Pre-orders are now being taken for Toshiba’s third-generation HD DVD players. They’ve been added to our “Shop for HD DVD Players” page, and you can pay good old Amazon a direct visit through any of these links:
- HD-A3 1080i HD DVD player. This is the new entry-level model from Toshiba and lists for $299.
- HD-A30 1080p HD DVD player, listing at $399.
- HD-A35 1080p HD DVD player. Toshiba’s top-of-the-line player lists for $499.
Amazon’s pages on these players are a little bare at the moment without even product pictures, but that should be fixed up any day now. My advice is not to pre-order these players until Amazon posts links to the various promotions that were announced at CEDIA last week such as the Star Trek Phaser and the all-new “5 Free Movies” deal that applies on these new machines. That way, there’s much less explaining to do if you wind up with the wrong receipt dates for various offers. Luckily, the 300 + Bourne Identity part of the promotion includes the movies right in the box.
I’m also happy to recommend Value Electronics as yet another source for these new HD DVD players with competive prices including all the promised bundles, as well as their own bundles that include cables.
Finally, over at the AVS forum, a reader posted that the A30 was available at a Best Buy in Houston, Texas. This player is supposed to debut around now any way, and the other two should be coming in October.
The next big HD DVD player news will be when we get reports on the Venturer players, as well as the very high-end Onkyo and Integra machines.
It’s going to be an interesting shopping time over at least the next two months since there’s bound to be some overlap between introduction of the new players and inventory depletions of the old ones. Even without help from the Venturer, I think we’re likely to see low-end HD DVD (the A2) going for $180.
September 9th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Holy crap! $499 for the HD-A35? I thought that thing was going to go for $700-$800.
Nice!
September 10th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Breaking HD-DVD news:
http://www.digitalbits.com/#mytwocents
WB apparently is not as easy to buy. Good for them.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
ok fanboy, what does that have to do with this article?
September 11th, 2007 at 6:20 am
It has to do with Toshiba’s shady business practices.
And me laughing at the fact that WB told them to stick it because Paramount decision created a lot of negative press.
Oh thats right, people over here still don’t believe Paramount took a payoff, I forgot.
Oh well, it must be nice to live in a dream world.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:40 am
This posting was about HD DVD players becoming available for pre-order.
If your future messages are not approved, you don’t need to wonder why. Either contribute to the discussion properly or find a more proper venue for your fanboyism.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:21 am
It is good to see the third generation players getting to market. Each generation will see more stability, lower prices and performance upgrades. It is also a good thing that Toshiba releases firmware upgrades for older players at a regular pace. Some people like me will regularly “retire” earlier players for next gen but for those who don’t those upgrades are welcome. I am sure that we will in the not too distant future see a HDDVD/DVR combo which will allow you to record, edit and burn high def programming.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:27 am
I’ve heard recently that WalMart is fading out Toshiba products all together. Yes, this came from a biased post on bluray.com, but according to this guys experience, there were no more HD DVD players on the shelf, there was one HD DVD Xbox add-on left, and after that, no more were being ordered (according to the manager), and they had just two HD DVDs on the shelf, which were old releases. I also read in a completely different post by a different user that the cheap HD player was rejected by WalMart and they would not sell it. Have you heard anything about this? Trying to get an different biased opinion/fact.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:51 am
This comes up often on the Home Theater podcast where they and listeners visit stores in their respective areas and find that one store in a chain has nothing but one format, and some stores have both formats, and some stores have nothing at all of any format. The managers and employees at those stores usually have no proper explanation why, and the corporation hasn’t made any statements about their own support.
Cruising around at forums, one will also find that many employees working at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. bring their own biases or ignorance into the advice given to customers, and this kind of thing ends up becoming hearsay as people pass it around.
There are hundreds and hundreds of Walmarts and Targets, and you can’t easily guarantee that every employee knows what is going on at all times.
Get your news about such things from official corporate statements. That will tell you much better what trend to expect in their stores than anything a particular salesperson or manager will.