Format Wars: HD DVD Fights Blu-ray With Huge Price Cuts, Better Marketing

Toshiba Slashes Prices: HD-A3 Now Only $131.98

The HD DVD camp looks like they're in tough now with Warner Bros. backing Blu-ray exclusively and last two major supporters, Paramount and Universal, not looking so supportive these days. Heck, even major porn studios are starting to jump ship. But contrary to popular opinion, HD DVD is not dead as they announced their new battle plan yesterday.

Effective yesterday, Toshiba Corp. said that they would be slashing player prices 40-50% in order to better appeal to mainstream consumers. "While price is one of the consideration elements for the early adopter, it is a deal breaker for the mainstream consumer," Toshiba executive Yoshi Uchiyama said. Now, top-of-the-line HD DVD players will be selling for a fairly reasonable $399 and lower end players such as the Toshiba HD-A3 are already selling for as low as $131.98 on Amazon.com.

Toshiba has also said they will vastly improve their marketing campaign with extended pricing strategies, joint advertising campaigns with studios and an extension of their "5 Free HD DVD's With Select Players" deal.

Well this is all well and good, the fact still remains that without major studio titles being released on HD DVD, cheap player prices won't mean consumers will buy. The red camp just better hope Paramount and Universal stay put. On the other hand, Brian Behlendorf, investor in Aaron Mendelsohn's Virtual Artists said to me in a conversation last night that he doesn't regret purchasing an HD DVD player because he'll just stock up on cheap titles when stores begin to try to get rid of them all to create more shelf space for Blu-ray!

Via Los Angeles Times

Read More in: HD-DVD

Share this Article with others:

Related Articles:

• Trade in your Warner HD DVDs for Blu-ray discs - Apr 24, 2009
• Philips Signs Multi-Million Dollar Eco TV Deal, Industry's Largest To Date - Oct 27, 2008
• HD DVD Rising From The Dead Thanks To Crap Economy - Oct 02, 2008

Came straight to this page? Visit TV Snob for all the latest news.

Posted by Justin Davey at January 15, 2008 5:24 AM