$314 for the Toshiba HD-DVD Player?! (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=629952

Talk about a price war! Will the PS3 be available at that price?

 

[Edwin-S]

That price turned out to be a mistake on BBs part. The price was corrected to $499US pretty quick . The ones who ordered are still debating whether BB will honor the price. My guess is they won't, since they don't have to.

 

[Travis Hedger]

Yeah too good to be true.

Hopefully though players will start coming down in price fast like DVD did.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

$499 is MSRP. Street price tend to be around 60%-70% of MSRP. Therefore, although it's been corrected back to the MSRP, chances are the players will be streeting at approximately $300-$350

 

[Cees Alons]

I payed more for my first SD-player, a Toshiba too, back in 1997.


Cees

 

[Kelly Grannell]

As mentioned on a different thread, I paid around US$200-ish for Panasonic DVD-A100 in March 1997.

 

[Matt Stone]

Wow, that's a great price. I paid $260 for my Tosh SD2109 in October '99.

 

[Mike Heenan]

Why wouldn't Best Buy honor the price, if the orders went through while that price was posted?

 

[Travis Hedger]

There terms of service state they are not responsible for pricing errors and will correct when noticed.

 

[Will_B]

That was still about $114 too much. If these formats are going to compete with DVD, they've got to be $200 or lower, IMO.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

It's not supposed to compete with SD DVD yet. Right now they are battling agains each other (BD vs HD DVD), when one format won, only then they will compete with SD DVD.

Heck, DVD competed with VHS and their intro price was around $500 (MSRP) vs Hi-fi VHS's $100 tag.

 

[Steve Christou]

I paid £420 ($740) for my first dvd player, multiregion JVC, back in 1999, six cheaper dvd players later and that first one remains the worst and least reliable to date.

Hopefully when I eventually make the leap from Standard-DVD to Ultra Definition-DVD, sometime in 2019, players will be at a decent affordable price.

 

[Jerome Grate]

I paid about 300 for my first player Pioneer DVD 414 and still going strong. It comes down a little more I just might get my feet wet.

 

[Will_B]

I hear you, I'm aware that the tactic is currently to aim only for the high end enthusiasts and the early adopters.

However, that tactic has been a failure in recent years (the failure of SACD and DVDA). It may be that today, they need to aim at general audiences.

I cast my vote in that direction, if it means I can get a $200 BluRay player by Xmas!

 

[Shawn Perron]

Seems to make sense. The other thing I was wondering is how Toshiba expects to get manufacturing support when they are driving the price down. At $500 they have the appearance of making a razor thin margin if they are making any profit at all. Where's your incentive to make a player for HD-DVD if it's being marketed as a bargain basement product?

 

[Will_B]

Out of synch on purpose! I hate to say it but the BluRay crowd is essentially saying they're willing to blow the first year. I hope that their plan to neglect regular consumers works.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Will,

that's not the whole blu-ray crowd...just Pioneer talking there. They've always aimed "hi end" first-off and then dropped prices. Sony typically does the same thing, though their more affordable gear isn't as far behind.

I'm more of the mind that it makes sense to give the rich videophiles their $$$ option while at the same time giving the videophiles-on-a-buget *their* option so they don't have to wait a year or two to dive into the format. Hopefully the PS3 will be the "poor man's BD player" near the format's launch with other more affordable players not too far after.



Toshiba is LOSING money on the gear. They are willing to sacrifice and lose a lot of $$$ on the hardware side to try to gain ground on the format adoption. Sony will also lose money on their PS3.

But as someone else in another thread said...it's like giving out free crack to people on the street. You lose money in that action...but once their addicted they come back for more and more. If either camp can establish their format for long-term viability, they stand to make much more in royalties and margins off of disc sales than they'll lose initically during the launch on gear. At least that's what they are hoping!!!

 

[Juan C]

Toshiba benefits from an agreement with Microsoft to jointly develop its DVD player.

Need I say more? Oh yeah: maybe it isn't Toshiba who'll eat the loss on their player.

 

[Rob_Walton]

What financial agreement are you refering to? MS are helping implement iHD (the interactive layer for menus and more on HD DVD), and are also planning on having an HD DVD add on drive for X360. I'm unclear how either of these arrangements will add much profit to the Toshiba kitty.

 

[Juan C]

Microsoft, Toshiba to jointly develop HD DVD players

Rob, I didn't say a 'financial' agreement. I said a joint development agreement. But then again, you can't develop anything without cash, now can you? And Toshiba's financial situation is not too healthy, what with the competition they get on LCD and the CES launch delay.