HD-DVD Player Prices

As a counter point to the Blu-Ray post below, today’s Circuit City circular lists a Toshiba HD-DVD player for $299.99 (original price was $399.99), and includes five free HD-DVDs (after a mail in rebate). The Xbox 360 HD-DVD attachment costs $199.99; throw in the price of an Xbox 360 and you are at least $200 over the cost of the Toshiba stand alone unit (really depends on which Xbox 360 system).

Is there a point to the comparison? Probably not, but to me it shows that if you want to go HD-DVD, there is no reason to go with an Xbox 360. If you want to go Blu-Ray, you are better off going with a PS3. This is very similar to how the PS2 helped the DVD format achieve market success. However, there are two key differences. First, the price of a PS3 is a lot different than the price of a PS2. Second, the quality of the PS3 Blu-Ray player is far superior to the quality of the original PS2 DVD player.

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2 thoughts on “HD-DVD Player Prices”

  1. Yeah with the Xbox add-on, you don’t get all the audio options either.

    Toshiba is essentially dumping players to try to stave off Blu-Ray, which has much better hardware and software support and right now, bigger software sales.

    They’ve alienated main line manufacturers in favor of courting cheap Chinese manufacturers. So their nuclear option is to have the Chinese dump players under $200 to flood the market, hope that will get studios like Disney and Fox to support HD-DVD as well as Blu-Ray.

    But they’re basically not making it possible to make money on hardware, to recoup some of the research done or fund future research. That is why you don’t see any other name-brand manufacturers making HD-DVD players.

    PS3 won over studio support for Blu-Ray, although PS3 isn’t selling as well as they probably expected.

  2. I had read that Blu-Ray was doing better than HD-DVD, but did not realize it was at the point where Toshiba was ready go dirt cheap in order to salvage the format. It makes sense; I am sure they have spent a fair penny on R&D … have to somehow make something for their trouble.

    From what I have read Blu-Ray players (I suspose led by the PS3) and HD-DVD players are not even close to the numbers for DVD units (and sales by disk type). Then again, I have read the same thing about HDTVs, but I do not see how that can be true. Seems like everyone I know has a HDTV set of some type.

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