Hardware prices dropping fast.

[Frankie]

Glancing through my local paper this morning and came across an add for the Toshiba HD player for $188 and that includes 3 movies. Right beside it was the Sony for $499

Unbeliveable how fast these prices have dropped. If nothing else this format war has helped to drop the prices on hardware.

F

[sub780lime]

Provides a lot of hope for Christmas. If they stick at those prices, the Christmas push could be great.

[rixrex]

Baically means that HD is getting serious and the difference in price will stall BD if BD players stay high.

I've seen it all happen before.

[dugpa]

I'm sure we'll see cheap prices on all the Toshiba players as stores clear them out to make way for the G3 units that are starting to ship. Might be time to pick up a XA2 finally.

[sub780lime]

Originally Posted by dugpa

I'm sure we'll see cheap prices on all the Toshiba players as stores clear them out to make way for the G3 units that are starting to ship. Might be time to pick up a XA2 finally.

good point. Now that I have the new receiver I really want loseless.

[Jeff003]

Well hopefully blueray prices will come down that low.I'm leaning more toward blueray when I buy my next player.

[MooglePorn]

PS3 will be $399 this Xmas... not sure about BD stand-alones.

I would be turned off the $200 HD DVD player simply because it's 1080i only.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by MooglePorn

PS3 will be $399 this Xmas... not sure about BD stand-alones.

I would be turned off the $200 HD DVD player simply because it's 1080i only.

Well, the average joe definitely wouldn't be turned off as his beloved sports and other HDTV programming are all 720p/1080i - no 1080p. To them, HD is HD.

And, the enthuisast would likely know that 1080p60 is not a very useful feature - the best HDTVs look better when sent 1080i than 1080p60 because they can deinterlace the former to 1080p24 while the latter's cadence is busted resulting in it being stuck with 1080p60 judder. And, simply decent HDTVs look the same when sent 1080i because they deinterlace them to 1080p60 resulting in the same picture, sometimes better because deinterlacers in players generally arent all that great unless its a $500+ player with Reon. The only time 1080p60 is truly useful is when you have a TV that completely sucks at deinterlacing like some of the cheap Westinghouse models - but its doubtful an enthusiast would have one of those anyway. 1080p24 output - which a good chunk of "1080p" players don't support - can be useful if you have a very high end TV, but then again if you have a very high end TV (and actually know what 1080p24 is) you probably aren't looking at a $199 standalone.

So, the HD-A3 certainly has its target market.

[MooglePorn]

I was just saying for me it is a turn off.

[limacharliewhiskey]

I might consider picking up a HD-DVD player in the next few months, but the cost of the hardware isn't really a major concern for me. Selection for software titles is. It's getting better as time goes by, but right now, I can barely find 10 titles that I'm interested in getting.

I'm predicting that it'll be at least 6 months before I pick up a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.

[Shadowman82]

Most people who assume Blu-ray will win always do so because it tends to offer more titles than HD-DVD from more studios and it still has a large install base thanks to the PS3.

I think however even if the prices for some players come down this low I'm just not sure average joe cares enough about either one of these formats to bother getting into it at this point and the fact that there are two ain't helping matters .

[videoworx]

Panasonic has officially announced their new model, the DMP-BD30 (1.1 compliant). It's $499, so street price should be a bit less.

[Iguana Man]

Originally Posted by Shadowman82

I think however even if the prices for some players come down this low I'm just not sure average joe cares enough about either one of these formats to bother getting into it at this point and the fact that there are two ain't helping matters .

I think if both sides pump up the marketing of their respective sides soon (real soon), all that marketing is gonna make HD the 'new' thing and if prices are low enough, people will buy. They may not understand the two sides are against each other, but they will buy since everyone wants to be the one who got the cool gift for someone this Christmas.

That's how I see it anyway.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by videoworx

Panasonic has officially announced their new model, the DMP-BD30 (1.1 compliant). It's $499, so street price should be a bit less.

Not a bad unit - the best BD value I've seen in standalones thus far - though it would be disappointing if it lacked internet connection for firmware/web-features as even the $199 HD-A2 has this feature. I didn't see if that article specified whether it had one or not.

[Shadowman82]

Originally Posted by Iguana Man

I think if both sides pump up the marketing of their respective sides soon (real soon), all that marketing is gonna make HD the 'new' thing and if prices are low enough, people will buy. They may not understand the two sides are against each other, but they will buy since everyone wants to be the one who got the cool gift for someone this Christmas.

That's how I see it anyway.

Not necessarily as I said it may not even be the price that has so far kept average Joe away . These days they seem to care more about portability rather than quality as is evident with music . Average Joe may just not care enough about the quality difference between SD DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray .

Also while players may be getting cheap most stores still have a relatively small offering of HD titles in stock compared to SD-DVD so that may not exactly make average Joe want to buy .

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Shadowman82

Not necessarily as I said it may not even be the price that has so far kept average Joe away . These days they seem to care more about portability rather than quality as is evident with music . Average Joe may just not care enough about the quality difference between SD DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-ray .

Also while players may be getting cheap most stores still have a relatively small offering of HD titles in stock compared to SD-DVD so that may not exactly make average Joe want to buy .

I disagree. Music is something you do "on the go" and movies are something you do when you are relaxing at home. Lots of people do just listen to music at home, but most people are listening in their cars, or working out, or walking to work or on public transit, etc. When they are at home in the evenings, they are watching movies on a dvd player on their main TV. They aren't watching it on a laptop or on their cellphone or ipod. If they have kids in the car, they may turn on those little screens, but those still run off a dvd player.

Observing people in airports and on public transit, I see a few people watch movies on laptops or psp's. But if there are any watching programming on ipods, they tend to be TV programming like LOST or the Colbert Report or something like that. Portability with movies has not been something as desirable as it has for music.