AfterDawn: News

HD-DVD price drop confirmed by Toshiba

Toshiba announced today that they would be lowering the price of their entry-level HD-DVD player down to $400 USD and that they would also be introducing a 1080p player with a $500 price tag.

The new "HD-A2" would become the latest entry-level player, and the "HD-A20" will be great for those on a budget but looking for a full 1080p resolution. The best of the best, the "HD-XA2", which includes 1080p, had its price cut to $800 earlier this month.



Along with the price drop the HD-DVD Promotional Group announced that there will be 70 more new HD-DVD movies made available through July. They include such hits as the Matrix Trilogy, Dreamgirls and The Bourne Identity.

Universal's HD-DVD chief had this to say: "The spring is ramping up well for HD DVD, with an incredible list of movies and the best priced hardware on the market".

Universal is the only of the major movie studios to completely back HD-DVD. Others like Paramount produce for both formats.

The Blu-Ray camp declared victory at CeBIT and the HD-DVD camp has conceded that they are losing in hardware sales simply because every PlayStation 3 has a Blu-Ray drive. The HD-DVD camp has also said that disc sales around the country are even with those of Blu-Ray discs.

Source:
BetaNews

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2007 20:32

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• 12 comments

• azndrake

  dang i thought it was gonna be 299 :(((

  28.3.2007 20:49 #1

• webe123

  Forget the PLAYERS, I want a HD DVD BURNER for my PC! At a cheap price.

  28.3.2007 21:40 #2

• rihgt682

  Originally posted by webe123:Forget the PLAYERS, I want a HD DVD BURNER for my PC! At a cheap price.
  me to

  28.3.2007 21:42 #3

• BobbyBlu

  Quote:They include such hits as the Matrix Trilogy, Dreamgirls and The Bourne Identity.Damm that is right Matrix is a Universal movie i want this on Blu-ray guess not now but Dreamgirls going to be on Blu-ray.

  29.3.2007 03:58 #4

• toadie70

  The Matrix is a Warner Bros. movie and it is coming out on BR, it's just Warner's hasn't set a release date as of yet.

  29.3.2007 10:26 #5

• hade

  correct, matrix will come to Blu-ray but is releasing on HD-DVD first if im not mistaken.
  
  for those interested here is a link where you can preorder the collection on HD-DVD at a discounted rate. (30% off)
  amazon

  29.3.2007 21:08 #6

• Jmark

  I assume that it takes probably about the same amount of technology to produce HD-DVD as plain DVD...so it will be common to see these at $50 or less in record time. The Chinese sense of immediacy will push the price lower than the rest of the world quickly--which is why they OWN and I mean COMPLETELY OWN the CD/DVD/HD-DVD/LCD markets today. I have a rule--I don't buy until it becomes low-priced or two years have passed. There is NO worse feeling than buying an $800 DVD player and then soon after perusing the $35 models that are BETER than yours...

  30.3.2007 16:59 #7

• toadie70

  One thing that I have read is that The Matrix movies on HD-DVD will be flippers. Hopefully they won't be flippers on BluRay.

  30.3.2007 17:35 #8

• error5

  Originally posted by toadie70:One thing that I have read is that The Matrix movies on HD-DVD will be flippers. Hopefully they won't be flippers on BluRay.There will be 2 versions of the Matrix Trilogy to be released. One is the Ultimate Matrix Collection which will have have 5 discs which are "flippers." This set is for hardcore fans and contains 35 hours of supplemental material but you don't have to flip the disc to watch the whole movie. The other is the Complete Matrix Trilogy which is a 3-disc set of "NON-flippers" with just the films and minimal extras.
  
  http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/matrix_umc.html
  http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/matrix_ct.html
  http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/pressrelease_matrixhddvd.html
  
  Quote:There is NO worse feeling than buying an $800 DVD player and then soon after perusing the $35 models that are BETER than yours...There's just no way that the cheap Chinese players will be able to approach the performance and build quality of the $800 HD-XA2 considering that it has the industry-leading Silicon Optix Reon VX chip.
  
  BTW, Value Electronics has the XA2 for $578 (as of today March 31, 2007).
  
  http://www.fsiwebs.com/shopcart3/SC_Prod...oqXuKw2OTVIuNI-

  31.3.2007 04:39 #9

• Gnawnivek

  What the hell they mean by entry level HD DVD player? To me, a HD DVD player is HD DVD player, there shouldn't be a different hardware level (unless better design or more hardare options).
  
  So this means the entry level player's picture quality is inferior to the $100 more model? Are they selling upscaled player or something?

  31.3.2007 21:01 #10

• error5

  I have the "entry-level" 1st generation Toshiba HD-A1 and believe me it's no slouch. It does what it supposed to do and very well at that.
  
  The "entry level" tag here means less options and features than the higher end models but all the machines still play HD-DVD's very well. For example:
  
  HD-A2
  no 1080p - only 1080i (not an issue to most owners)
  no 5.1 analog audio output
  
  HD-XA2
  1080p output thru HDMI
  5.1 analog audio ouputs
  has the Silicon Optix Reon VX chip which is one of the best video processing chips in the market today hence it's larger price tag.
  
  The "entry level" models are there for those who don't want to spend that much but still would like to get the basic HD-DVD experience. The "higher end" models are for enthusiasts who are willing to spend more for quality and better features. In the end both play HD-DVD's very well.

  1.4.2007 04:42 #11

• Gnawnivek

  i see... thanks for the answer error5.

  1.4.2007 20:03 #12