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Forums - General Discussion - $198 too expensive? HD-DVD player on sale for $99 at Wal-mart

FishyJoe said:
Studios don't give a sh*t about audio. They care about one thing and one thing only, profit. Whatever makes them better profit is the winner in their eyes.

 Then why bother with surround sound at all?  A small minority of the country has it.



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a-2 won't be going back to 198.. amazon.com is already selling the a3 for 189.

i just got back from walmart the dude working their said they had 87 a-2's that sold out in less than one hour. that is just one walmart super center... what is the total number of br to hd units out there right now anyways (i am actually asking) seems like 87 times over 4000 super centers! and that was not one of the busier supercenters so other may have got more, some less. this guy was kind of wierd at walmart (big suprise) he told me that vivid (porn) studios went hd dvd exclusively and he said that porn sells more dvd's than any regular studio... so anyways i am not a porn consumer but sounds like a plus for hd,, i will be buying a 2nd player for downstairs if i can get it around 100 bucks this holiday season.



Assuming just fourty players per Walmart at say, 3000 stores (accepting that not all had stock), you have 90,000 players sold this weekend. Now recognise that there are probably far MORE than that as ripper mentioned that the store he went to had three times the stock. ON TOP OF THIS Best Buy is reported to have matched Walmart's offer whenever presented with it. In effect, HD DVD may have just added over a third to its userbase in one weekend, further increasing its standalone advantage. And on top of this their is evidence that HD DVD is far outselling Blu Ray on the laptop front.

Blu ray is going nowhere soon, but neither is HD DVD.



starcraft - Playing Games = FUN, Talking about Games = SERIOUS

makingmusic476 said:
kn said:
makingmusic476 said:
You completely ignored my price argument. >_<

It's as if you expect the war to be won over the next two months when HD DVD is below $200 and Blu-Ray is still $400. What about the people that buy in over the next year or two? Blu-Ray player prices will keep dropping.

I don't think he is ignoring your price comments.... I don't think that looking forward a year from now and stating that a sub $200 BR player will be on the street will win the war... IF Toshiba decided they wanted to win this war NOW, they would release the A-3 for a price close to $100 around the globe (plus VAT where applicable)...

I don't think your average Joe Six Pack is going to look at the two formats and decide on what the price might be a year from now. He's going to decide right here and now. Apparantly, $98 was enough to throw caution to the wind and jump in head first.

If the price differential remains $150-200 for another year, Toshiba may build a rather substantial stand-alone lead and stand-alones tend to buy a lot more software.

I understand what you are saying.... as the war continues, prices do keep coming down and maybe blu-ray will be $149 or less next holiday and that would certainly change the game a bit but as I said, J6P doesn't care. He just wants it cheap and he wants it now...


J6P wants it now? Only 30% of NA homes have HDTVs, and that number is far lower in Europe, and not even close to a majority of those are looking at upgrading to HDM. Many of the current HDTV owners have no HD signals going to their tvs at all!

My point was that the prices of Blu-Ray players will be far lower in 1-2 years, when the majority of people will have HDTVs and will begin upgrading, if they choose to do so at all. The people that are buying HDM right now make up a very small percentage of the market, even including those who bought $99 players yesterday.

 


 No, I don't mean J6P wants HD now.  The average Joe that DOES have an HD set and would like to get into HD movies is the guy that doesn't stand around waiting on prices.  I'm speaking in terms of wanting something now as instant gratification.  J6P isn't going to jump into the HD war unless prices are cheap.  When prices are cheap, instant gratification and impulse buying trump any long-term thinking...  That was more my point.  Yes, 30% is the penetration at this point and yes, a lot of them won't jump in until they can get a 42" for 750 or less I suspect...  But again, they will jump in when there is a phenomenal price and aren't looking forward to what might be... 



I hate trolls.

Systems I currently own:  360, PS3, Wii, DS Lite (2)
Systems I've owned: PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Saturn, 3DO, Genesis, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, GBA, GB, C64, Amiga, Atari 2600 and 5200, Sega Game Gear, Vectrex, Intellivision, Pong.  Yes, Pong.

Hello everyone. I am an average joe middleclass consumer. This is my very first VGChartz post, and based on reading this thread and Kbg329's comment, I am going to buy an HD-DVD as soon as I can get my hands on one. And I think I might be getting one for some other people this Christmas.




 

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You do that....but just remember, they aren't $99 anymore. ;)



Welcome passenger 57, this is a fun site.
I'll be buying couple of HDDVD players as gifts for Christmas as well. It's kinda selfish cause I'm buying the HDDVDs as gifts but will send out for 10 (or is it 14) movies for myself.



@makingmusic476:

If you're talking about the extended editions of LotR, they won't be able to fit on a single Blu-ray disc with lossless audio either.

Also, many HD-DVD releases include Dolby TrueHD, a lossless format. Although a couple of high-profile releases have forgone lossless audio, their audio mixes have still been roundly praised and the difference between lossless audio and a well-done Dolby Digital Plus mix at 1.5 Mbps is entirely neglible if not non-existent.



Hates Nomura.

Tagged: GooseGaws - <--- Has better taste in games than you.

Oh I know about Dolby TrueHD. I mentioned it in the same sentence with uncompressed PCM.



Wow, I don't understand all that techno mumbo about True Hd audio, but I do know that I don't really give a rats ass. Most people won't because my 5.1 surround sound system blows most people away. I'm still amazed and its more than 5 yrs old.