Hybrid HD player from Samsung and Toshiba ?? (1 Viewer)

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/06...g_and_toshiba/

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/21...mat_hd_player/


Hope someone can sift through this and get us the truth one way or the other. Hence the ?? in the title.

Those articles were dated Jun 21 & June 22... Days later on June 23, Samsung back pedals:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-ente...yer-182876.php
Then on June 27, Toshiba throws a curve ball:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsar...BA.xml&src=rss

It's all a guessing game on what goes behind corporate closed doors. But I think these subjects have been discussed on multiple threads.

Meanwhile, I just noticed the Best Buy website has removed the "order now" option for the HD-A1. This coupled with reports that Best Buy is refusing to sell the A1 to customers in it's stores is troubling.

This sucks...Toshiba needs to do something and do it now. Even with lackluster quality so far Blu-Ray is going to smoke HD-DVD with Best Buy pulling this kind of crap.

Just when I finished posting... Here's the latest and greatest on Samsung stance dated June 28:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3059

This whole thing's peculiar...

I'll say this much: I'm definitely on the side of format unification.

I also was/am on the side that was against a format war to begin with.

Last summer was the last opportunity for a combined standard. Sony is too far along with the PS3 to change anything as major as the standards it uses. Any movie that will be played with the PS3 will have to strictly adhere to the current Blu-Ray specs. For the $500-$600 dollars they will be charging for the PS3, movie sales will have to play a large part in it's overall success if it's to stand any chance of convincing consumers it's worth a $200 premium over the XBOX 360.

The only way Sony would even begin to agree on a new standard would be if it is using the physical BD standard since the PS3 will be shipping in under 5 months. Unless the blue laser pickup in the current HD-DVD players can read Blu-Ray discs, then Toshiba would have to abandon all the current players sold. How can Toshiba even consider obsoleting all the players it has sold? I would be fairly angry if I paid for a product and barely 3 months later Toshiba is already talking about bailing on it.

There is no such thing as "Unification" when dealing with this Format War. Please use one of the following terms, "Surrender, Concede, Submit, Forfeit, Yield, Succumb, Acquiesce, Comply, Concur, Obey, Observe, or Conform".

Seriously, this is not DVD+R vs DVD-R where both formats can read the format that SD DVD movies are produced. Think of it as a physical media battle like VHS vs Beta. A Universal player would mean 2 different hardware components and studios only want to produce 1 physical media. So it wouldnt matter if you have a both Beta/VHS slots or both HD-DVD/Blu-Ray lasers. Bottom line is the studios will produce 1 HD media format.

How about..."assimilate?"

or the old adage..."Peace, through superior fire power." So far, BD is firing blanks.

In the end, the consumer will get shafted, much as it has on DVD-A and SACD, both abysmal failures from a market point of view.

Well, some people including me believes that Sony probably paid off Best Buy to not sell HD-DVD players. There was a good story online at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=691699 from someone who mentioned about how Best Buy employees are forcing Blu-Ray on people.

If Sony is forcing Best Buy to do this, it doesn't really surprise me espically since Sony is notorious for forcing stores to put the Playstation 2 stuff in the front of their stores & their competitors stuff in the back.

BB is still selling HD-DVD players, they've never stopped.

Check the Amazon.com rankings of the Toshiba HD-A1 and compare with the Samsung BDP-1000

http://www.amazon.com/gp/comparison/...N.5=B00078GLJY

Ugh, stupid long URL...anyway.

Toshiba HD-A1 #429 in Electronics
Samsung BDP-1000 #4,227 in Electronics

UPDATE:

Toshiba HD-A1 NOW #291 in Electronics
Samsung BDP-1000 #4,581 in Electronics

WOW!

Those numbers are essentially meaningless. I see you failed to note that the RCA HDV5000 (a rebadged HD-A1) is number 6486 in sales and it sells for exactly what the Toshiba does. All the numbers tell me is that most people are steering clear of Samsung and RCA because the manufacturers are perceived as lower quality brands.

It will be interesting to see the rankings once a powerhouse Blu-ray brand shows up on the market. If the rankings remain low once SONY, PANASONIC, or PIONEER are on the market then BD has got something to worry about.

I'm not so sure how many retailers are selling the RCA HDV5000? I know CC and Walmart sells it, but I don't know any other retailers. I had that player and it did a fine job, though, RCA's CS leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to firmware updates and such which is why I exchanged it for a HD-XA1.

I don't think that the RCA branded machine would actually be lower quality than the Toshiba, since I believe the machines are basically manufactured on the same line: just different nameplates. However, I do think that there are negative perceptions attached to the SAMSUNG and RCA brands, justified or not, that cause a lot people to steer clear. On a personal note, I would be more inclined to purchase the TOSHIBA over SAMSUNG, even if the roles were reversed in regards to cost: that is just me, though.

If hybrids do show up then the artillery duel between the two camps becomes moot. The new arguments will be, " do these jack-of-all-trades players screw-up the picture quality on both formats?" Or, howabout, "Ever since they incorporated BD into my HD DVD player my PQ has been lousy. Were unis a mistake?'.....or, of course, it could be vice versa. Anybody looking forward to that?

Edited to add:

I noticed something interesting about the weight of Toshiba's HD A1 and the RCA HDV5000. Amazon shows the A1 weighing in at 10lbs while the 5000 weighs in at 19.7. Is that a typo or is it possible that the 5000 is actually a rebadged XA-1? Part of the weight discrepancy could be due to the double chassis. I'm just curious about that.

Amazon’s sales stats are only for Amazon orders. Perhaps not necessarily indicative of a general trend, but they are probably very indicative of how one market segment (those who buy online) makes purchases.