Bowing to
reality, Toshiba is apparently going to delay the release of its
HD-XA1 and
HD-A1 (pictured) HD DVD
players until at least next month, so that early buyers will actually have something to play on them. The players were
originally meant to ship this month, but that timeline was jeopardized by Warner Home Video's
announcement last week that its initial
slate of HD DVD flicks wouldn't be out on March 28th as originally planned. Now, Toshiba says it plans to
"synchronize the launch of our players with HD DVD title releases." Of course, if you've
preordered one of the players
and were hoping to use it as a very large and expensive paperweight, you're out of luck. For everyone else, the delay
will give us one more excuse to wait a little longer for a dual-format player to hit the market.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
h2so4 @ Mar 23rd 2006 5:27PM
In other news - Studios delay HD-DVD releases until more players are available.
Emo1313 @ Mar 23rd 2006 6:08PM
Yea it does seem very chicken and egg-ish.
In other news still - Consumers delay buying until the industry gets us an actual product.
Emo1313 @ Mar 23rd 2006 6:09PM
Yea it does seem very chicken and egg-ish.
In other news still - Consumers delay buying until the industry gets us an actual product.
Kerina @ Mar 23rd 2006 6:51PM
It's a vicious cycle.
james @ Mar 23rd 2006 7:15PM
The chicken or the egg.
Jason Tapley @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:01PM
If you build it they will come. It is surprising to me that Toshiba is willing to let another company dicated (even if indirectly) when it will sell it's own product. If they know that the player will be used, and they have the product ready to ship & sell- they should get it out there. Nothing says opportunity like knowing that one company is holding out for another to siml-release products. If I were a competitor I would be all over this and have my product released right now to take advantage of the slip. How will you explain that to the boss or better yet to shareholders. 'Share prices and sales expectations are down this quarter because we decided to let another company make our decisions for us and someone beat us to the punch and grabbed market share.' Toss me the ball!
slow news day @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:03PM
I was in BestBuy yesterday, looking at HDTVs and asked about HD DVD players, and no one could help me. No one knew anything about them or when they were coming out. They did keep telling me I should wait for Blu-Ray though.
Too bad Toshiba can't release the player with a demonstration disc. I wonder if they'll offer free movies in the beginning like they did with the first DVD players. Spend $600, and get a free movie! Weekend at Bernies III
Whydrive @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:04PM
HD-DVD will be DOA.
mikey @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:29PM
You guys really rip on HD-DVD and say how blu-ray is going to be so awesome. I'm telling you, HD-DVD is going to kick the crap out of sony. It's a much better format, offers a lot more to the end user for functionality, and i believe in it very much. I've purchased 2 players and waiting for them to arrive, and you guys can bitch while i enjoy my batman begins in 1080i! Forget 1080p. Forget higher density disks. 1080i is all you ever need.
raider @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:51PM
#5... have fun waiting for your delayed product...
This has made me think of something.
Anyone remember the good old days, where things actually shipped on time???
HD DVD, PS3, Vista? Well I don't care about two of them (but I do about the one in the middle).
I never take anyone's word anymore, everything is just TALK.
Tony Rayo @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:53PM
@#5... many people said the same thing about DVDs 5 years ago. In today's context Blu-ray may seem like overkill, but we will always need more space and an easy way to access it. I am still very disappointed that the two parties could not come together to create one format. I also do not think one format is so much amazingly better than the other, and there is still lots of room for both to evolve. I am going to pre-order a PS3 ASAP and because of that I suppose I will be more likely to try BR before HD (I must say though from the non-techie view, HD-DVD has a name that I can see lots of people moving towards since most people know what HD is, so they will think... oh HD-DVD, must be what I need... but what's this Bluray thing? We'll have to wait and see what happens, it'll be entertaining and depressing for many of us, that's for sure).
Tony Rayo @ Mar 23rd 2006 8:57PM
@#6... I don't know what world you've been living in my experience new technology rarely arrives on the first or even second and third time quoted (I'm glad Sony has finally come out and said PS3 = November. It will make a great 21st birthday present for myself and will most likely end up flunking out of college the same year =p).
c.Lake @ Mar 23rd 2006 10:07PM
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!!!!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!
....yeah....
H. Johansen @ Mar 24th 2006 4:12AM
Toshiba's reason for the delay makes no sense to me. Is this player not supposed to play normal DVDs? So why wait? Let the early adopters buy the player and enjoy using it to view normal DVDs until HD-DVDs arrive.
MasterCKO @ Mar 24th 2006 6:59AM
#8. You're just plain wrong. Blu-Ray is technically a far superior format to HD-DVD. And once the PS3 is launched worldwide and makes it's way into hundreds of millions of homes in a few months during and after the christmas season, it will become the de facto standard. and again, 1080p is SUPERIOR to 1080i. So why should I not want it again? hmmmmm.....
MrFloppy @ Mar 24th 2006 10:17AM
#8 mikey
Yeah, men. Let me laugh first, and then I'll reply properly.
Timbux @ Mar 24th 2006 11:12AM
Newsflash. It's 30,000 BC. Ughluk Corp. has announced it's upcoming 'cave wall paint set' version 2 will be delayed until the next ice-age. Ughluk spokesman concedes the beta needs much more work.
David @ Mar 24th 2006 2:10PM
#8 and #14 : HD-DVD is perfectly capable of 1080p. It's only Toshiba's first players, the HD-A1 and HD-XA1, that are limited to 1080i output.
Since only a handful of current TVs can accept a 1080p signal, leaving 1080p output off the first players makes economic sense (why pay for expensive scalers which nobody will use?) but it's absolutely stupid from a marketing perspective. People that don't understand the reality of the situation will claim that Blu-ray is technically superior based on this one meaningless spec-sheet checkbox and HD-DVD is going to have a hard time climbing out of that hole.
David @ Mar 24th 2006 2:25PM
(To clarify: the "meaningless spec-sheet checkbox" is only valid right now. In a year or two, 1080p will be vital.
In fact, HD-DVD has better support for 1080p than Blu-ray, which can't handle 30fps.
Also, the numbers jumped around, my comments were for Mikey, who said 1080i is good enough, and MasterCKO, who said Blu-ray is far superior.)
MasterCKO @ Mar 25th 2006 3:15AM
The far superior comment was actually more about the fact that Blu-Ray has a higher capacity than HD-DVD, and can theoretically be extended to higher capacities in the future than HD-DVD can theoretically be extended to. Hence, more content on one disc. So, um, yeah. I actually didn't know about the framerate limitation. Thanks for letting me know about that. Where did you get the info from, btw? I'm interested in reading up on it.
Jack @ Mar 26th 2006 10:02PM
#9 By saying "SONY" you mean to say Sony and that you own a 360, and you obbsesed with you original XBOX. Its been repeated a multitude of times by forums and news sites alike that Blu-Ray is suppirior in terms of Software, support, content, price ETC. NEC (the other partner of the Blu-ray deal are also the people your not acknowledging) has also stated that they had everything.
The only advantage remaining is that they have a stripped down (more below then even the PS3's player capabilities), and that they are coming out earlier.
#18 & #19 David you should seriously try reading a book once in a while. Frame-Rates are determined by the systems capability to output it, not by the effects of the read speed (This just goes to show you that there stupid people on the net, that will misguide you with either hype or old rumours presented as facts).
1080p is an upscale for "DVDs" not the actual Blu-Ray format, plus in the future (starting the 2nd half of this year) when you'll have one of those cheap 1080p HDTVs at attractive prices you won't be crying that you don't have HDMI 1.3 (Lossless DTS-HD anyone?) and a player capable of playing those new HD 1080p movies of yours!
Lyris @ Mar 29th 2006 6:55AM
"Forget 1080p. Forget higher density disks. 1080i is all you ever need."
Sorry, could you cut that down to fewer characters? It's taking a long time to display on my machine, I only seem to have 640k of RAM in there.
Frank Hannibal @ Mar 30th 2006 6:57PM
I recently saw a 1080p display of Spiderman and Lawrence of Arabia on a large screen at sony's nyc flagship store and was floored by the picture.For the "average" consumer 1080p is the pinacle of hi-rez technology.The other higher rez formats (4K) are just way to expensive for the general public and will probably remain so for many years.The competing format war is bad for everybody.Remember dvd-audio vs sacd ? Ultimately despite blu-ray having for the time being a majority of studio backers I think that the backwards compatible technology of Hd-dvd will lead to its triumph.
grimey 559 @ Apr 4th 2006 1:11PM
blu-ray players are also capable of playing dvd
defeedme @ Apr 18th 2006 1:30AM
it is sad that people do not learn from past mistakes. Blu-ray is betamax all over again. HD-DVD is backed by Microsoft, that should say enough. HD-DVD although it has less capacity, is way more stable, easier to copy and will have less problems in the long run. Too many bells and whistles with blue-ray. The general public will gravitate towards HD-DVD - guaranteed, so sorry blue-ray fans, eat dirt.