Lack of HD-DVD hardware supporters?

[dduke99]

Why is it that Bluray has tons of 3rd party hardware releases but Toshiba has just themselves and like one other maybe? Especially since it seems the HD-DVD is gunna be releasing more blockbusters to the general public in the next 15 months. All the 3rd party support for bluray hardware should drop the prices like a rock.

[darrylr]

Part of it is profits. Since Toshiba has been steadily lowering the prices on their own hardware to stay alive in the "war" it makes it hard for other manufacturers to jump in and make any kind of profit. They would likely have to charge a good deal more than the Toshiba models to make money but then they likely wouldn't sell well when sitting beside lower-priced Toshiba models.

[james99]

Several threads have been created over the last week or two relating to new HD DVD players.

I can think of 4 or 5 new announcements (including dual players):

Integra
Onkyo
LG
Samsung
Venturer

[U]

Except for Venturer, these will be much more expensive machines than anything Toshiba sells...

[Eug]

Lite-On also makes HD DVD drives.

[SensualPoet]

All of the Blu-ray players from all manufacturer's are more expensive than Toshiba's two biggest sellers ... and the Venturer ought to serve the budget conscious for which nothing Blu-ray currently offers comes close. Toshiba's HD-A2 is available nationally for $299 from two major box stores since Sep 1.

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Shinco (budget level) and Alpine (Car ) are also part of the list.

Regards

[Damed]

LG and Samsung both make combo (Bluray and HD-DVD) drives, so they're also HD-DVD hardware supporters. Either (or both) could come out with standalones at any time.

[meatbird]

Other than Venturer has anyone heard of any other HD=DVD players? Or is Toshiba not liscencing it to anyone?Just curious as there seems to be a fair number of BD players.

[wallee]

I've seen an RCA at my local CostCo. $399.00

I don't know anything else about it sorry.

[Cyclism]

Integra is Onkyo's upmarket brand so you can't really count them as two separate manufactureres.

And Onkyo is officially format neutral, and their one and only HD DVD player was just released, and their Integra model hasn't come to market yet.

[Jake]

I've merged the two HD DVD hardware threads.

According to videohelp.com there are:

12 BD capable players
19 HD DVD capable players (13 from Toshiba)

[jvillain]

With the exception of Venturer all the other players are just re-badged Toshiba players. No matter what Poet says.

[SensualPoet]

Does that include the two LG models and Samsung BD-5000? Are they "rebadged" Toshibas?

[Zoo]

I've seen an RCA at my local CostCo. $399.00

I don't know anything else about it sorry.

These RCA models are essentially rebadged Toshiba A-1s (first gen player). With regular $298 pricing on the A-3s around these RCAs should be getting marked down to $198 to move them out. Some things about these players:

-They are built like tanks and have excellent quality compoents in them.

-They are a LOT slower than the A-2 and A-3 for boot up times, disc loading time etc. At an equal price point I would swing for the A-2 instead as the loading times are about half of the A-1/RCA units.

As for some of the other points. From what I understand the upcoming Onkyo is based on the Toshiba A-35 reference design with Onkyo's own tweaks plus some upgraded components here and there. I'll bet that this will be the best HD-DVD player to date and will probably have phenomenal sound quality. It does not seem to be a "clean sheet" design from Onkyo.

The dual players from Samsung and LG seem to be "clean sheet" designs from both companies.

I suspect with Toshiba's experience making these things and with their Chinese manufacturing that many companies like Onkyo will use Toshiba's designs to work from instead of doing a ground up design of their own specification. This way Onkyo can sell their player for $600-$800 or so and make some profit. They will get economies of scale with the chasis and many of the componenets in the unit.