Toshiba is reporting price cut is showing postive results (1 Viewer)

While still too early to tell just how much the price reduction (rebate) will increase sales to the Toshiba HD DVD players, the initial press release from Toshiba is promising.

That would seem to be good news.

They seem to be selling rather well and another price promotion is coming in mid June I think too?

Yes it is. And IMHO, if the sales keep up, it will probably be turned into a real price reduction.

Toshiba will take a financial hit, but in the long run, it could help push HD DVD sales closer to a critical mass. Seems that Toshiba is trying to find the price point for the mass market to move in. Here's hoping. Can 199.00 players be far behind?

What I want to see is if people are buying movies. A thread in the HD software area pointed out that a spike in HD DVD sales was apparently mainly due to an AVS buy day; I'm wondering if the people buying it are just buying one or two movies, sending away for the freebies (or grabbing two more with the Matrix promotion), and basically using it as an upscaling DVD player.

Time will tell. But it seems obvious to me that if you own an HD player, you will probably use it as an HD player.

Well, being a long-time HTF member and home theatre hobbyist I'm hardly a member of the general public, but the recent price reductions have convinced at least this individual to adopt HD DVD.

Although I don't own a player yet, I'll probably get one this summer, possibly with the help of a relative who will visit USA and should be able to pick up a Toshiba for me. I'm currently waiting for my online order of my first three HD DVDs to be delivered, thanks to the Deep Discount 20% off sale.

Although adopting a HD format at some point was only a matter of time for me, the Toshiba price reduction is exactly the reason I've chosen to jump in at this particular moment.

Marko,

I don't know if VE is shipping overseas (perhaps not), but no harm asking Robert Zohn...
Or did you do that already?

(I had mine sent - by another party who is not available now - and the VAT + shipping costs are stiff, but unless you know some friends who can take it, ahem, past customs on an airport, it's not that different.


BTW, does Amazon Germany ship to Finland? Or do you happen to know someone in Germany?)


Cees

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, Cees, they are much appreciated.

I have given some thought to importing a player from the USA, but I hesitate to place an online order as the VAT + duties would increase costs. If I can have a friend bring me a player personally, I can avoid that hassle.

Toshiba HD DVD players are also available here without having to resort to importing, but my first choice would be a US model as more than 90% of my DVD collection is Region 1 and I'd like to be able to use the Toshiba as an upconverting player for the majority of my SD collection. Therefore I'll avoid the European models for now.

The Xbox HD DVD add-on may also be an option, if the Xbox Elite with HDMI outputs is released here, but I'd really prefer a stand-alone player. The current prices of US models are great!

Marko,

Yes, I understand your reasoning, which is mostly the same as mine was!

The HD-Ax is not extremely small - I doubt if your friend could carry it unseen past customs or insist that is was an old machine he took with him to the US (and it will have a US power connector), so you would certainly avoid the rather high shipping costs, but possibly not customs and VAT, I assume.

Perhaps you could buy a machine from Robert Zohn at a very nice price and have it picked up by your friend? Maybe Robert would also be willing to test the machine first, to avoid another potential problem with imported machines....


Cees

I've been very disappointed with the selection of HD-DVDs available. Right now I'm pretty much using my A2 as an upscaling player. I've purchased 3 HD-DVDs so far and will probably buy a couple of more in the next week or so. I'm not really interested in replacing my existing DVD collection (about 300 DVDs), I want to see buy new releases. We were using a very cheap Sony DVD player that was several years old. When we got a new plasma I decided to get the A2, even if it meant using it mainly for upscaling, with the thought that eventually the number of current films released on HD-DVD would speed up.