HD DVD Prices Slashed By Toshiba 414
Hellburner writes "Hoping to stop the inevitable, Toshiba has slashed the price of entry-level HD DVD players to $150 — down from the previous $300. 'It's a half-empty, half-full moment for retailers, who could see a sales boost at the same time that some may be faced with price matching from holiday sales ... The theory: play up the acceptance by consumers who have already paid for HD DVD versus those who get it with something else like a gaming console, get more players out there--and dare studios to ignore those consumers. In addition to the sales cuts, Toshiba will launch major initiatives, including joint advertising campaigns with studios.'"
Great... just great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Warner joins Blu-Ray. People think the battle is over. In response, HDDVD prices are slashed. Consumer's flock to HDDVD. Battle continues.
I'm really tired of this.
Re:Great... just great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when Disney is Blu-Ray exclusive - never underestimate the number of parents buying Ratatouille for their kids.
Parents aren't early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)
Little kids aren't clamoring for better-than-DVD quality. They don't care or know the difference, and parents aren't going to fork over extra $$ for it.
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The kids won't and don't care because they're not looking at the definition of the video, and the parents are happy because they can burn another
Re:Parents aren't early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people are just complainers. They complain about stuff, but they refuse to find ways to solve their problems, and worse, they actively ignore any suggestions which would solve their problems.
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A lot of the "parents" I know would not trust their HD-DVDs or Blueray discs to their "Disney aged" kids, in the first place. Pretty much all of them back up their original DVD and give the kids the backup... Surprisingly, a lot of them are "non geek" parents. Of course, a lot of them rent the DVD, and then create a backup, too... Not that I really support that.
Fortunately Blu-ray mandates a anti-scratch coating that is really really hard to scratch. Find a bargain bin Blu-ray and try it out (total recall is a candidate).
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Little kids aren't clamoring for better-than-DVD quality. They don't care or know the difference, and parents aren't going to fork over extra $$ for it.
And yet, these parents are the first ones to buy whatever technology is needed to play the Rataouille or any cartoon that the kids want.
With this I mean it is not a matter of technology, as they have said before, it is a matter of availablility. When you kid wants Toy Story 5 and it is only in BluD
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A better comparison is VHS = DVD, LaserDisc = HDDVD/BluRay. Notice how when they started making LDs, they didn't stop selling VHS?
Re:Parents aren't early adopters (Score:5, Funny)
Just kidding. I don't have any kids.
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Re:Great... just great. (Score:4, Funny)
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Much thanks for the (albeit unintended) morning mental giggle. :)
Re:Great... just great. (Score:5, Informative)
Only in North America. In some other parts of the world Disney titles (at least some of them) are HD-DVD, due to different agreements with local distributers. And HD-DVD has no region encoding.
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Exactly. Even $150 is too much to pay for a paperweight.
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Re:Great... just great. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a parent, that's one of the least convincing reasons to go with HD discs.
The minute I start buying kids movies on HD, I lose the ability to play those movies:
- on my laptop when on holiday
- in the car
- ripped onto my media centre
- on the upstairs SD TV
My kids don't watch a lot of TV...but the places they do watch tend to be non-standard. They don't go down to the theatre room & plan to spend a couple of hours watching a movie. That's a mom & dad thing.
Watching TV for them is more typically on the way to grandma's house, or for 20 minutes in the family room so mom can get dinner ready. Unless I invest in a whole pile of new technology, blu-ray reduces the options for my kids. Do portable Blu-Ray players even exist yet?
And to make matters worse...my kids won't even care. Oh sure, if I sit them down and force them to compare they might notice a difference, but they won't whine about having to watch the DVD version over the HD version.
For that matter, neither will I. I'm gonna pass on this format war until I have no choice whatsoever (i.e. blockbuster doesn't carry standard DVD's).
It's still possible that BOTH formats will go the way of the laser disc.
Re:Great... just great. (Score:4, Interesting)
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On the Contrary... it's the inverse (Score:4, Insightful)
When did consumers make the move en-masse and DVD started outselling VHS? Not when the quality and content difference was there - it was there from the beginning. It was when the players got cheap!
When did the DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD-RAM war end? It wasn't when one media had innvation over the other - it was when the dual-format hardware came out!
Why did VHS beat out betamax? It wasn't cause of the Porn angle, that is an urban myth (do a Google search). The real reason? VHS media was cheaper both to acquire and to record on (consumers could record 3 hour long shows on 1 tape vs. betamax's 1 ).
Consumers don't think with their heads. They think with their WALLETS. If they see high def player A on the shelf and high def player B on the shelf, and one is 1/2 the price of the other, they don't sit around doing market analysis to see what content is available on each - they buy the cheap one. Then they buy stuff that works in the cheap one.
And if your content doesn't work in their cheaper player and they know that, it won't get bought.
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Re:Great... just great. (Score:5, Informative)
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Competition drives down prices! (Score:2)
Battle continues. I'm really tired of this.
I've never heard consumers complain about price wars in the past... airlines, PCs, etc.
Isn't that a big part of what capitalism is all about? While there are two competing solutions, since they have many similar features on a technical level, they're forced to compete on price. This tends to be GOOD for the consumer, at least in the short term. (In the longer term, it can be bad as lower margins can squeeze out smaller startup competitors in the field.)
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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital [nerdkits.com]
Re:Competition drives down prices! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Meanwhile, though Apple is a backer of Blu-ray, Final Cut Studio still doesn't support Blu-ray, but does support HD DVD (unless there's an announcement at MacWorld).
Re:Competition drives down prices! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Competition drives down prices! (Score:5, Funny)
Did your professor mention how comfortable the couch was?
Re:Competition drives down prices! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard consumers complain about price wars in the past... airlines, PCs, etc. Isn't that a big part of what capitalism is all about? While there are two competing solutions, since they have many similar features on a technical level, they're forced to compete on price. This tends to be GOOD for the consumer, at least in the short term. (In the longer term, it can be bad as lower margins can squeeze out smaller startup competitors in the field.)
That totally misses the point. We're talking *standards*, not *manufacturers*. Having multiple manufacturers who are competing for the exact same market is fantastic. But it doesn't help capitalism to have multiple standards; if anything, it fragments the market and makes competition more difficult.
Even then, IF players on the market could play either disc, then sure, competition between standards would be OK. But nobody likes hardware/disc incompatibility. Nobody likes buying a player that only gets half the movies released for it. Nobody likes having to have two damned disc players to make sure they can play what they want. And nobody likes buying a disc player whose maker loses the format war, meaning you spent hundreds of dollars for something that becomes a dinosaur in a year. Do you then go buy another disc player? Do you leave the player hooked up in your entertainment system forever even though it can only play the 5 movies you bought, or do you go re-buy those movies?
Basically, what's happening now is nobody wants to get caught up in the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray pissing contest, so a whole lot of people who otherwise would have bought a player by now are getting sick of the crap and want someone to win. That doesn't mean we want to see only one manufacturer making players; far from it. I'd like to see tons of manufacturers competing directly on the basis of a single standard. I'd like to get a better disc player than the one I have now, but I don't want to get in the middle of this crap.
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That totally misses the point. We're talking *standards*, not *manufacturers*. Having multiple manufacturers who are competing for the exact same market is fantastic. But it doesn't help capitalism to have multiple standards; if anything, it fragments the market and makes competition more difficult.
Why, exactly? One would think that competition in ideas and standards would be just as healthy as a competition in the products themselves.
Hell, if it wasn't for competition in standards, we'd all still be using Direct Current in our homes instead of AC, and our computers would still have RAMBUS(*puke*) in them instead of DDR memory.
Everyone acts like standards wars are new or something. Go hunt down the really old-school standards wars, like Westinghouse vs. Edison (AC vs. DC) sometime... it's been
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It is. Competition is good also in ideas. In this case Blu-Ray, which is the technically superior format, won the war. Sadly, the fact that a Microsoft funded Toshiba continues the fight just means that we will have more senseless damage to innocent bystanders and no different outcome in the end.
In this battle Toshiba is Microsoft's paid assassin, and the only thing
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Why, exactly? One would think that competition in ideas and standards would be just as healthy as a competition in the products themselves.
Network Effects [wikipedia.org] prevent fair competition in the market. see also Microsoft Office.
That's the rub though, isn't it? Blu-Ray as a spec was just about sealed and ready to go, then Microsoft cobbled together a consortium at the last minute, and pushed HD-DVD because they didn't get their lock-in goodies included into the Blu-Ray spec.
Now do realize that the customer in this format war was not you or I, or any other end-user of the products. Far from it, in fact. The real customer in this little format war were the movie studios. Put in that perspective, the movie studios chose what they
Betamax apple vs VHS orange (Score:2)
Pick the wrong standard and you end up lumbered with a pile of useless junk.
Maybe someone can come up with a car analogy.
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People are on the sidelines waiting for a winner. The simple move of a studio or two to one format or the other won't decide the battle- the consumers will, and the studios will follow.
But what's really going to give the consumers the illusion that one side has already won? Sensationalist headlines and news stories similar to this one. It treats it like the battle is already over and toshiba lost. If enough news sources po
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I find it tiring that the prevailing attitude is "If everybody tells you that you cannot succeed, don't bother trying". Whatever happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"?
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Dying format. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dying format. (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is something that we won't see for at least a year--possibly longer. Something that struck me about the new BD player announcements at CES is that none of the manufacturers are lowering the prices of the entry level players (all are still around 400 bucks MSRP). Rather, they're refreshing/updating them and keeping the prices the same. The only price drops were on the higher end ones ($800 down to $650, for instance).
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HD-DVD needs to push their hybrid DVD/HD-DVD disks that they introduced a year ago. That alone would win the war if they just got out there and told consumers "hey, you can buy a DVD today and when you decide to switch to HD-DVD your HD library will already be started."
In fact, if HD-DVD got half as much advertising time as BR they woul
Re:Dying format. (Score:4, Informative)
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Y'mean film? Yeah, I think film handles the conversion to HD quite well. Of course, not everything from that period was filmed on film, but the stuff that was will convert nicely.
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[quote]Hersteller von Abspielgeräten für das konkurrierende Blu-ray-Format erklärten derweil, sie sähen aufgrund des mittlerweile entschiedenen Konkurrenzkampfes keinen Grund, die Preise ihrer Player zu senken.[/quote]
Translated:
Meanwhile manufacturers of players for the competing format Blu-ray stated they wouldn't see the need to bring dow
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Re:Dying format. (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is the best way to do it.
The Blu-Ray folks are complaining that HD-DVD forced them to release crappy players that are going to be horribly obsolete and not play *well* new Blu-Ray discs. They did this because HD-DVD players have, in their specification, everything that Blu-Ray Profile 2.0 (BD Live) is supposed to have, practically two years earlier!
And then, the HD-DVD players debuted at a price of $500.
The first Blu-Ray players in North America debuted as a price for $1000, but were basically upgraded DVD players that added Blu-Ray disc support and HD decode.
Now, you can find HD-DVD players for $150. The price of a good Blu-Ray player (at least one supporting profile 1.1, and optionally supporting upgrade to 2.0) is $400 (PS3, for varying definitions of "good" because of a lack of IR support (and thus integration with useful devices like Harmony remotes)).
I'm fairly certain if it wasn't for the push to the bottom, Blu-Ray players would take their sweet time coming down in price, and we'd still be at Blu-Ray 1.0. And double-layer Blu-Rays would be nonexistent, rather than heavily developed (which is where HD-DVD triple layers are - dual layer HD-DVDs are trivially simple since they have millions of DVDs to refine the process).
If we believe the Blu-Ray guys, then Blu-Ray wouldn't have been out until a year after it was released (what the PS3 would use, who knows).
The funny thing is, the Blu-Ray Association claimed profile 2.0 was long settled before the first player made it to market, as well (and still, the combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players have the hardware, but don't support profile 2.0).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
MSRP? (Score:3, Informative)
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Really? I'm pretty sure Apple does this with their iPods, Nintendo with the Wii, Microsoft with the XBox 360, Sony with the PS3, Canon with their cameras, and so on. Granted they appear to have pre-existing agreements with those retailers, but let's not pretend it's completely illegal.
Re:MSRP? (Score:5, Informative)
Co-op is paid at anywhere from 50% up to 100%, and is based on how much a retailer purchases from the manufacturer. For example, in my hardware store we buy products from Scott's (fertilizer) and accrue 6% of our purchases into co-op funds. If I run and ad, feature Scott's products, and follow their price guidelines I get reimbursed up to whatever my accrued co-op fund is.
Why not both? (Score:5, Interesting)
I really don't care who wins out or if we end up with both. I'm sick of needing to replace my movie collection every however many years. I had a crap load of vhs. I now have a library of films on dvd. Am I going to replace everything with the media du jour? No. I have too much money invested in the shiny discs I already have and I don't see those going away for a very long time. Most people I know don't even have a high def tv yet and according to the story yesterday regarding the uber def format the Japanese are working on, why should I upgraded to BR or HDDVD only to have to upgraded again to support the crazy resolutions of yet another format in 2015?
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However, you might be happy to be able to buy a player now that allows you to enjoy better quality now and later. For instance, every time I read about this fight it reminds me of the BBC's Planet Earth series. I have the DVD version and when I watch the amazing pictures I regularly notice something that might be better in HD. But I can't go and buy a player while the format war is still raging and makes it uncertain that I can use the player for anything else in the com
Cracking (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Cracking (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think Bluray hasn't been cracked, take a look at the newsgroups and how many bluray rips there are. HDDVD, too, mind you.
So why are there no stories about BR being cracked? Because nobody's talking about it.
I Own a Single HD-DVD (Score:4, Interesting)
My mother bought me an HD-DVD for the holidays, assuming for some reason that I owned an HD player. Now, this is a series that I wanted in HD (Planet Earth), but I was going to wait till this annoying format war was over. Now of course, a month later, the format that she bought me turns out to be losing.
Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
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Unfortunately there isn't any way to do that at the moment. You may want to try to take it into WalMart or somewhere and exchange it for the BD version or just try to get a refund/credit.
As for contingency plans, I have a library of about 20 HD movies. My player should last at least
EBay? (Score:2)
If there was a flood of $99.95 HD-DVD players on black Friday then HD-DVD would have won.
I thought that was going to happen.
It does do a wonderful job with upconverting and is is a very nice DVD Player.
The funny thing was when I was buying it the woman at the check out made the comment "That is an expensive DVD player." I told her that it was re
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Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
Rip it. Easier said than done, I know - but I've heard it can be done with HDDVD as well as Blu-Ray.
I've sat-out the format war, and while I believe Blu-Ray will win, I'm not convinced that I'll ever get into it. Of course, within this is a hope that the legitimate on-line market for video will finally get going. Seems a fool's dream at the moment, but two years ago it seemed impossible the music industry would ever wake-up and drop DRM.
Physical media is dead to me.
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What is really happening at Toshiba headquarters. (Score:2, Funny)
Youtube clip via gizmodo : http://gizmodo.com/344885/the-downfall-of-hd-dvd-now-available-on-blu+ray [gizmodo.com]
Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially since, lets face it, you'd only care about Blu-Ray/HD-DVD in the first place if you drop $1k-2k+ on the TV itself, and another $200-1K on the stereo system.
Re:Too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
$150 is still a little pricey (Score:3, Insightful)
Free Blu Ray player (Score:2, Funny)
How ironic.... (Score:2)
Too little too late (Score:2)
The best option (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, it doesn't really matter at this point. Digital Distribution is going to end this format war a lot faster than Sony's or Toshiba's corporate posturing.
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"joint advertising campaigns with studios" (Score:2, Insightful)
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If the writers strike goes on 'til the summer, one or 2
If the writers strike goes on for a year, NONE. All the producers will have bypassed the studios and dealt with the writers directly.
(David Letterman did it already...)
Interesting timing (Score:2, Informative)
Why not ? (Score:2)
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BlueRay format not finalized, players will die. (Score:2, Informative)
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Now if the Blu-Ray people have a brain - (Score:2)
I love Capitalism!
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But they know the prices will drop down to rock bottom soon enough - why not use that to stab HD-DVD in the proverbial heart?
Blu Christmas (Score:2, Troll)
admission of defeat - dumping inventory? (Score:2)
The real question is: will their factories continue with production (after the stock of components are used up), or will they shut down - maybe even licence Blu-Ray and start building "the competition's" products.
The only indicator would be if Tosh are still ordering components - anyone know?
Victimizes the weak (Score:4, Interesting)
This is simply taking advantage of mom 'n pop consumers who are just out to buy a nice birthday gift or something like that and don't read consumer electronics news sites.
There's probably nothing in particular that can be done to stop it. It's simply the strong taking from the weak, where in this case the weak are the uninformed. The current moral climate in the United States seems to accept that it is perfectly OK for the strong to take from the weak as long as there's no law against it, and as long as it only involves money. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless.
I wonder how many of the Best Buys of the world will be warning customers that the price drop is a firesale of a product that many think will be orphaned, and how many will be stacking 'em up by the checkout isles and selling them as hard as they can?
Yeah! Low prices are like so evil! (Score:2)
If it bothers you so much, then you pay for an ad in your local newspaper warning others of the "danger" of buying electronics at a discount. Seriously, why do people even care what others are doing with their own money? It's called free will.
Re:Victimizes the weak (Score:5, Insightful)
$150 Free (Score:2)
Link [devsdeals.com]
I Still Can't Figure Out (Score:2)
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As of today 75% is controlled by BluRay supporters (Score:2)
'The Wawr is ovuh!'
Re:As of today 75% is controlled by BluRay support (Score:3, Interesting)
I finally figured out why I don't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me actual high-def - three or four megapixels. At the moment I'm walking past the demo screens and I'm having to check the labels to make sure it's actually hi-def and not just a good quality DVD.
Make me say "Wow!" and I'll pay this thing some attention.
Until then, I'm just not going to bother.
Something I discovered over a year ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember looking at HD-DVD burners around the same time. It was about $600 for the Blu-Ray internal drive and it was about $1200 for an external firewire HD-DVD burner. Late spring/early summer 2007 I went to look at getting an HD-DVD burner as wedding season started. I figured the price of HD-DVD burners had dropped to the point where I could make a buck by offering the same service to others still not wanting to invest a $1000 in a burner, but still needed HD-DVD work. I could purchase the blank media at staples (both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), which is saying something because it's a rural college town, not a big city.
So I went out shopping online and found HD-DVD drives for computers, but I couldn't find a single burner. I went to a couple specialist companies that sell high end editing equipment, and they didn't have any Pro-sumer grade HD-DVD burners (they had the high end stuff). Come to find out, the low-end/consumer/prosumer grade HD-DVD burners simply didn't exist. They weren't available.
That told me something right there. When people asked what format to buy this past christmas, I still said, "I think digital downloads is going to be the way HD-content is delivered to TV's. Whether that's Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon/Cable/Tivo/Sat. I don't know. My advice is to wait. But if you have to buy one, go Blu-Ray. I can burn Blu-Ray discs, I can't even find an HD-DVD burner.
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At first there was just Showtime and HBO HD, and the first time watching movies in HD was amazing
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It might be, but the again it might be a way of getting rid of stock. At this point they have nothing to lose.
Ironically, with other storage solutions about five years, or less, away you have to ask how long this victory will be. Included in the catalogue are the Chinese HD DVD format (it will get submarined in), and various forms of hologra