Toshiba, too little, too late.

[kaliraver]

Toshiba in a move to try to persuade people to buy their movies on their soon to be obsolete system is dropping their prices on their HD-DVD's by $2.00. Whoopee, now I guess there will be millions rushing out to save on $2.00. Toshiba has done too little, too late. If they would've had a better technological hardware and software that was better than Blu-Ray from the get-go they wouldn't be in the position they are in. I think they definitely under estimated the BDA and the power all those companies have against just Toshiba.

In case you haven't had enough of the coaxing carousel, a recent writeup by David Kaplan lays out Toshiba's plan to hack a few dollars off of the MSRP of HD DVD titles, presumably in an attempt to persuade Warner to not go Blu-ray-only. Reportedly, the outfit is getting set to lower the retail price of each disc to $31.74, which is currently around $2.00 less than Blu-ray's suggested price. 'Course, it remains to be seen what difference such a minor change will actually make -- after all, when is the last time you were forced to pay retail for an HD DVD / Blu-ray disc? That being said, we certainly won't complain if Tosh wants to start up a price war.

[theknub]

isn't it the studios and not toshiba who controls the price?

[maconomics]

Wow a whole two dollars! I guess if consumers purchase HD-DVD's they can save money on a cup of coffee.

[Luis_A51]

Originally Posted by theknub

isn't it the studios and not toshiba who controls the price?

I think the studios will continue to charge whatever they want, but toshiba will subsidize those $2. Thats the only scenario that makes sense to me.

A bit odd, considering theres no way toshiba makes more than $2 per HDDVD sold. That would mean in addition to subsidized players, movies given away (at toshiba's expense) now the movies they do actually sell will cost toshiba money? I cant believe their shareholders havent lynched the poor jackass who came up with the whole HDDVD idea.

[kaliraver]

It seems that the end is in sight for HD-DVD and Toshiba knows that is the case and is going to start dumping as many movies as possible before they go for $5 each instead.

[reiella]

Might be a case of people misattributing a decision by the DVD Forum as being just Toshi.

[ add ]
Sides, what does it matter, you already get half the HD-DVD catalog for free when you buy a player.

[atomik kinder]

The funny thing is I think that it was noted that most retailers drop the prices on the movies to $29.99 and may not drop them any lower anyway.

[spicynacho]

Originally Posted by reiella

Might be a case of people misattributing a decision by the DVD Forum as being just Toshi.

The studios couldn't make a group decision to do that, it would violate anti-trust laws against price fixing, it would have to be subsidized by a single company to happen legally.

But it could be something the BDA's lawyers could look into and seek damages for

[reiella]

Originally Posted by Strannix136

Imagine: Bargain bins full of HD-DVDs at the dollar store.

Next year, get an hd-dvd player at big lots for 49$!

[fronn]

This has already been posted... David Kaplan or Engadget are just misunderstanding things.

There was no mention by Toshiba or anyone that HD DVD group was going to drop the price by $2.00.

The information that this is taken from states that HD DVDs SRP averages (over all titles) to be about $2.00 less than Blu-Ray... not that Toshiba/HD DVD group intends to reduce it by $2.00 to compete.

This information is in the Business Week article correctly... someone else took it and didn't seem to understand (what is actually very straight forward).

Not sure why this got around forums so much as the news makes no sense at all in the way it's written... Most of this forum has read the business week article, so I'm not sure why little buzzers didn't go off for people (as the original information is in that article... this guy just misinterpreted what was said there).

[TheTenth]

it's a "buy 15, get one free!!!"