The most recent news item for Toshiba and HD DVD is that their first HD DVD player, the HD-A1 which made its debut in April of 2006, just got a firmware 3.0 update. No word just yet on updates for the later models.
A pseudo-news item about a Toshiba Blu-ray machine came up a few days ago when it was revealed that their Brazilian unit was offering a home theater PC (HTPC) sporting a combo HD DVD/Blu-ray drive. Writers who are less familiar with covering HD DVD and Blu-ray were quick to suggest that this was Toshiba’s attempt at getting into Blu-ray. Technically, this is a Toshiba product and it does do Blu-ray, so it’s not like these reporters were lying. However, it’s not a mainstream player from the big Toshiba mothership, and in the end there’s no reason to expect this Brazilian product at Best Buy, Circuit City or Amazon any time soon.
In early March, Toshiba put a final number on what they’d be writing off as they got out of the HD DVD business. Now that those documents are filed, this amount made news again and you might have read that Toshiba’s earnings were down 95%, representing their first fall in profits in three years. Toshiba is not a one-trick pony and has good prospects in other product areas, so don’t feel too bad for them. They’re still active in the DVD forum and I’m sure we’ll be hearing about at least one or two measures aimed at keeping DVD technology afloat as the world switches to Blu-ray or other ways to get movies.
The big news in movie deals has been that you have to look over in Australia or Europe for the HD DVD fire sales. Australian sites such as EzDvd and Dvdcrave have been selling a lot of discs for prices as low as USD $8.50 and under. Some of these titles are already around $10 at Amazon, Fry’s or DeepDiscount, but it seems that the stores from down under are offering more discs from more studios at these low prices.
On the European front, the various Amazon sites have had some good deals on discs too, but the currency conversion rate from Pounds and Euros is not as favorable when compared to the Aussies. Still, there are some really interesting titles there, many of which were only available on Blu-ray here.
There’s no need to worry that European or Australian discs won’t work with your US player. Region encoding was never enforced on HD DVD discs, and there’s no such thing as PAL incompatibility on HD. Except for the fact that a European disc may have different language options, the movies themselves will work just fine.
Shipping costs don’t really weigh down the final price much, and it might take a few more days to get discs internationally, but if you’re definitely not getting into Blu-ray any time soon, then this may be a good way to get some of the movies you had always wanted. Don’t forget that Paramount has still not come out with any solid Blu-ray plans, and Universal’s first Blu-ray discs barely scratch the potential catalog they had put out on HD DVD. This means that the only way to enjoy certain titles on HD discs is still via HD DVD.
Most of the deals from the start of April are still in effect at US-based stores, and you can revisit this April 4 posting for more information about those sales.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Can imported standard dvds be played on an hd dvd player, since imported HDDVDS can? I’ve always wanted the 2 disc special edition of The Fifth Element from the UK. I love that cover.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Your HD DVD player will enforce whatever regional restrictions are on the discs you play. HD DVD titles were typically not bound to any region, thus you can freely import them. Since DVD discs often are region-coded, you won’t be able to play them if they’re from another region.
This thread at the AVS forum discusses firmware hacking on US players so they’ll work with import DVDs, but it seems a little risky: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=981941