$299 HD DVD players unlikely this year

[McBain]

US$299 HD DVD players unlikely this year

http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070502PD215.html

[MozartMan]

Good news for HD-DUD.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

HD DVD already has players for under $310. I don't think $299 would be a real stretch. Even with that they couldn't sell 200,000 players. IMO, this Holiday season should put Blu-ray in a very good position.

EDIT: Check out the big ad centered near the bottom about the HD-A1. Since when did a HD-A1 play movies in 1080p?

[BOSS10L]

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

HD DVD already has players for under $310. I don't think $299 would be a real stretch. Even with that they couldn't sell 200,000 players. IMO, this Holiday season should put Blu-ray in a very good position.

EDIT: Check out the big ad centered near the bottom about the HD-A1. Since when did a HD-A1 play movies in 1080p?

Agreed. Some friends of mine have seen them as low as $300 online. This "magical dagger" into the heart of BD that HD DVD keeps talking about won't happen until they can get players to market for $150 or even less. I'd like to think that as well, but if $300 players can't help HD DVD, how are even more expensive players going to help BD? Content will play a role, for sure, but you can't get people (J6P) to buy content if they won't even purchase a player first.

Slick marketing. The discs are encoded in 1080p, the player send out the signal in 1080i, and the display then re-displays it at native. So technically, it is being shown in 1080p. Just buzzword for the uninformed public.

[Coltboy]

By the time they get the HD players down that low, BD will be lower too, they are already able to make the blu diodes faster and cheaper than before.

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Coltboy

By the time they get the HD players down that low, BD will be lower too, they are already able to make the blu diodes faster and cheaper than before.

News today said that the most expensive part of the pickup should go down in price by about $100, leaving it at about $40 for the whole thing and a few bucks extra for the raw materials (plastic) to make the drive.

So we will soon be into the realm of $150 BD-ROM drives and $250 BD-R/E drives.

Also this will enable a larger price cut to the PS3 than first envisioned (read $150 instead of $100) as Sony should be able to cut the costs much more quickly.