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Gadgets Toshiba Launches HD DVD Player Fire Sale
Brandon Hill (Blog) - January 13, 2008 2:14 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 153 comment(s) - last by toms89.. on Jan 18 at 7:01 PM

Tiger Direct lists the Toshiba HD-A3 for $129.99
Toshiba fights bad news with lower prices

DailyTech brought you steady coverage over the past week concerning the latest news in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray wars. Unless you've been living under a rock, you by now already know that Warner Bros. made the decision to back Blu-ray exclusively.

The move by Warner Bros. was followed by similar actions from New Line Home Entertainment and HBO Home Video. Recent stories have even suggested that Paramount is also tossing around the idea of supporting the Blu-ray disc standard.

Toshiba apparently doesn't want to go down without a fight and is instead slashing the prices on its HD DVD players. Toshiba's second generation HD-A2 players previously dipped down to the sub-$100 mark during November -- but that was during the traditional holiday buying season and not truly indicative of regular retail pricing.

Now, Toshiba's third generation 1080i-capable HD-A3 is selling for a mere $139.98 on Amazon.com. The 1080p-capable HD-A30 is not much more expensive at $179.98. For the price of an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, consumers can now purchase a fully-fledged set top box with 1080p support.

Amazon isn't the only retailer with the discounted pricing, however. Tiger Direct is selling the HD-A3 for $129.99 and the HD-A30 for $179.99. There are also reports that Sam’s Club and Costco are selling the HD-A3 for as little as $128.

In addition to the lower prices, customers who purchase Toshiba's HD DVD players are still eligible to receive five free movies via a mail-in rebate -- this is in addition to the two movies, 300 and The Bourne Identity, which come in the box.

It remains to be seen if this move by Toshiba is simply an act of desperation, but the tides are definitely changing and a haze of "Blu" can be seen drifting in from the distance.

For all we know, this could be the last hurrah for HD DVD, so it looks as though Toshiba wants to go out with a bang.

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Could be interesting
By porkpie on 1/13/2008 2:59:40 PM , Rating: 2
Even with all the recent announcements, HD-DVD is still selling 38% of the market, same as they've been doing the past several months. This fire sale could really make things interesting. All it needs to do is hang in another year. By then there'll be so many players out there the market will be too big to can no matter how well Blu Ray is doing.




RE: Could be interesting
By Fox5 on 1/13/2008 3:10:27 PM , Rating: 2
Not so true if all the studios decide to move away from HDDVD.

Forget about HDDVD's share still being rather significant compared to blu-ray, both are still small enough that the studios can easily abandon one or both. Thing is, the PS3 has enough support (even with lack luster sales) that will guarantee a decent sized Blu-ray support based. HDDVD has no such guarantee. Now, if microsoft had released an x360 sku with HDDVD support (and eventually moved towards all 360s having it), that would make this an interesting fight.


RE: Could be interesting
By NullSubroutine on 1/13/2008 5:41:48 PM , Rating: 5
How many millions of PS3's (as Blueray) are on the market? 8, 10 million? How many for HD-DVD (which are almost all stand-alone players) 1.25, 1.5 million? And Blueray is only winning 64/36%?

Most PS3 owners are not buying Blueray compared HD owners. As the more stand alone players are released the gap SHOULD shrink, if it were not for WB and Newline leaving HD-DVD support.

I am not saying HD-DVD is staging a comeback just yet, if at all. But I am not awed by 'Blue-Ray penetration'.


RE: Could be interesting
By TJ Spyke on 1/13/08, Rating: 0
RE: Could be interesting
By mushi799 on 1/13/2008 8:08:13 PM , Rating: 2
6 million? Try closer to 9 million ps3.

"shows no sign of improving sales" uhhh they sell about 200k per month so eventually that # will grow.


RE: Could be interesting
By rninneman on 1/13/2008 8:10:45 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
8, 10 million? The PS3 is at about 6 million and showing no signs of improving their current sales.


No signs of improvement? Better check again.
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1173
PS3 sales are ahead of Xbox 360 sales after the same number of weeks available.
http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php

quote:
I am glad that BBC will continue supporting both (citing the fact that the HD DVD version of "Planet Earth" has outsold the Blu-ray Disc version).


Do you have numbers to back that up? The Blu-ray version has consistently held a higher position on the Amazon Top DVD charts. Currently the BR version is #14 whereas the HD-DVD version is #33.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dvd/ref=sv_d_...

Give it up; HD-DVD lost.


RE: Could be interesting
By sweetsauce on 1/13/2008 8:31:12 PM , Rating: 4
Amazingly people continue to quote vgcchartz as a source to prove their point... You're better off making up a website and creating your own numbers, would be just as credible.


RE: Could be interesting
By rninneman on 1/13/08, Rating: 0
RE: Could be interesting
By sweetsauce on 1/14/2008 12:12:53 AM , Rating: 1
Its been posted here countless times but i'll indulge you. http://nexgenwars.com/ To someone uninformed it might seem like trolling to you, but facts say otherwise.


RE: Could be interesting
By Pezman37 on 1/14/2008 5:06:53 AM , Rating: 3
Hopefully I'm not the nail that gets hammered down, but

http://nexgenwars.com/

didn't seem to be based in fact anymore than daily tech, and all the time I see facts fudged here. They do cite their sources, but I also didn't see any sources that looked reputable.

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php

They also didn't seem very reputable, but nextgen at least didn't look like a college kid got bored and made it over a weekend like http://vgchartz.com/ does. Either way both of you seemed flawed to me in your citations.

Saying "according to XYZ" with sony or kotaku or some such is as much noise as any politician would make. If Sony themselves released such numbers (not someone else saying "well sony told us/ released blah blah") AND people didn't start attacking those numbers, THEN it might have some basis in reality. These are blogs, and anyone can make an online news site. There's no BBC or CNN for gamer news, so it all has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Maybe there is a more definitive source, but it's neither of those two sites as far as I can tell.


RE: Could be interesting
By Demon-Xanth on 1/14/2008 10:07:21 AM , Rating: 2
Where the 9.1 million comes in:
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_sa...

People are adding up all the numbers, thus counting Q3 and Q4 of 2006 twice. They're only upto 5.6 million as of 9/31/07 (Q2 of the fiscal year). 5.5 million shipped as of 3/31/07 according to:
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_e....


RE: Could be interesting
By othercents on 1/14/2008 11:51:31 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
They're only upto 5.6 million as of 9/31/07

Most everyone has projected that PS3 sold 3 mil units from 10/1/07 - 1/1/08. While your numbers are very accurate they are also old and don't take into account the Christmas sales.

Other


RE: Could be interesting
By Demon-Xanth on 1/14/2008 12:51:47 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, they're old. But the new numbers from neither Sony or NPD have not come out yet. So effectively, everything else is an estimate. The NPD chart is likely to be out in a week or two, then we'll have an even number.

Sony has been quoted as saying that they sold 1.2M PS3s in NA during that time period.


RE: Could be interesting
By rninneman on 1/14/2008 12:14:03 PM , Rating: 2
nexgenwars.com is even less reliable. Only the manufacturers know for sure what the sales are and they aren't exactly forthcoming with exact details. We can infer however which site is probably right. Microsoft publicly stated recently that they had shipped 17.7 million Xbox360s. The sites in question are quoting retail sales. Vgchartz is quoting 16.3 million and Nexgenwars is quoting 14.4 million. So what do you think is more likely? That there are 1.4 million or 3.3 million unsold Xbox360s in warehouses and retailer stores. I have a hard time believing 1.4 million let alone 3.3 million so which site do you think is more accurate?


RE: Could be interesting
By rninneman on 1/13/2008 7:56:24 PM , Rating: 2
Your numbers on HD-DVD players are way high. It was 750k at the end of November. That included the Xbox add-on drive. Your numbers on the PS3 are high too. I remember reading that in the US there are 4-5 million PS3s now. (We can't use the worldwide number because the disc sales firgures are US. Worldwide, BR is dominating even more.)

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Industry_Tr...

I would bet the gap is not greater because HD-DVD does have 30% exclusivity for now.


RE: Could be interesting
By dluther on 1/13/2008 10:57:34 PM , Rating: 1
Here's something to consider:

I just bought a PS3 and three Blu-Ray movies. Then last week I bought a Toshiba HD-A30, which I hadn't yet opened in anticipation of getting an HDMI hub.

When Paramount went public with the Blu-Ray exclusive news, I sent my HD-DVD back and got a refund.


RE: Could be interesting
By Lazarus Dark on 1/14/2008 1:15:09 AM , Rating: 2
Prior to last week, I was saving up for the LG combo bdrom/hddvd drive for 300$ Now I am just going to get the Liteon bdrom drive for 200. I'm not going to waste money on an unnecessary combo drive if all the studios are going to move to Bluray.


RE: Could be interesting
By Shadowmaster625 on 1/14/08, Rating: 0