AfterDawn: News

Toshiba planning 3rd gen HD DVD players for October?

Early this morning, Amazon began taking pre-orders for three new, third generation HD DVD players by Toshiba.

Once the players started seeing significant orders placed however, Amazon took down the listings and canceled all orders. Before they were taken down, a few key but vague details were revealed, and Engadget listed them.



The new players were dubbed the HD-A3, HD-A30, and the HD-A35 with each one costing $299, $399 and $499 USD respectively. Each also had a release date of October 1st 2007.

It is now anticipated that Toshiba will reveal the full details of the players at the CEDIA Expo next month.

More details as they come in.

Source:
HD Digest

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 2 Aug 2007 19:15

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• 8 comments

• b18bek9

  its nice to see the next gen hd players arent gonna be 600-700$ lol oh well i might have to buy one tho not a fan of sony main reason why i dont support blu ray but they are both similar in quality so price will be the main factor to me let the battle begin i want a cheaper player/ movies....

  2.8.2007 21:41 #1

• vinny13

  Originally posted by b18bek9: its nice to see the next gen hd players arent gonna be 600-700$ lol oh well i might have to buy one tho not a fan of sony main reason why i dont support blu ray but they are both similar in quality so price will be the main factor to me let the battle begin i want a cheaper player/ movies....I wouldn't if I were you... People seem to be leaning towards Sony this time around.

  3.8.2007 07:28 #2

• hughjars

  Originally posted by vinny: I wouldn't if I were you... People seem to be leaning towards Sony this time around. - Oh get off of it.
  
  It's way too early to be making that kind of sweeping statement.
  
  Highdef (and this is both formats put together) accounts for less than 1% of the total retail movie disc market.
  
  Anyone who seriously imagines things are set in stone when the market is so tiny & immature is either just kidding themselves, grossly ill-informed or just shilling for the POV they're promoting.
  
  Gen 3 Toshiba players have been discussed for a while, nice to see them coming & prices looking lower still.
  
  I really like the idea of DVD-Audio being included in the spec - and hopefully SACD is coming into it too.
  If they could just include Divx/Xvid (so I can bin/sell my old SD DVD player) they I'd be in like a shot.
  
  The gen 3 Toshiba's could be an excellent replacement for my SD DVD player (cos these Toshiba's are excellent upscalers), the combo really appeals to me, I'm very interested in a player that does everything my existing SD DVD player does and is a high quality HD DVD player.
  Nice one.
  Hopefully the news will be easier to come by in the coming weeks.

  3.8.2007 10:16 #3

• borhan9

  This will have interesting developments to follow.

  5.8.2007 04:17 #4

• matt87622

  my personal opinion is that bluray is going to be a failure due to the high price of ps3 games($60), high price of bluray blank media ($20 per disc in retail stores last time i checked) and the high price of bluray writers (~$700), i think it would be great as a backup solution (80gb to 250gb seems to be standard now in days), so it would be very easy to back up your whole hdd on 4 or 5 discs.
  
  then again sony seems to have alot of money to waste (there still making and marketing the ps3 after all)
  
  then i read this and find out hd-dvd players are expected to drop in price, at this point i think i would opt for an hd-dvd., at least if sony isn't willing to make bluray technology cheaper.
  
  this isn't a rant against sony, just a rant against there pricing.

  5.8.2007 08:57 #5

• hughjars

  Blu-ray's biggest problem is a result of what was initially it's big strength.
  
  Blu-ray = PS3.
  
  That's great to kick-start the format but it's killed the stand-alone side of things.
  
  PS3 is never going to 'win' the a/v market and neither is their 'cheap' $499 S300 Sony player
  (which like all but 2 Blu-ray players announced or available today aren't even 'profile 1.1 complaint......only the $2000 Denon and the Samsung dual format player are).
  
  Meanwhile HD DVD player prices continue to fall and sales rise (so much so that DVD Empire has the retail movie sales gap down to 44/55 in Blu-ray's favour - which is hardly impressive given that there are supposed to be less than 400,000 HD DVD players to 3.7 million PS3s).
  
  Interesting year ahead, I reckon.

  5.8.2007 09:43 #6

• error5

  Originally posted by hughjars: which like all but 2 Blu-ray players announced or available today aren't even 'profile 1.1 complaint......only the $2000 Denon and the Samsung dual format player areJust got done looking around the BD hardware section of avsforums. The following players announced for Q3/Q4 or later will also be Profile 1.1 compliant:
  
  Samsung BD-P1400
  Samsung BD-P2400
  Sharp BD-HP20
  Sony BDP-S500
  Pioneer BDP-LX70a (BDP-94HD in the US)

  5.8.2007 14:57 #7

• dblbogey7

  Originally posted by error5: Originally posted by hughjars: which like all but 2 Blu-ray players announced or available today aren't even 'profile 1.1 complaint......only the $2000 Denon and the Samsung dual format player areJust got done looking around the BD hardware section of avsforums. The following players announced for Q3/Q4 or later will also be Profile 1.1 compliant:
  
  Samsung BD-P1400
  Samsung BD-P2400
  Sharp BD-HP20
  Sony BDP-S500
  Pioneer BDP-LX70a (BDP-94HD in the US)I imagine we'll get more details from both HD DVD and BD at next month's CEDIA in Denver. My local AV dealer/installer is attending and I'm at the brink of convincing him to let me pay my way as part of his "delegation."

  5.8.2007 15:08 #8