Everyone wants to know why Toshiba's HD-DVD player can be sold for $499 and there are no BluRay players out there for $499.
HELLO? PS3 for $499! And it comes with HDMI 1.3 and TrueHD decoding (with DTS HD decoding in the future?) And guess what -- you can play games too!:yikes
Have any of you seen the prices for the new standalone HD-DVD players coming out next year. Toshiba's new $499 player does away with the analog out ports and only provides HDMI (but not HDMI 1.3). Their top player will be priced at $899 with analog out and HDMI 1.3. And the Samsungs can now be purchased for under $900. So how is THIS cheaper?
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That is right, those newer HD-DVD drives are gonna cost (money or performance). So by next spring we are going to be looking at a more even playing field. I am still not convinced that the market is not going to support both formats. Man, the world is big and I can easily see BluRay dominating places like Europe and Asian and HD-DVD making it big here in the America.
But I am telling you, if those other BluRay player manufactures start delivering product and the studios only making movies for the BluRay market don't change their direction HD-DVD will not maintain the lions share of the market nor will they ever be able to catch up. It is a simple matter of mathmatics.
Hpman, I have already purchased 4 BD titles and I don't even have a PS3 yet. However, my daughter is #50 at a Sony Store for a 60GB so if I cannot get one by Christmas she will get it for me. I have predicted that the atach rate for BD movies will be signifacantly higher then the games-- and this is how Sony is going to make money.