RSSToshiba Confirms HD DVD Price Drop
By Ed Oswald | Published March 28, 2007, 2:34 PM
Confirming speculation that it was set to announce a price drop in its players, Toshiba said Wednesday that it would lower the cost of its entry-level HD DVD player to $399 USD, and would debut a 1080p player at $499 USD.
The Toshiba HD-A2 would become the new entry-level player, and the HD-A20 will provide an affordable entry point for those seeking full 1080p resolution. The top of the line HD-XA2, which also includes 1080p, was already reduced to $799 USD at the beginning of the month.
In conjunction with the announcement of the price drop, the HD DVD Promotional Group also said more than 70 HD DVD movie will be made available through July.
They include The Complete Matrix Trilogy, March of the Penguins, Nutty Professor, Dreamgirls, The Meaning of Life, and The Bourne Identity, among others.
"The spring is ramping up well for HD DVD, with an incredible list of movies and the best priced hardware on the market," Universal's HD DVD chief Ken Graffeo said. The studio also reports that consumers are buying discs at a rate higher than the early years of standard DVD.
Universal is the only major studio to exclusively support the format. Others, like Paramount and Warner Home Video, are producing discs for both Blu-ray and HD DVD.
Blu-ray practically claimed victory at the CeBIT technology conference in Germany earlier this month, and the HD DVD Promotions Group has conceded that it is being outsold in hardware by a five-to-one margin due to Sony's PlayStation 3 supporting Blu-ray.
However, HD DVD disputes claims by the BDA that it is also losing the battle elsewhere, saying disc sales are pretty much even.
Price drop was not a minute too soon. Now all they need to do is ADVERTISE! I'm tired of Sony advertising as if they are unchallenged when they are challenged. Get your name out there, HD-DVD folks!
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It's basically strike now time for HD-DVD's camp. They only have about 7 months before Spiderman 3 comes out on Blu-ray, I imagine. Then, it'll be a pretty big hole to climb out of.
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I see spiderman 3 selling well to those that already own a player, but 1 movie or even a couple of movies is NOT going to get someone to spend $500-600.
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What Toshiba should do is sell a $99.00 HD-DVD player (yes it sounds crazy) and take a peice of every DVD sold. If they sold a $99.00 player HD would go through the roof - it would become the standard - tens of thousands of DVD's would go live and they would make a fortune from that small hit in the beginning.
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Why is it every time an article about these 2 mediums shows up on BN it sounds like representatives from both camps jump on the offensive comment postings faster than you can say "submit post"?
Honestly, the "format wars" articles BN posts are the only ones that I try and stay away from the comments. They really sound like they are peppered with the ramblings from official brand representatives...
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And yet... here you are.
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HD-DVD movie sales are gaining ground big time. The Blo-Ray boys thought they were going to run away with it.
Little girlie boys like Dave on the "official" BD forum are going nuts. When HD-DVD was killing BD in sales, people like Dave said www.thedvdwars.com was wrong and they were a bunch of liars. That was until BD overtook HD-DVD sales, at which point him and all of his little f** buddies were linking every post to the site.
Now BD sales are falling, HD-DVD is gaining and they are all coming up with excuses for the relapse.
I for one havent bought a single BD movie yet, all of my titles are HD-DVD, especially when it's available on both formats. BD's picture and black levels are nowhere near HD-DVD's far superior look.
I can't wait until there is a $199.00 HD-DVD, it's over at that point, the BD only studios except for Disney will all come over to the look and sound of perfect.
Read it and weep Dave.
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And only you and Dave actually care.
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Actually I dont, I'm just trying to raise his blood pressure in the hopes he'll die soon.
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Hahah, you are a complete loser :D
Who are you talking to, i have never replied to this thread before, see i am DaveBG not DaveGB - you looser!
Someone is making jokes with you loser!
Your butt is being kick everywhere, and i see you like it...
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/ - look @ the hd dvd price! LOL
http://www.dvdempire.com...Features/hidef_wars.asp
http://kotaku.com/gaming...-buys-600000-247561.php
Suck on that cool info you retard!
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Right now - before the april price-drop - you can get a brand new Toshiba HD A2 on Amazon USA for $356 (from Amazon themselves = no dodgy class 2 or 3 goods) - delivery included.
edit to add - Actually guys scrub that, I just looked again and it is now $349.99, right now before the $100 price drop.
So, is it reasonable to think we're going to see this (excellent very high quality Japanese brand name) player discounted to $250 this summer?
I think so - it's only where we are now but with the announced $100 april price reduction knocked off.
$200 by X-mas 2007?
Quite possibly.
......and just where does that leave the 3 Chinese brand HD-DVD players coming at the end of the year?
$100 - $150?!
That's 'take-off' in the mainstream mass-market territory.
That's quite possibly 'game-over Blu-ray' and goodbuye; hope you enjoy being a PS3 and mere games console proprietary format just as UMD is to PSP or at best also a professional bulk data storage media.
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Blu-ray and UMD will be occupying the same place on you Sony geeks' shelves, have fun handing more money to a clueless corporation in the meantime.
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Just because the picture's better doesn't mean the movie is (unless they got Salma Hayek's snake dance scene in From Dusk Till Dawn). Following on the news from Microsoft that I get a whopping 10% discount on extra copies of Vista, I'll pass to the next sucker.
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Toshiba were already losing $250 on each player sold, with no revenue stream to get it back.. This is last chance saloon, and a predictible response to the PS3. However, they need to shift 2.5 millon HD-DVD players to catch it...
WOO, a 1080P player for the same price as a 20GB PS3 with Blu-Ray, bargain...NOT...
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A trolling we will go...
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Get back under that bridge!
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Same prices as a PS3??? No way... The PS3 is only $599 (60gb).
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2.5 million?
No, they don't need to ship 1:1 with PS3 numbers. Take a look at sales of titles. Bluray sells a much lower percentage based on the number of players.
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Keyword being 'were'. They're not any more. Shame we can't say the same for the PS3 - Sony loses a small fortune for every one of those they sell.
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Don't get mad, we all know you have nothing more important to do than spew $ony crap.
Most of us have lives, we don't make 600+ posts in the "official" Blu-Ray forum like you, plus you DONT OWN A BD PLAYER YOU STUPID ****SH i T!
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Clear a bit your eyes and you will notice that you are replying to no one YOU STUPID ****SH i T!
GB BG
LOLOLOL
While you wonder what is gong on check out some great articles @ http://forum.blu-ray.com
... oh wait, i forgot. You are banned from there... oh well...
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HD DVD is incredible. Excellent movies, excellent quality, excellent value. Thumbs up to Toshiba for this!! This guarantees sub $299 HD DVD players for the holidays by other manufacturers. :)
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BetaMax was also better then VHS, and look what happened.
I don't have an opinion yet on which is better, just the comment. Personally, I still need to convince myselfe to pony up the dough for the HDTV, let alone buying a new DVD player. :-)
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Sony is the BetaMax of this format war.
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I'd rather the movies got the price drop than the players.
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