While the preannounced death of HD-DVD is sounding (although HD-DVD is not dead and will not be for some time) I think it is time to thank HD-DVD. Hear are my reasons:
1) Toshiba pushed prices to the mat. They could not be interested in profit simply because the BDA had too many CE manufacturers and too many Studios to overcome. So they drop prices on their players like a rock. Of course the other reason for doing this was to increase sales of players and when this did not inspire the consumer they started the 5 free giveaway. This forced the BDA to come as close as they could with prices of some players under $400 and heading to the sub $300 range now. And it also forced BDA studios to do BOGO's--that effectively reduced the price of BD's to the respectable range of regular DVD.
2) Universal's HD-DVD product was well done and PQ started out excellant right from the beginning. This push the BDA when they finally started to release product (who could forget the first release of The Fifth Element forcing Sony to redo the product and offer free replacement to those who purchased the sorry product in the first place.) to improve their product. By coming out of the gate first and strongly the HD-DVD camp pushed the BDA into providing better product alot faster then what would've been done if HD-DVD had not been around.
3) Toshiba quickly fixed problems with the first HD-DVD standalones and then polished their format to maturity very quickly. My hat is definately off to Toshiba for doing this. While the BDA has three steps to complete their move to BD-Live Java this has definately put somewhat of a cloud over a rather rosey picture for BD right now. At least we have 2.0 players on the way -- we just have to see the price get down for these new players to mainstream. Maybe HD-DVD can stay around long enough to force the BDA to get a move on. Big thanks to Toshiba who showed what could be done so that we know what we should expect from a 2.0 player.
Yes, I think it is indeed time to thank Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp for pushing the BDA to not only improve their products but to push the prices down on both players and movies and to constantly find ways to improve both players and the product they were putting on the BDs! Thanks!!
:
1) Toshiba pushed prices to the mat. They could not be interested in profit simply because the BDA had too many CE manufacturers and too many Studios to overcome. So they drop prices on their players like a rock. Of course the other reason for doing this was to increase sales of players and when this did not inspire the consumer they started the 5 free giveaway. This forced the BDA to come as close as they could with prices of some players under $400 and heading to the sub $300 range now. And it also forced BDA studios to do BOGO's--that effectively reduced the price of BD's to the respectable range of regular DVD.
2) Universal's HD-DVD product was well done and PQ started out excellant right from the beginning. This push the BDA when they finally started to release product (who could forget the first release of The Fifth Element forcing Sony to redo the product and offer free replacement to those who purchased the sorry product in the first place.) to improve their product. By coming out of the gate first and strongly the HD-DVD camp pushed the BDA into providing better product alot faster then what would've been done if HD-DVD had not been around.
3) Toshiba quickly fixed problems with the first HD-DVD standalones and then polished their format to maturity very quickly. My hat is definately off to Toshiba for doing this. While the BDA has three steps to complete their move to BD-Live Java this has definately put somewhat of a cloud over a rather rosey picture for BD right now. At least we have 2.0 players on the way -- we just have to see the price get down for these new players to mainstream. Maybe HD-DVD can stay around long enough to force the BDA to get a move on. Big thanks to Toshiba who showed what could be done so that we know what we should expect from a 2.0 player.
Yes, I think it is indeed time to thank Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp for pushing the BDA to not only improve their products but to push the prices down on both players and movies and to constantly find ways to improve both players and the product they were putting on the BDs! Thanks!!
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