Toshiba sold 100 000 HD DVD players in 2 days
Toshiba has announced that it sold 90,000 HD DVD players between last Friday and Sunday, thanks to sub-$100 players offered by Best Buy and Wal-Mart, according to trade publication Video Business. Toshiba’s HD-A2 is the lowest priced standalone high-def disc player, and last weekend that was made even more evident when Wal-Mart announced a special one-day sales to bring the price down to $98. The discount retailer normally sells the player for around $200. In a seemingly immediate reactionary move, Best Buy decided to clear out its existing stock of HD-A2 players, marking the price permanently down to $100. However, most locations sold out within hours.
Media reports said that other, more local retailers also marked down their price to match Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Because of its price advantage, sales of specific standalone HD DVD players have consistently been ahead of similar Blu-ray sales numbers. For example, Video Business reports the three-day sales of HD DVD players was greater than Sony’s BDP-S300 Blu-ray player over the past several months. The S300 is the top-selling Blu-ray player aside from the Playstation 3. If course, because of the PS3, Sony has been more easily able to convert people into Blu-ray adopters and has handily taken the lead in overall HD disc market share.
Source: TG Daily
Comments(27)
HD-DVD and Blu-ray players are worthless if you don’t have an HDTV. Thus I haven’t bought one
Well that was an obvious statement, a question, bit off topic, does the Xbox360 elite play HD-DVD or do you need the external player like the normal 360’s.
high def players are useless if you download your high def content and play it on your htpc
@ Doom, You still need to get the external HD-DVD player , even with the Elite…
On the subject, I wish we could see some of these promotions in Europe….I mean 100$= approx 80€..I would get one in an instant..
is there a divx player that can play 720p downloaded content,mine wont play it.only my pc can,
good question robert
@ Numlock
I’m with you mate. Here in Australia the cheapest Toshiba hddvd player retails for $650, and that one doesn’t even do 1080p, only 1080i. That’s how cheap it is. 1080p out here will set you back a minimum of $850.
As per usual, the yanks don’t know how good they’ve got it.
hope sony loses, less money to try to find me
now, that’s a journalistic masterpiece.
my math teacher would’ve killed me for rounding 90,000 sales up to 100,000 sales. And I even predicate that thoshiba only sold about 86,000 players and told their press office to round that number up
maybe the next website quotes rlslog’s headline and makes it “more than 100,000 players”…
Flooding the market with cheap players is a good way to try and end the HD / BR debate, since porn isn’t going to decide it like the BETA / VHS issue of yesteryear.
@robert
just hook your pc up to your tv… problem solved.
90,000 or 100,000 what is it?
Someone want to trade my $90,000 for their $100,000 of the same currency please?
We don’t even have this player here afaik (Netherlands). And that new “cheap” PS3 goes for 399 euro (~585 USD). I want that player for 100 bucks too! It’s like they sell last years crap as “the latest hi-end stuff” over here for twice the price.
Ok, i dont see any price change.. its 229.28 at Walmart and 399.99 at Best Buy. Did I miss this sale?!
Hey Rob,
You’ll have to wait for a while like we did for years before the first DivX\XviD DVD players started arriving. Nobody supports mastroka .MKV’s or .M4V’s unless it’s an HTPC.
And nobody in the scene is really using the HD DivX codec so this list of certified HD DivX DVD Players is useless:
http://www.divx.com/products/hw/browse.php?c=7
Then we have VideoHelp.com’s list which you can do a search and just check off DivXHD/XviDHD, but then I question the validity of most of those players on the list.
I bet the designers of the current crop of DivX players are watching the net’s latest titles of HD encoded titles and looking to include support. Takes one to know one, so they’re downloaders too. Maybe in a year we’ll have the first player which will play Evil Dead 2.MKV.
Also, the latest HD DVD\Blueray players should have enough horse power to decode these files too, so all they would really need is a firmware update. But it’s more likely they’ll just try to sell you a new player since they don’t make money including it in something you’ve already payed for.
Then there’s the argument if they include support for HD files are they supporting the pirate community. Well, they do it now with the DivX\XviD players. It’s all about money. I’m sure they saw how much money Philips was making in their DivX players so everyone wanted a piece of the action. It’ll most likely be the same with HD files.
In the end, just be patient since they’ll come eventually.
Sony still says it is a stalemate with the hd-dvd/blu-ray war?
Not likely once you bring the price down from a totally insane number like 999$. If blu-ray and hd-dvd came down to the same price I’m sure you would see both of them being bought anyways so its not really a stalement as far as format as much as price advantage.
Hey Danny,
I don’t they are. They all say “Support 800×600 resolution DIVX movie”. That’s not 720. It sounds like they’re just 720\1080 upconversion dvd players.
“High Definition DVD player output 1280X720P” means upconversion.
Smart move from the HD-DVD camp. In the end the customers will decide who wins, not the big companies like Sony and Toshiba.
It is a good move. I would hope the format war ends soon for the consumers sake. Never-the-less, I haven’t used a disk in quite awhile. So I can wait it out. I like to download and watch right on my pc.
more p0rn!
Please, I know this is off-topic but could you post the release of Craig David’s new album. This is a must!
Craig_David-Trust_Me-2007-404
Customers wont be the one who decide this.
When the big hollywood studios finally decide who they are going to get behind, they will have decided for us.
Personally I have got a PS3 and the fact that it is an awesome console plus it has free online capabilities and is also a bluray player. It also upscales my current DVD collection.
The cool thing is that I didnt buy it for playing bluray, but now im buying loads of movies for it.
I think this is fantastic news! I can think of nothing better than S0ny squirming in their pants at the thought of so many HDDVD players getting sold.
HDDVD is the progression of DVD it also has more backing in the IT world and clearly the players are cheaper to produce ( which in the end could make HDDVD the winner )
Sony has its blue thing in its over priced or *cough*underspeccheapassps3* That sells for around $650 AU dollars. Hell I’ll consider buying one to help hold the door open to my computer room but thats about it.
End of the day I’m a HD DVD supporter and hey somebody’s gotta bring balance to the force.
I love the war between the two formates! It’s good for both BR + HDDVD fans because of the continual rapid decrease in costs, and don’t forget that now HD DVD is bringing the fight up to the next level the real money backers will be put to the test. The faster you produce something like a BR or HD player the faster your costs spiral.
Lol, sony doesnt really need to squirm…..
Overall Bluray is winning. Only place where HD-DVD is winning would be in USA ONLY.
All of the numbers of which format brought the most…. are pretty bias. Since they only take into consideration AMERICA.
Ive been to asian countries lately, such as Hong Kong, Japan, Europe.
I live in Australia too.
I have YET to see 1 HD-DVD or 1 HD-DVD Player ACTUALLY stocked on shelf. In any of those countries.
The largest Entertainment retailer Jb-Hi-Fi in Australia doesnt even stock HD-DVd.
You go in and ask them, they will say “we can order it in for you, however we do not stock them”.
Sony *AMERICA* maybe squirming cuz of the numbers of HD-DVD players sold in america is high. however SONY INTERNATIONAL, wont be, cuz other countries just clearly wont accept it. lol.
Good points Mr Anon.
And like I said, this battle of the High Def media wars can ONLY be good for us the consumer.
guys before u get this know that its highest resolution is 1080i