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Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player
Toshiba cuts its HD DVD sales forecast by 44%

As the battle between the Blu-ray and HD DVD disc standard slithers along, both camps are looking for ways to get a "leg up" on the other.

Both sides have looked to consoles to increase marketshare. Microsoft's Xbox 360 can be equipped with a $199 HD DVD add-on and every Sony PlayStation 3 console comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive. The inclusion of the Blu-ray drive on the PS3 instantly gave Sony some serious firepower in the next generation high-definition wars.

Toshiba has countered by offering promotions to boost the sales of its HD DVD players. The company has a current promotion where customers who purchase a Toshiba HD DVD player can receive five free HD DVDs via a mail-in rebate.

This week, Toshiba is also offering a $100 instant discount on all HD DVD players to celebrate "Father's Day." The discount effectively brings the price of the low-end HD-A2 to $299.

In addition, Toshiba announced efforts to include HD DVD drives on all of its notebooks next year. Toshiba shipped 9.2 million notebooks in 2006, so making the drive standard issue would do wonders for boosting HD DVD penetration.

Despite Toshiba efforts to latch onto the console market, offer special promotions and expand its use of HD DVD drive in the mobile sector, the company is revising its forecast for HD DVD player sales. Unfortunately for Toshiba, the forecast is one that is trending downward.

The company announced that it lowered its North American sales forecasts for calendar year 2007 from 1.8 million units to 1 million units -- a decrease of 44 percent. The adjustment for the North American market will also affect global sales forecasts, but no estimate was given by Yoshihide Fujii, Toshiba's head of consumer electronics. "Obviously we are going to have to lower our previous global estimate."

Toshiba cites lower than expected unit sales for the lower forecast.

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Advertising?
By Noya on 6/12/2007 9:38:56 AM , Rating: 5
If the marketing is what's getting sales, HD-DVD needs to triple it's budget. I see Blu-Ray marketing on TV, print ads, online, everywhere. HD-DVD...barely any. I must see 10x + more BD ads than HD-DVD and for the layman, well, he must think BD is 10x better.




RE: Advertising?
By bhieb on 6/12/2007 3:29:02 PM , Rating: 2
I agree. The main problem is that HD-DVD is not a big enough name change. When the average Joe sees BlueRay they know it is an entirely different experience than DVD. When they hear HD-DVD they just think it is a slight upgrade to DVD. Think back to S-VHS vs VHS, the average person does not know that HD-DVD is something to be excited about. Blown marketing if you ask me.

For me (and many others) it will be neither until there is a clear winner or dual drives.


RE: Advertising?
By omnicronx on 6/12/2007 4:16:17 PM , Rating: 2
I think its the exact opposite.. people see blueray player and wonder WTF IS THAT??? is it a cup holder? will it play my 8 tracks??

then they see HD-DVD .. everyone knows what a DVD is and does.. and most people now a days know what high definition is... this is one of the reasons toshiba chose the name.. people could relate to a successful product (DVDS) and the superiority of HD.

i think in the end, most people will realize blueray is a stupid name, and although right now its been more successful (because of ps3) and its probably a better format overall, i see HD-DVD being the choice for people who dont know the difference.. just because of the name


RE: Advertising?
By omnicronx on 6/12/2007 4:19:13 PM , Rating: 2
on another note.. sony has to advertise blueray 10x more because of the same problem.. many people have no idea what it is. Im not saying toshiba advertises enough because they dont.. but i think they feel they have to do so much less because most people will know what it is just by seeing the name.. anywhere


Are we forgetting yesterday's news already?
By OxBow on 6/12/2007 10:46:50 AM , Rating: 2
Just yesterday I saw multiple articles based on a HD-DVD press release that they were doing better than Blue-Ray. Today, they announce a projection revision. Seems to me that yesterdays press release was designed to take the sting out of todays announcement. Having to revise their projections is a big deal in terms of stock performance. Such an announcement can cost the company significantly more in stock value than the actual projection adjustment losses are. It really seems to me that Toshiba is on more shaky ground with HD-DVD than they want to admit, if they have to spin their press releases so obviously to cover such bad news.




By killerroach on 6/12/2007 11:49:00 AM , Rating: 3
Probably right... the "doing better than Blu-Ray" statement was a bit of a numbers game, but they are far from dead in the water. Their sales projections were a bit of irrational exuberance, however, and this revision brings them more in line to what the market seems to be showing for either HD video format. Neither one is seeming to have a huge leg up, and that tends to further depress the market for either format, as a lot of people (myself included) are waiting for one format or the other to show a clear advantage one way or the other...


By steven975 on 6/12/2007 1:23:35 PM , Rating: 4
Considering standalone BD players have only sold about 100K units I believe.

While there are 3M PS3s (with slow sales now), not all of them are used for watching movies.

When you look at it like that, 1M HD-DVD players plus probably 500K Xbox HD-DVD drives (which were purchased for movie watching unlike all PS3s) it starts looking pretty good.

And, don't take this article as a sign of slowing sales. Sales have grown, A LOT. It's just that Toshiba was a little irrational with a 1.8M forecast for the year. Still 1M is darn good and will keep them in the game.




Feel sorry for Toshiba
By EclipsedAurora on 6/12/2007 12:49:34 PM , Rating: 3
Lack of industry support will be the deadly fate of Toshiba. It is because many 1st Tier manufactureres like Panasonic, Sony, Pioneer, Samsung stand on BluRay side, their scale of economy can finally outweight the production cost of BluRay. Toshiba battle with herself only, which made her in a very unfavourable situation as she can't enjoy a larger scale of economy, thus ending up with the fact that HD-DVD cost more than BluRay in many region outside USA, or simply disappeared from the market (e.g. Until now HD-DVD is simply paper launched in Australia only, while BluRay had been flooding around the Australian market)

Also, today's technology can mature far faster than b4. One yrs ago blue laser diode are running out of stock in the market globally. But now u can find plenty around. 1-2 yrs later they may flood the market with cheap price and the Blue laser disc will eliminate the DVD completely.




And yet...
By SiliconAddict on 6/12/2007 9:40:48 AM , Rating: 2
Advertising
By jimmy27 on 6/12/2007 12:04:11 PM , Rating: 2
I personally don't think there is that much of a difference to me as a consumer of HD content whether it comes from BR or HD DVD. But, the cost of HD DVD is compelling. However, as one person wrote above, BR is out advertising HD DVD like crazy. If toshiba is blowing out all these players for cheap, they wont have the margin available to advertise. Perception is reality for people. So, even if they bought HD DVD and believe BR is better or will win, then BR will win. I think HD DVD really needs to step up its marketing or BR will win no matter how many HD DVD players are sold. Eventually though, I do think we'll just end up with all hybrid players or fancy BR/HD DVD combo discs.




still waiting
By Chernobyl68 on 6/12/2007 12:06:07 PM , Rating: 2
for a good combo player.




Internal PC HD DVD Drives
By Frazzle on 6/12/2007 12:40:54 PM , Rating: 2
Toshiba could probably pad their sales figures for HD DVD drives a bit of they released an internal HD DVD drive for the PC in the US market. They have the external drives available, and they sell the internal drives overseas and to US OEMs, so they already make them. Why they refuse to sell them in the US retail market is a complete mystery though.

I don't want some clunky external drive sitting on top of my HTPC. Make an internal model available, Toshiba, please.




prices
By omnicronx on 6/12/2007 1:37:12 PM , Rating: 2
i think we will have to wait and see if sony's disc sales actually stay like that.. because as someone said sony's standalone players are barely selling.. with something like 15% of players being sold being non ps3 machines. It will be interesting to see toshiba sales once they have sold more players.
In my opinion its great ps3s come with an blueray.. but i think its a really dumb idea to use your gaming system as a movie player. anyone remember what playing dvd's did to most ps2s? i know the lifespan of my ps2 was essentially cut in half because of dvd player overuse.. and as blueray and hddvd are still the ol laser and motor you would have to expect the same thing to happen again... I would also like to note that toshiba doesnt count xbox360 hdplayers in their count whereas sony counts the ps3




unrealistic forcast
By ncage on 6/12/2007 9:50:54 AM , Rating: 1
Ok i have another comment. I think 1.8 million was an unrealistic forcast. Think how many people have High-Def enabled TVs. Sure if everyone could get the benefits of these players there would be a lot more sales but everyone can't. This does not mean the player is not selling well because it is. 1 million is still a bunch of players. For example of of the biggest etailers as we know is amazon. The Top selling DVD player on amazon is the HD-A2, 5th place is HD-A20, 7th is HD-XA2. Sony doesn't come onto the picture until the 11th spot. 3 of toshiba's players are above it. Here is the proof:
http://amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/17251...




/Toshiba Fails
By speedyj on 6/12/2007 3:03:39 PM , Rating: 1
Why would Toshiba even bother putting a HD-DVD drive into all their laptops? It would just jack up the prices and make it unaffordable. The HD-DVD drive alone would be expensive. Then you would have to add a big enough LCD screen capable of 1920x1080 resolution and that would drive up costs even more! Not only that, why would anyone want to watch a 1080p movie on such a small screen? And what about the people who already have a stand alone HD-DVD player? Or a blu-ray player? Toshiba would just be forcing you to get another HD-DVD that would be of no use to you. If Toshiba goes through with this foolish decision then they should lower their laptop sales expectations for next year as well. No wonder HD-DVD is losing......Toshiba has such a terrible business plan.




Go Go Blu-Ray!
By henrikfm on 6/12/07, Rating: -1
RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By BladeVenom on 6/12/07, Rating: -1
RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By sxr7171 on 6/12/2007 7:21:35 AM , Rating: 2
Older movies like that often aren't transfered too well to HD formats.


RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By SLI on 6/12/2007 7:41:07 AM , Rating: 1
Umm, most of them from the mid 50's up *ARE* originally HD (16x9, 2.33x1, etc) so the "HD" is merely the original aspect ratio restored.


RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By tmp8000 on 6/12/2007 7:55:29 AM , Rating: 3
Simply "restoring" the aspect ratio does not make a movie suddenly HD, otherwise all of the restored DVDs would be HD. They have to make an HD digital master from the original 35mm and I think he was implying that a lot of the transfers from the original 35mm of older films don't hold up as well as they could due to degradation etc.


RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By Pitbulll0669 on 6/12/2007 7:58:26 AM , Rating: 2
ok I have the Toshiba HDAx2 the top line player and I have some of the Older movies like Forbidden Planet. And Ill tell you,IT LOOKS AWESOME! Its not just expanded to fit and play But dig. remasterd so it looks Friggin Sweet! Dont knock it untill you try it.:)


RE: Go Go Blu-Ray!
By therealnickdanger on 6/12/2007 8:17:25 AM , Rating: 2
Exactly. The only thing that is often lacking in new transfers of old films is the audio. Film stock of 50 years ago was excellent, it was designed for massive screens. The audio, however, was not recorded in a way that was kind to surround sound. They can clean, tweak, and resample it, but the audio rarely comes out as good as the picture. However, what these old movies can lack in technical aspects they can usually make up for in cinematography and writing.

Old movies in HD = wet my pants.