new HD movies for the SAME price as regular DVDs, and a 60Hz 2080p HD-DVD player for around $150, THEN I will buy.
Maybe if Toshiba didn't have so many different models, they could offer one or two good ones at that $150-$200 price point.
You say that upconverted DVD's "look SOOOO GOOD", but then you bellyache that the early HD DVD players only supported 1080i.
If you cannot see the difference between a 480p signal "upconverted" to 1080i/1080p and a true 1080i signal, then you need glasses.
Do you even know the difference between 1080i and 1080p. The "i" is for interlace and the "p" is for progressive scan. The interlacing is so fast that the human eye cannot see the difference.
Since you cannot tell the difference between an "upconverted" picture and a true 1080i picture, then there is no way you can see the difference between an interlaced and non-interlaced picture.
As the 98% of media sales as DVD, and all the paramounts and universal DVDs are HDDVD's too. It could sway studios back.
Personally, my feeling is that similar to DVD-R and DVD+R, eventually, the chipset manufacturers will develop single dual-mode chips that play Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, which will drive down the prices of dual-mode players, to a level that is affordable, and everyone ends up winning except for the early adopters.
With an HD cable box, it's a great set. I also have a component level DVD player to watch movies on it.
No HDMI and since it's still a really nice set, I'm not going to ditch it in favor of the flavor of the week in A/V.
I'll wait for the Blu-Ray /HD-DVD wars to settle and players to get affordable.
I doubt they are going to quit producing DVDs any time soon.
- Speaking of uninformed public
- by aristotle_dude January 16, 2008 4:57 PM PST
- Do you really believe what you are spouting?
- Reply to this comment
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- HD DVDs dirty little secrets
- by jrm125 January 17, 2008 7:29 AM PST
- Yea, all true. But they'll never acknowledge it as long as they can point at Sony's past transgressions. Mind you Blu-ray hasn't done anything shady...they're zealoted about HD DVD and will probably stay that way.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (62 Comments)The lack of regions was the region why several New Line releases were delayed for HD DVD prior to the Warner announcement.
Managed copy is vapourware and would most likely be based on WMP DRM and require a windows PC.
Combo discs were notoriously glitchy and some people had to boil their discs to get them to playback on their HD DVD players. Not to mention that they were often priced 10-15 dollars higher than most Blu-ray titles.
It was recently revealed that some German released HD DVD titles were authored with the Image Constraint Token turned on which means that those titles will revert to 480p if played back on a non-HDMI display.
So much for "consumer friendly".