Prices slashed on HD DVD players as HD DVD vs Blu-ray war winds down
By Sean P. Aune
Maybe it’s just a normal price cut, or perhaps it’s a “fire sale”, but the prices of HD DVD players are coming down.
Following a tumultuous start of the year for the HD DVD camp, Toshiba has announced several price cuts to their line of HD DVD players, effective immediately.
The HD-A3, the entry level player, now has a suggested retail price (SRP) of $149.99, but can be found for $132.98 on Amazon.com. The mid-range, HD-A30, which offers 1080p output, has an SRP of $199.99, but is only $171.98 on Amazon. The top-of-the-line HD-A35 lists for $299.99, but can be picked up for $275.98.
Beyond the price-cuts, all three models come with free copies of the movies 300 and The Bourne Identity. The offer for five free movies by mail (PDF link) has also been extended, but no new expatriation date has been announced yet.
With the seemingly endless list of studios that are switching their support to Blu-ray (Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, HBO, the porn industry), this has the feeling that it may be more of a last gasp to try to win support. The prices are attractive, and far lower than most Blu-ray players, but be warned you may be purchasing a brand new player for a soon to be dead format. The one bonus you will have if you purchase one is a nice upscaling for standard definition DVDs.
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Stumble It!
January 14th, 2008
Sell the players far cheaper than BluRay. This is bound to be a winning strategy for HD-DVD. What can go wrong?
Oh wait, that’s exactly what they have been doing for the past 2 years and that’s when they had a 50/50 share of studio support lol.
January 14th, 2008
Sell the players far cheaper than BluRay? This is bound to be a winning strategy for HD-DVD. What can go wrong with a strategy that consists entirely of just being cheap?
Oh wait, that’s exactly what they have been doing for the past 2 years and that’s when they had a 50/50 share of studio support lol.
January 15th, 2008
They aren’t trying to win anything gor. They are trying to sell as many as possible before the format is officially pronounced dead.
January 17th, 2008
Gosh you Bluray fanboys kill me. And I think it’s funny as of right now how the two movie studios left (Universal and Paramount which both have better and more successful movies then any other studio) is still vowing to stay with HD DVD. Yeah, yeah, yeah read the bogus claims and what not but both companies have released statements stating they are not switching yet. And let’s not forget you got Dreamworks, MTV Films, Nickolodeon films and so on which are still on the format as well.
So you Fanboys can go ahead and claim victory if you want but right now I have no real reason to even wanna go with the Bluray. Yeah ok they have alot more movie studios behind them but oh well. I want my Bourne Series (Universal), American Gangster (Universal), Zodiac (Paramount), Shrek (Dreamworks Paramount), Transformers (Paramount) and countless more blockbusters. Not to mention the new Indiana Jones, Cloverfield, Beowolf and countless other movies, good movies from just those tow companies alone. So, as of right now HD DVD has what I need and I want as far as movies go. What does the future hold? We shall wait and see.
January 17th, 2008
You BluRay Fanboys kill me:
You sound like me 20 years ago with Beta and look what happened .. you’ll end the same way. ALL movies will be produced in the format that wins (if any) no studio can afford not to produce in a format that they can make money … GREED is to strong for them not to !!!