Toshiba HD-DVD player is $100 this Friday at Walmarts nationwide.

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
I still want this more.

I'm happy buying on impulse every once in awhile. How I just need an HDTV in the living room to enjoy HD goodness throughout the house.

 

[Yreka]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX

Originally posted by: Yreka

Originally posted by: Yreka
Damn, missed out 🙁 Everyone around here is OOS..

I was on the fence about the $198 player too.. I can tell you one thing, after seeing them for $99 there is no way I am going to pay $200 now. Clearance sale or not.

$100 just became my new price point 😉

Ok I lied.. $120 is my new price point. Just got one from Crutchfield

Shows out of stock at Crutchfield.com for me now.

Yeah, its dead now.. It lasted all of 20 min.

They had it for $129 + 10 shipping with a $20 off coupon (+Tax in VA). Came out to $120 shipped for me.

 

[waggy]

man it took a while to update it.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence

Originally posted by: ElFenix
so does this thing play divx and maybe x.264 movies that i've burned? or do i need to keep my phillips hooked up?

You need your phillips still hooked up 🙁

The only negative i have about this player.

what a pain in the butt. still, can't argue with a $100 upscaling dvd player with a few movies that i'd probably have bought anyway. the fact that it does HD is a bonus.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
HD and bluray are both a total waste of time for 99.9% of people, but with an HD player this cheap, you can consider the war over. Sony lost (again), as they deserve to for their hubris.

I expected a better-worded argument from you. No wait, I didn't.

So Wal-Mart (along with Best Buy, Circuit City, and some online retailers) will have sold a lot of HD-A2s this week. Some estimate as high as 100,000-150,000 units between them. Even after this week, Toshiba will still have sold far less than 1 million hardware units this year.

During 2007, at the same time Toshiba was cutting HD DVD player sales estimates, Sony was struggling with PS3 sales as well. But even during months of "poor" sales, Sony sold roughly 100,000-135,000 units worldwide per week, during non-holiday months, at a $599/$499 price point. They have roughly 5.4 million PS3s sold to date (which is the same pace the X360 had for its first year).

Today (coincidentally, the same day Toshiba/Wal-Mart had their big sale), Sony launched their $399 PS3. This is the same mass-market price the X360 was successful with, selling 8+ million units in the US alone to date. Except the X360 only built on the relatively meager success of the original XBOX (which is stretching it, given that the original XBOX was in the red during its entire life-cycle). Sony is banking their sales on the success of the Playstation brand, which has sold 100+ million Playstations and 120+ million Playstation 2s worldwide to date. Even with a lower attach rate, the PS3 is one hell of a trojan horse with the Playstation brand behind it, and now they have a $399 price-point going into the holiday season.

I own both HD DVD and Blu-Ray movies. Don't mistake the fact that I'm not joining your HD DVD circle jerk as a sign of fanboyism; I just simply think there won't be an outright winner until one format gets an overwhelming lead (at least 4:1) over the other. Right now that is not the case. And with so many huge studios being exclusive to one format or another, I don't think we'll see a winner until next year.

But this HD-A2 sale will help HD DVD get back on equal footing with Blu-Ray going into 2008. Maybe they can gain (or entirely erase) the 2:1 sales lead Blu-Ray has year-to-date?

Walmart has spoken. If they are pushing HD, especially, that's it.

But are they? I'm sure the Wal-Mart higher-ups took notice of the fact that Best Buy was leading all retailers in high-definition content sales, and decided they needed to get some of that foot-traffic back to their stores. Sony couldn't cut Wal-Mart a deal on door-buster players (they didn't want to sour relationships with other Blu-Ray player manufacturers like Samsung, Panasonic, Pioneer, etc.), but Toshiba could since they are the sole HD DVD player manufacturer in the US. In fact, Toshiba had so many HD-A2s still sitting in their warehouse (actual sales were far short of projected sales for 2007), they needed to quickly liquidate their inventory on the eve of introducing their 3rd-generation players.

Today is Friday, a work day. While there are a good number of savvy consumers who got in on this deal, the average working Joe had no chance. By 10AM Friday morning, in my medium-sized metro area, all Wal-Marts were sold out of HD-A2s.

What will someone shopping at Wal-Mart this weekend see on the shelves? At my nearest Wal-Mart SuperCenter, they will see a $298 HD-A3 next to a $469 Sony Blu-Ray player; in the next isle over, they have a $399 PS3 w/ Spiderman 3 in the box. As for content, HD DVD and Blu-Ray shared an roughly equal amount of shelf space, with content pricing being the same.

Does it sound like Wal-Mart made their decision? Next Tuesday, they'll have Blu-Ray copies of Cars and Ratatouille on their shelf (along with boatloads of DVD copies). Wal-Mart is in the business of making money, and as of today, Disney has several of the highest selling standard definition and high definition titles on the market.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: techs
Well, I spoke with Toshiba support and the disk has to restart from the beginning whenever you turn off the player. He said it was a function of HD-DVD so thats a drawback. Not a big one, for me, though.
However, I can't update the firmware. I downloaded it to my pc and burned it on a disk like Toshiba said. Says incorrect version.
Toshiba support says I should try different burning software (I tried Nero 7 and DeepBurner).
So I asked for a disk to be sent. They are out of stock and backordered.
I tried to update via ethernet but says it can't find the server. I will try it with my router later instead of directly into my cable modem (despite the fact it did get an IP, subnet mask, etc). Maybe the server was down.

Did you burn it into a +R or a -R? The spec sheet only claims that it supports -R

 

[waggy]

not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: michaels
My wife surprised me with the Toshiba player and Clerks 2. Now before I open it should I open it or return it and get a 360 hd-dvd addon? I have a 720p/1080i tv

Clerks 2 looks like shit on HD-DVD. Trust me, I own it.

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Today is Friday, a work day. While there are a good number of savvy consumers who got in on this deal, the average working Joe had no chance. By 10AM Friday morning, in my medium-sized metro area, all Wal-Marts were sold out of HD-A2s.

I know one of the guys that I work with (who had to work today) picked one up 😕.

EDIT: For more description on Clerks 2's bad transfer, it looks very, very blotchy. I could take a picture to show ya and it's kind of easy to notice since the movie's a lot of talking and you tend to see people's faces a lot (that's where you tend to see the issues since the color doesn't change much in someone's face so it ends up blotching).

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: waggy
http://www.monoprice.com/produ...=1&format=1#largeimage


thinking of snagging this. its cheap and will do the trick until i get a new recieverwith HDMI onit.

?

that is a HDMI selector not converter (oh which they don't really exist except for HDMI to DVI)

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: waggy
not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

Street date is Nov. 6th, along with Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection.

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: techs
Well, I spoke with Toshiba support and the disk has to restart from the beginning whenever you turn off the player. He said it was a function of HD-DVD so thats a drawback. Not a big one, for me, though.
However, I can't update the firmware. I downloaded it to my pc and burned it on a disk like Toshiba said. Says incorrect version.
Toshiba support says I should try different burning software (I tried Nero 7 and DeepBurner).
So I asked for a disk to be sent. They are out of stock and backordered.
I tried to update via ethernet but says it can't find the server. I will try it with my router later instead of directly into my cable modem (despite the fact it did get an IP, subnet mask, etc). Maybe the server was down.

Did you burn it into a +R or a -R? The spec sheet only claims that it supports -R

Neither. It says it needs to be on a cd not a dvd.
I did get it updated when I connected it to my router, so I am a happy camper.

 

[pontifex]

well, stopped at wal-mart and they were all sold out.

they said some guy came in this morning and bought 22 of them. 22!! they really need to limit the amount you can buy. they're all on ebay right now i bet.

fucking greedy ass people.

 

[michaels]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: michaels
My wife surprised me with the Toshiba player and Clerks 2. Now before I open it should I open it or return it and get a 360 hd-dvd addon? I have a 720p/1080i tv

Clerks 2 looks like shit on HD-DVD. Trust me, I own it.

[

It looks nice on dvd to me, surely hd isn't any worse

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: waggy
not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

Street date is Nov. 6th, along with Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection.

I don't feel like copy/pasting your entire argument so I'll give the short response to what you wrote. If the PS3 numbers were all counted by the publishers as a 1:1 install base the war would be over. No publisher, regardless of any behind closed doors $$$ handed out by MS, would have any logical reason for going exclusive HD.

 

[Fingolfin269]

On another note, I picked up Lucky # Slevin and Blood Diamond from WM today. If you buy any one movie try to grab Blood Diamond if you can. It's the only Warner movie I could find and I'm doing my best to buy as many of those as possible. If you are HD-DVD friendly you understand why. 😉

 

[JasonCoder]

I strolled into my local walfart at about 2pm and there was a 5' tall stack of these players with $99 signs and HD-DVD logos plastered everywhere. Picked one up no problem. And I'm not in a major metro area.

Now along with bitching about how little HD content there is on my cable provider I get to bitch about the lack of HD-DVD rentals at my local LackLuster, I mean, BlockBuster. NetFlix here I come.

Thanks for starting this thread OP, this is a serious deal.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269
I don't feel like copy/pasting your entire argument so I'll give the short response to what you wrote. If the PS3 numbers were all counted by the publishers as a 1:1 install base the war would be over. No publisher, regardless of any behind closed doors $$$ handed out by MS, would have any logical reason for going exclusive HD.

Studios and retailers calculate profit based on the raw number of units they move, not based on attach rates.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: waggy
not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

Street date is Nov. 6th, along with Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection.

thats nice. BUT i seen it at walmart for sale today. I nearly purchased it.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: waggy
not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

Street date is Nov. 6th, along with Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection.

thats nice. BUT i seen it at walmart for sale today. I nearly purchased it.

You should have. I saw a Cars Blu-Ray demo disc at Best Buy on a 1080p LCD. Stunning. Easily a reference disc for all HDM.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: techs
Well, I spoke with Toshiba support and the disk has to restart from the beginning whenever you turn off the player. He said it was a function of HD-DVD so thats a drawback. Not a big one, for me, though.
However, I can't update the firmware. I downloaded it to my pc and burned it on a disk like Toshiba said. Says incorrect version.
Toshiba support says I should try different burning software (I tried Nero 7 and DeepBurner).
So I asked for a disk to be sent. They are out of stock and backordered.
I tried to update via ethernet but says it can't find the server. I will try it with my router later instead of directly into my cable modem (despite the fact it did get an IP, subnet mask, etc). Maybe the server was down.

Did you burn it into a +R or a -R? The spec sheet only claims that it supports -R

Neither. It says it needs to be on a cd not a dvd.
I did get it updated when I connected it to my router, so I am a happy camper.

Cool. Glad to hear it, as I was going to try it tonight. Anything special you had to do with your router? Why did it work with the router and not the modem directly?

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: waggy
not to nit pick jpeyton. BUt the walmart had Cars in blu-ray today! i almost got it.

Street date is Nov. 6th, along with Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection.

thats nice. BUT i seen it at walmart for sale today. I nearly purchased it.

You should have. I saw a Cars Blu-Ray demo disc at Best Buy on a 1080p LCD. Stunning. Easily a reference disc for all HDM.

is it? sigh.

well i have to go shopping tommorow. will pick it up then. damn you!


also nearly grabbed the bos set of spiderman in blu-ray. i wanted something in HD-DVD but they didn't have anything. well they had Transformers but they only ahd one copy and while looking at other DVD's someone esle snagged it.

 

[Pabster]

Cars is fantastic on BD.

For HD DVD I'd have to say Planet Earth is the best I've seen yet.

 

[SmoochyTX]

Scored two after work today - one for me and one for a co-worker. One more was still left on the display.

 

[chuckywang]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Scored two after work today - one for me and one for a co-worker. One more was still left on the display.

How did you get one so late?

 

[SmoochyTX]

Originally posted by: chuckywang

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Scored two after work today - one for me and one for a co-worker. One more was still left on the display.

How did you get one so late?

I didn't get off work until 5:00. Drove to Wal-Mart using my car. Walked into Wal-Mart. Took a cart. Went straight to electronics department. Took two players off the display and put in my cart. Paid the cashier. Walked out of Wal-Mart. Drove home. Posted on ATOT about it.

:laugh: