That's my sentiment. I don't really care which format does win - just want a single out and out winner.

My feeling is that the player price is much less significant than being pretty certain that your (expensive) collection of films isn't going to become obsolescent because you backed the wrong horse. At least SD DVDs will be playable on any machine, so whilst not HD, they will still remain playable.

Combo players are coming out, but sheesh, they cost upwards of $1000!

You can get a Blu-Ray player for around $400-500, and an HD DVD player for $100-300. Or a PS3 and Xbox 360 + the HD DVD add-on for around $1000 or so.

heath

It is, by definition, a low-end model, at least as far as Toshiba's HD-DVD line stands (actually the A2 is being discontinued). I agree that it's a move to preempt Blu-Ray sales, and in some ways the generally lower prices of HD-DVD players are working to the format's favor -- at least one large chain, Kmart, is reportedly dropping Blu-Ray over the price difference. And, true, the price won't stay $99 forever. It will go back up, but nowhere near $399. And it will undoubtedly drop again. But it's hardly a desperate move.

Let me poke some holes
 

Other than the PS3 Blu-ray sales have been fairly static.

Jordi Ribas, General Manager of HD-DVD, Microsoft. "I can't speak to specific numbers, but based on recent NPD data, there have been more Xbox 360 HD-DVD players sold than all Blu-ray standalone players combined. The Playstation 3 simply hasn't been the gamer changer Sony had hoped it would be."


Paramount has made no such statement about the length of the Exclusive deal with HD DVD other than "indefinite". Sony has subsidized production of BD50 discs for studios which is why Warner ships the same encode <30GB regardless of whether they deliver on HD DVD 30GB discs or Blu-ray 50GB

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...y/article.html

If this exclusivity arrangement holds for the long-haul--Paramount executive Alan Bell (see below) says it's "indefinite" at this time--


Of course because there will always be higher end units with more expansive circuitry. Reon processing cost more. Eventually we'll see units with HDD for larger local persistent storage.

Facts are bits of information proven by 3rd party sources. You've presented nothing but subjective opinion.

HD-A2 top DVD player for Amazon Best Seller. HD-A35 ranked 5th

Seems to refute your commentary about no one buying the hardware or software. 1080i outputs mean nothing if the orginating data is encoded in 1080p/24 the players chipset simply encapsultes the data for transmission in 1080i/60 interlaced format for compatibility with a wide range of TV. The TV then deinterlaces back down to a progressive signal (always if the monitor is an LCD)

"clearly tongue in cheek" it's clear that you're not interested in logical discourse. You've chosen your champion and everything you see has a strong Blu tint. If you can't see the paradoxical elements this statement then I'd say that's quite amusing. Sony "packed" a Blu-ray player into game console that didn't need the extra space in order to bolster the chances of Blu-ray becoming the DVD successor. Asking gamers to finance your avaricial goals for a DVD successor smacks of pretty "extreme" measure IMO.

Toshiba
Venturer
Onkyo
Samsung
LG


In summary:

Your post was hardly difficult to deconstruct and tear apart. But most posts from people who lean too heavily in a certain direction have that same weakness. Once Blu-ray is down to an affordable level I will either buy a standalone player or wait for an affordable Universal Player. It has always been about the movies to me and I'll gladly support both formats for the right price.

Toship HD DVD HDA2 is holding at $129. It's not a 1 day sale.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Toshi...oductDetail.do

FYI, Circuit City only dropped it to $129. I couldn't find it on Wal-Mart's site.

heath

I heard there was initial batch for $99 and sold out in five hours. I think that was the one day sale people mentioned above.

$129 seems to be the price it's floated back up to after the sale.

Wal Mart was also going to have the normal price for the older model HD-DVD players at $200.00.

What is so wrong with wanting to sell off all the older players and get things moving.

For months we have all complained that the price of HD needs to come down and then when somebody did it the other camp says it is bad tactics and a sign of desperation. Would you be saying the same thing if Blu-Ray did it? No you would be sitting here saying "I told you so" and "look how awesome SONY is."

Did it ever occur to anybody that maybe this was the plan all alone. Perhaps it is all over priced and Toshiba finally made enough money back that they can really start to sell cheap. Besides low prices are what is going to jump start HD with the consumers. If HD-DVD wasn't around Blu-Ray players may still cost over $1,000.00.

Yeah and SONY has never paid people off before right? You guys say it like it was some kind of a dirty drug deal. But yet if SONY did it it would be great strategy. The fact is Toshiba convinced some of the sudios that a cheaper format would get consumers on board faster and they offered a bonus to gain their trust. Do any of you think a Studio would risk loosing millions of dollars on sales if they didn't really think there was hope in the format? Some of the last topics are starting to border on speculation because none of us know exactly what is going down in these deals.

Why do you people love Blu-Ray so much? Other then storage space it offers nothing at all. If you really want more video then make it a double disc set. I prefer it that way anyway. It's not like I can watch a movie and the special featrues at the same time. The argument that more companies support it is bogus too. That is something that can change as soon as one format takes off. Do you think Samsung and Panasonic are going to just sit by if HD-DVD takes off? Heck no they are going to jump on board as soon as they see where the consumer dollars are. I cannot figure out why people are so loyal to a format when a lot of those people don't even own any of the equipment yet. I'm really starting to get sick of this fanboy attitube. We see it towards cars, cameras, tape brands, disc formats and ATSC HDTV standards.

I am not a fan of Toshiba. I don't really care who wins but my money is with HD-DVD because of the lower cost. That is all I care about. I have enjoy the same level of quality and give my clients the same level of quality for a much lower cost. As video producers shouldn't that be the most important thing to all of us? How we can sell HD to our clients so we can make more money. Cost is the only reason why I support HD-DVD. End of story. It works very well is high quality and is cheaper.

HD-DVD works and it works very well. I have heard very very few issues with HD-DVD players other then they boot up slow. Every single person I know who owns one loves it. I have yet to read anything bad about a HD-DVD player other then by people who don't even own one or even a Blu-Ray player for that fact.

This thread was started to inform people about low cost HD-DVD players and how the format seems to be gaining a lot of steam and all the Blu-Ray people can say is that Toshiba is doomed and this must mean HD-DVD is garbage.

I think HD DVD is being aggressive, and I like Blu-Ray, but I'm frustrated they aren't coming back with something cool, like a $100 or even a $200 model.

heath

I'm frustrated because I can get a Blu-ray burner for a little over $600 but can't get an HD-DVD burner.

As a video professional I need to be able to deliver to my client.

If it stabilizes at that for a couple of weeks, then you know that it'll drop below $100 at least on Black Friday. Some company in the Blu-ray camp should do likewise just for the hell of it -- sell a model for, say, $89.99 for the duration of the Christmas shopping season. Or better still, every Blu-ray manufacturer should do it just to show they are serious and aggressive. You can't convince me that Blu-ray players cost so much more to produce that it couldn't be done. Problem is, mostly only people with HD TVs will buy them, although they make decent SD DVD players until you upgrade your TV.

Originally there were stories that HD-DVD players would be $199 and then drop to $169 on Black Friday. Seeing $129 already was a bit of surprise to me. Maybe Blu-ray manufacturers didn't think $199/$199 that would be as much of a threat. Matybe Toshiba realized the previous price wasn't enough of a market push. It sure seems HD-DVD or at least Toshiba decided to push hard though. I can't help but believe they're doing this as a "lose lead" strategy that Blu-ray may not want to emulate.

I would think that those $449 Blu-ray players could drop to $299 though.


I don't doubt there's an overall market strategy in Toshiba's "lose lead" strategy. Such a low price may push the sale of HDTVs (Toshiba's?). Homes that don't have satellite or cable HD might now be attracted by having disc playback. The "studios" that have invested in releasing HD-DVDs will now have a market to sell to. I suspect the sales on TVs and discs may be the reason for the "lose lead" strategy.

The Blu-ray infrastructure (not simply making players but the disc manufacture and replication) is more expensive than HD-DVD and that's been part of the "discussion" on this format war and one some studio chose HD-DVD. Hence Blu-ray may not be in the position to "lose lead."

If both drop prices dramatically for Black Friday, I'm buying!

Heath

And I'm seeing base prices for 42" 1080P HDTVs down to $1099 already (Vizio and Westinghouse to name a couple). 720p models are less and when you get down to 32" the prices are not much more than getting a good 27" CRT TV a few years back.

Westinghouse Digital is my pick for affordable 1080p HDTVs. My friend bought a 42" model and I love watching Blu-Ray DVDs on his PS3.

Heath

That's all wrong because the Sony PS3 clearly gave Blu-ray a big edge over HD-DVD in 2007. Within a few weeks of the PS3 launch the sales of Blu-ray movies went from slightly behind HD-DVD to basically double, and stayed there for most of this year. (In the past few weeks it's been about 60-40 in favor of Blu-ray.)

At some point the relative cost of standalone players may matter more, but if you can buy a complete game machine and multimedia center for $399 versus something which just plays movies for about half that, the PS3 is actually a better buy. The latest aggressive pricing of HD-DVD players will undoubtedly help that format going into the holiday shopping season, but it's about the only thing keeping HD-DVD alive when most movie studios and consumers are happy with Blu-ray and independent producers don't have a choice because there are no HD-DVD burners.

Sooner or later most movie studios will probably decide to back just one HD format to make their life easier, and once that happens it won't matter how many cheap players are in circulation for the other format.

I don't understand this. Why should the price of the manufacture and replication of the media have anything to do with that of the player? If you're saying that player prices are in part underwriting the cost premium of disk production, that doesn't make much sense -- surely Chinese manufacturers wouldn't care about that. Besides, the loss-leader approach is something that Sony and other manufacturers have tried for years to grab market share. The Blu-ray camp simply can't go on pricing their products that much higher than the HD-DVD camp's and expect to win, regardless of the alleged technical superiority of Blu-ray.

That's a myth which has been dispelled by analyses showing that the bulk cost of making Blu-ray movie discs is only a few cents more than for HD-DVD...and for that extra few cents you get almost twice the content capacity per layer. Movie studios like Blu-ray both because of the higher capacity and (by some accounts) better copy protection. The main reason any movie studios are exclusively making HD-DVDs right now is because they're being paid to do so, and those incentive contracts expire around the end of next year.

back to the point
 

Ok guys, everyone go back to your respective corners for a moment. The whole point at the beginning of this thread was not the technical superiority of one format over the other, or each format's strengths and weaknesses but rather the simple principle that when dealing with selling a product to the general public (which is the goal of both Blu-Ray and HD DVD) that a sudden shift in price should have a somewhat equal shift in sales.
Ultimately, Joe Public doesn't know or care about all the technical stuff that we on this board do, he cares about price. When he looks at one player costing $200 and another player costing $400 and sees that they both offer comparable quality on the cheap, poorly calibrated plasma or LCD he's looking at in his local electronics store, he's probably going to take home the less expensive of the two. The format that wins the "war" will not be the one that can capture the hearts and minds of we videocentric pixel snobs, but it will be the one that puts the smaller dent in the average consumer's pocketbook.

I do think Lawrence and Kevin are speaking from biases and NOT about the reality of the business and the calculations that are going on. It's sounds like they're speaking from what THEY WANT things to be like, not on the REALITY or STRATEGY the "studios" have.

You BET the manufacture and price of players is, in part, tied to the costs of disc production. It has to do with contracts and incentives and calculated risk and retooling production facilities etc.

Blu-ray cost more for MANY REASONS.

Like people at a poker table, they're calculating odds and taking risks but those risks have EVERYTHING to do with the cards they're holding.

Price of a player is a KEY and probably a leading point but even that is NOT the only point. There's price and availability of the media (the movies) that is also critical. In fact, in the long run, THAT is probably the biggest issue since there's the studio investment in manufacturing and sales of MOVIES where the money is to be made (from the studio/manufacturer's perspective). The consumer is very much thinking about that too. How much is that HD movie going to cost to own, can you get your favorite movie on the given format, can you rent the movies you want. You're NOT going to spend $129 HD-DVD player when every movie you want will only play on the $449 Blu-ray player.

I'm speaking as much as possible from known facts but won't deny my preference for Blu-ray, which is the better format for my purposes and also the one with the most fully developed delivery options. As far as major movie studios are concerned, there are currently only two which are exclusively supporting HD-DVD and all the rest are either neutral or exclusively Blu-ray. If the last two holdouts switch back when their incentive contracts expire that could be a clincher for consumers no matter what happens with player prices, so in this case I think the movie studios may make the decision for all of us. Blu-ray movies outsold HD-DVD by a ratio of 2:1 this year even though the players for the latter were significantly cheaper, so if that trend continues we can guess what most studios are likely to do.

I wouldn't ultimately mind if HD-DVD overhwhelms Blu-ray to give us one preferred delivery format, but I doubt that's going to happen. Either HD-DVD will falter or both formats will limp along in a pointless deadlock until consumers give up in disgust and switch to online delivery of HD content. This last option isn't realistic yet but could be soon enough. Come to think of it, the Sony PS3 would be just as useful for internet HD downloads as it is for disc-based delivery, so either way it's a safe investment... :-)

Why does everyone think the delivery method is going to be online? Why not some type of system where it's sent to a hard drive inside your cable box or satellite receiver and is then transferable to your computer so you can then do with it as you wish. I could be way off here, but that seems possible to me. It might not be any faster than online delivery, but it would seem to make sense to get your content from the cable/satellite company if it's reasonably priced.

Next time I try to talk my wife into letting me spend $500 on a personal entertainment device/time waster, I need to give you a call. That was a darn good rationalization.

I agree that satellite/cable HD delivery is likely to be prominent, and may currently be the most widely used option for HD movies...but good luck getting the content out of your cable box to save for future viewing. Plus I don't see the cable companies offering independent producers a way to upload content directly to customers, so that doesn't help most of us. The internet is a more promising long-term solution for my purposes, and it's fairly easy to attach a computer to most HDTVs if someone wants to view HD content that way.

In all seriousness, the Sony PS3 is one of the best electronic gadgets I've ever owned -- it's basically the all-purpose multimedia and computer device some of us have contemplated for many years now. It plays HD and SD movies, digital photos at HD quality, both PS2 and PS3 games and can connect to the internet and your wireless home network. At $399 for the base model it's a no-brainer as a business investment to display your video work to clients, so even if Blu-ray tanks as a movie format you'll have something which is useful in other ways for years to come. The only issue I have with it is that it gets very hot if you use it in an enclosed space, so don't stick it in a TV stand or cabinet with poor ventilation. Other than that, I heartily recommend it.

P.S. My wife's the one who bought a PS3 for me as a belated Christmas present back at the beginning of this year. :-)

90,000 HD DVD Players Sold in One Weekend
 

I saw this link on HDforIndies.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/11/07...n-one-weekend/

Evidently they sold 90,000 of those players. That's gotta help their cause right?

Yup. Bunch of us home entertainment and video geeks picked one up. I wish I had...

heath

I wanted to post this news up here, but did it in another thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....5&postcount=24

heath

The price of the Toshiba HDA2 is back to about $199 (and it's discontinued BTW). The A3, replacing it is at $299. At those prices HD-DVD loses its big price advangate. For most people it's back to being a choice between $300 HD-DVD or $420 or so for Blu-ray. That's just not a big enough difference for HD-DVD to run away with a lead.

It'll go back to what movies you can buy and whether you can burn a disc of your "home movies" to hand to family members and friends.

Does anybody have any idea why they're no HD-DVD burners on the market? I belive Toshiba might be including them in some of their laptops but that's about it.

I don't see the Toshiba A2 on any of those lists. I do see the A3 listed for either $199 or $169. I don't remember which. There's certainly nothing close to the $99 bargain they had.

Well $169 is the A3 from Sears and Sears.com on Black Friday before 11am. The includes 2 HD-DVD (300 & one of the Bourne Movies) in the box plus a coupon for 5 more (your Choice). 7 Movies at $20 = $140 so the player is $29.
I've been sitting on the fence but I'll be sitting at my computer buying A3 on Black Frioday.

I may take the plunge...I wish I was shelling out $100 for it, but good analogy with the free movies. It feels like 1998 all over again, when you'd buy a DVD player and get a bunch of free rentals and DVDs (albeit, the DVDs sucked).

Heath

Me too! That special was basically a clearance thing.

I told my friend about it and he showed up at Walmart at 8:25am.that morning just as someone was walking out with the last one. Ouch.

In my neck of the woods, it must've been sold out quick, too!

Heath

Maybe not - Sony just announced that the recent PS3 price cut doubled their weekly sales in the US from 30-40k a week to 100k:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/15/s...nce-price-cut/

Even without doubling the 30-40k a week number makes me skeptical that the 90k number due to the firesale will make much of a difference. While it nearly doubles the installed base for HD DVD the PS3 numbers still mean Blu ray will likely have an 8- or 10-1 advantage in installed players by the end of the year.

Yeah, but 90,000 dedicated players (not just gaming consoles) is a big deal, regardless!

The war wages on (yay). But then there's this, which may back up my predictions of downloads winning the format battle:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/te...tner=TOPIXNEWS

I think NY Times is getting rid of logging in; I can still access that page days later. If it becomes unavailable in anyway, I'll find a new link. But that story is great.

heath

Downloads will only win if the masses decide to watch most video content on their computers instead of on their TVs, or if they put a device with internet download capability in their living room. It just so happens that the best-selling Blu-ray player (i.e. Sony PS3) also happens to have internet connectivity, but I haven't heard of an HD-DVD player with similar capability.

And so it goes. HD-DVD is stuggling to survive, and the PS3 is the best multimedia/gaming device available today.

Apple TV, Windows Media Center, etc. Doing it on the TV like with iTunes. You can already watch movies on demand, which is similar.

Heath

ps-I'm looking forward to playing Assassin's Creed at my friend's tonight. (Grin.)

heath

All the Toshiba HD-DVD players have an ethernet port, it's part of the spec, in addition to some web enabled features of certain discs, it is also used for firmware updates.

The Ethernet port is a standard feature of HD-DVD players. Apparently, Toshiba and co. were aware of bandwidth issue and implemented disk-based player with connectivity used for additional materials as well as for upgrade. Even the crappiest DirecTV-grade MPEG-4 hi-def video requires at least 10Mbps, my internet cable connection can churn out about 1.2Mbps at its best, that is, at night. In the evening when everyone is browsing the Net, the speed falls to dialup levels.

Time for HD online video has not come yet. Video-on-demand is available for several dozens, maybe a hundred of simultaneous viewers, because video requires lots of bandwidth.

I don't know how Intel's chip is relevant at all. The problem is not in decoding, the problem is in the bandwidth.

All in all, even if/when high-quality streaming video is available, I will still prefer to have some movies right with me, on disks, tapes, whatever. It is like having your own book instead of borrowing from a library. No streaming video will change the habit to have ONE'S OWN STUFF.

P.S. I got the HD-A2 from Walmart too. I wanted a real thing, that is, the XA2, but for a hundred bucks I thought what the heck. And it is not that bad, it upconverts regular DVDs quite nicely to 1080i. My TV can lock onto 3:2 cadence properly, so even though the A2 does not produce 1080p output, I am losing nothing when I watch movies. Not bad for $100, not bad at all.

On the negative side, I find the way it handles subtitles very weird, unintuitive and downright unusable. Also, I can understand that it does not play DVDs from non-U.S. regions, but not playing region-free PAL DVDs, come on, this is not even funny. I will be using my old DVD player for PAL, other regions, for DivX and XVID. It is convenient that my TV has two HDMI inputs.