Toshiba HD-A2 sells over 90,000 for the weekend (1 Viewer)

[London Lawson]

http://www.videobusiness.com/article...l5ODE0MS5odG1s

 

[Jerome Grate]

Loving Toshiba's move towards making High Def DVDs affordable. But so far they have not been able to completely overcome the studio issue. Long, long way to go for that. I certainly think Sony should read the writing on the wall here. Toshiba's risk by lowering their prices (once again) has now reached the market that will determine the outcome of the competition. Hear that Sony, that the noise pushing you to move with crowd.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, I imagine the idea is that if they get enough HD-DVD players into consumer hands, that will force the issue with the studios. I guess the question is how many players Toshiba has to sell before the other studios see it as a market they really should be paying attention to.

 

[Bob Black]

Seeing that Toshiba was able to sell more players in a 3-day span than the best-selling Blu-Ray stand-alone player since inception (Sony), this is truly amazing news. A few more sales of this calibre and HD DVD should reclaim the software lead in 2008.

 

[Chris S]

The true question may be how many of these players went to "new" households that don't already have a player and how may went to those looking to upgrade? I know my purchase last week was to upgrade my HD-A1.

Toshiba and Sony both need to really push into the new household market to truly make these formats viable in the long run.

 

[Shane Martin]

Chris,
While a small sample, I know the majority of the ones sold at the store I bought at were upgrade models so I wouldn't expect a bump in software sales.

 

[Jin E]

I know the small sampling of my office had 6/6 people in my office of about 50 people buying into HDM for the first time with the $99 A2.

I bought an extra for my brother for Christmas, so that's 7/7.

 

[bigluigi]

It's hard to imagine Toshiba doing anything beyond what they have already done. Just think, a quality Hi-Def player with 5 FREE HD DVDs included for the unheard of price of $98. It's almost a give-away!
It's time for Sony to step up to the plate.
I bought the last A2 available at my Walmart for a X-mas present. I hope Walmart follows up with a 2 for 1 online software special before and after the holidays to "feed" these players.

 

[Cees Alons]

In case of an upgrade, you need more information: where did the replaced player go. Did it go (a) to the bedroom, or another place in the same home, (b) to the garbage bin, or attic or similar, or (c) to another party not having a HD player before, e.g. through e-bay, to a brother or a student-daughter living on a campus.


Cees

 

[Bryan X]

I didn't get in on the A2 deal as they were sold out at my local Wally-World, but I did cave and get the A3 at Best Buy with 10 free movies for $199.

I planned on staying out of the fray until the dust settled in this war, but the $98 Wal-Mart deal convinced me to get in. After striking out at Wal-Mart, I couldn't shake 'buy bug' over the weekend and when I saw the deal at Best Buy Sunday, I dove in.

So mine is 'new customer' to HDM. I looked at getting some movies at Wal-Mart but the selection was limited and their price wasn't real good. I'll be hitting Best Buy Friday and will pick up some additional discs then.

 

[Chris S]

That's a very good point. So far mine has been relegated to the floor but I imagine it will be finding a new home sometime soon.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

This irritates me because they could have sold a heckuva lot more units ... if only each store had more units to sell. My Walmart was out of the A2's also. So I went for the BB A3 deal too.

I don't care about HD DVD vs BD. I care about HD. The low price of the A3 (and the 9 free movies) got me in the door. But I will go dual format as a soon as the LG BH200 becomes more widely available, and/or as soon as the Samsung 5000 comes out. My A3 is an interim player. For those of you thinking the Walmart/BB deals will change the HD DVD vs BD war, personally, I don't think so. In fact, I am already ordering HD DVD *and* BD discs for when I go dual format.

 

[ppltd]

No matter whether they were purchased by new 'HD' consumers, as replacements, or as second units, the numbers are amazing. It also seems to be the first step in roving that price may be the issue.

 

[Ron-P]

Blu-ray still owns the software side and unless HD-DVD can gain some of that it still doesn't have much of a chance no matter how cheap the players are. Honestly, I don't care who wins, both formats are great and I own both but dropping player prices is just a small part in this war.

 

[ReggieW]

It still owns the software side -- but by a margin that appears to be getting smaller every week. It seems only logical that with the growth of hardware, the software side will only follow this growth in kind.

 

[troy evans]

Exactly. I do recall there also being a $14 to $17 HD DVD selection at both Wal-Mart and BB during this weekend sales event. Bluray had great success with thier BOGO sales during Transformers week. Seems likely HD DVD would have had simular success during this time.

 

[Robbie R]

The 3 Walmart Specials I picked up last week all went to New HDM homes.

 

[David_Jr]

Count me as a "new to the format" sale. I know 2 people who missed out on the sale that would have been "new to the format" sales.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

It's encouraging to see sales increasing in the US, but machine pricing in Canada is still ridiculous. The A2 is still $200, even with the dollar as high as it is. I would be tempted by an A3 in the $150 range, but with reports of a high percentage of defective units, I'm not about to buy from anywhere I can't easily replace it, and the free disc offer isn't open to Canadians (at least when buying from the US). Add to that the fact that there is very little in the way of content that I'm interested in, I'm not seeing a real need to dive in yet.

 

[RAF]

Yes, according to numbers being released Blu-ray still holds the edge in SW sales. However, with the influx of more HD-DVD players into people's homes this will soon shift. And on the title side, Transformers was just the first way of titles that will be extremely popular and are HD-DVD specific. Next up is Shrek 3 (not a favorite of mine but sure to be a big seller) and wait until Bee Movie (Paramount) hits the HD-DVD market. Blu-ray loves to promote the recently released Ratatouille (a great title and a tremendous looking and sounding Blu-ray disc!) as being the best reviewed movie of 2007 - but Bee Movie is getting raves as well in some cases even better reviews.

What's this all mean? The total number of sales of either Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs is still just a very, very small drop in the overall DVD bucket so claims that one side winning the "war" based on sales numbers really isn't statistically significant. What will really get things rolling are installed machines in the homes. My personal perspective, after attending the Blu-ray Festival in LA a few weeks ago is that the combo players, when introduced in sufficient numbers and at popular pricing, will end this war. Once a viewer has a single machine to handle any disc they want (so that the choice of movies becomes the driving force rather than one machine over another) it really won't matter. Until then, many of us have chosen to go the two player route and as prices drop this becomes a realistic option (albeit a bit confusing to the average non-HT person). Heck, I paid a LOT more for my first DVD player in 1997 (in 1997 dollars to boot!) than it now takes to get quality players from both camps. Careful shopping can get you both players for under $500 total right now and the prices will drop as the competition heats up.

Remember, it's all about the movies and soon it won't matter which format they are on. Unlike Beta/VHS, both HD formats can play in a single machine. Enjoy them both. They are both great.

my 2 (format) cents.