Toshiba is reloading in the HD disc war
 

http://www.crn.com/hardware/205604377

These new prices are attractive, especially considering the free movies offered.

It shows they're willing to put up perhaps a long, protracted fight.

I'm not for any side myself; I just like good deals.

I'm with you, plus I just want to see someone win so we can move on and I can start buying DVDs again! :)

Are they reloading, or selling off excess inventory before it becomes worthless??? Either way, this move makes sense for them.

Dang. I paid $307 for the Toshiba A20 a few months ago. Now the equivalent player is $174.

It's a great player, though, especially the upscaler, which is better than I expected.

I think the only way the HD-DVD format gets saved is if someone comes out with a dual-format player for $300 or less. That is, I don't see HD-DVD winning this anymore -- I think their best hope is co-existence.

My personal opinion is that they know they have now lost - this is exactly that - clear the stock and move on....

Wowzers
 

I think they need to start attacking some new markets as well. With HD camcorders poised to have a stellar sales year they need to be working with software and hardware providers to push HD DVD as the way to view not only movie content but your own home made (read porn..j/k) collections.

They could deliver a free download that takes AVCHD video and turns it into something that plays easily on HD DVD players. Come on $150 is nothing for something with these specs. I don't regret my HD DVD purchase and I'll continue to buy movies for the right price.

I agree with Dave -- blowout the inventory time. Too bad they never made a recordable product for us. IMO, they blew it.

IMHO, Toshiba Europe simple idiots:
1.Price of HDDVD players for european citizens cost to 2-3 times more than for US.
2.Every european owner of HDV/AVCHD 1080i50 camcorder is potential buyer HDDVD player, but Toshiba Europe not released firmware to support 50Hz HD/HDV/AVCHD content (25p/50i)!!!
Authoring soft like Ulead DMF6+ and Nero8 able to do HDDVD with HD 25p/50i content, but toshiba can not release firmware update more than 15 months!!!

P.S. I'm sorry for word "idiots", but can not find equal for loosers.

Even with heavy discounts, why would anyone want technology which clearly seems like it will be obsolete soon?

Their DVD library will be scant with most majors siding with Blu Ray.

HD-DVD technology incl HDi is better than rotten bluray discs with long promised java-BDlive.
HD-DVD is an evolution and bridge between optical and digital download with affordable price for USA consumer ;)

Bluray w/o pressure from HDDVD will be 25GB disc only with bad coded mpeg2 (see tread on avsforum about sony's hardware "pro coder" ).

HDDVD from start is solid technology with new feature through
firmware update (hddvd player can operate as network media player and play HD content from USB flash, hdd)
New feature of BD players only with new hardware - just buy new generation player instead of free firmware update:D

I wish Toshiba would release a firmware to play raw .TS files burned on a DVD-R.

A $150 dollar player that did that would make it a pretty awesome tool for HDV Camcorder folks.

[And the .TS file could be in the future be copied back onto a computer and re-authored in whatever format you wish ie. Blu-Ray disc etc.]

It would be cheaper than what a AveL Link Player cost a year and half ago.

The Sony Playstation 3 can already do all of the things you mentioned. It gets firmware updates every one or two months that add or improve its functionality. It's already a network media center with built-in Ethernet and Wi-Fi. It was just upgraded to Blu-ray profile 1.1 and will be be upgraded to 2.0 (also called BD Live) with another firmware update later this year. With the PS3 it's NOT necessary to buy new hardware to take advantage of new features. A quick and simple firmware update is all that's needed. HD-DVD did indeed start with a finalized specification while the Blu-ray specification was still in development. HD-DVD is good, solid technology, but it's not "superior" in any way. It simply had a good head-start over Blu-ray. Now, Blu-ray is catching up fast on the features, and HD-DVD rapidly failing, primarily because of marketing blunders by Toshiba and the HD-DVD consortium. As for file formats, HD-DVD and Blu-ray both use exactly the same codecs, so there's no advantage or superiority for either format in that regard.

And just for the record, I own both formats. I have a Playstation 3 and a Toshiba HD-XA2, which is a fabulous machine! I'd have been happy with whichever format ultimately won. I always suspected it would be Blu-ray, but never expected it to come to a head in quite this way. HD-DVD is gasping its last breath. It's time to bury it and move on.

Oh man this is funny ...

Downfall of HD DVD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=friS4OOcdgQ

Oh thank you, it hurts to laugh that hard.

Gahahahahaha. That video definitely sums it up. =D

there still is a market for HD-DVD, by simply replacing the DVD.
Same price for disk and players (apparently we are already close to this) and mass producing burners. they killed the product by not producing burners.
everybody of us would be recording SD or HD video on HD-DVD if only we could burn a disk.
Plants producing DVD players and DVD and DVD-R would be too happy to be saved by simple reconversion to HD-DVD. just change the laser head and the decoder chip and you can continue to produce high value product instead having the perspective to fight blu-ray by decreasing prices and benefits margins on obsolete DVD products.
The guys at Toshiba really need some marketing refreshement training..