There's nothing wrong with waiting for prices to come down. They always do. The BDA planned to amortize the R&D costs over the first few years of player sales, so that they can actually make a profit on the technology. This is normal for consumer electronics. Toshiba never will, having sold all their players at major losses, and that is not a smart move in the CE field.

HD DVD's business plan is to win market share by throwing away money, and that is not a viable long-term solution.

And you're right, it's not the early adopters who bring formats to the mainstream, but it's not consumers at all that decide format wars. There have always been format wars, but 99% of them are decided before anything comes to market.

FWIW, I always thought the reason why so many early DVDs looked crappier was, because they weren't remastered in any way, simply an old transfer (maybe from LD) was slapped on a DVD and pushed to the marked. Understandably to an extent, they wanted to create a marlet where everyone could find movies they wanted to buy.

As if this guy knows better than a huge successful company like Toshiba!!! 

And I am sorry but it is consumers purchasing decisions that decide if a format becomes mainstream!!!  I wasn't discussing who wins a format war, but whether or not a format becomes mainstream...consumers never bought into DVD-Audio or SACD...they never bought into Laser Disc...they never bought into Mini-Disc...all because consumers didn't see the need or understand the technology!!!

Quoting bob9000:

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Quoting nolesrule:

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Toshiba never will, having sold all their players at major losses, and that is not a smart move in the CE field.

I love the way these people throw out these big statements while providing inothing to back them up.

All I can say is, where have you been the last two years? It's been discussed to death... a teardown of the HD-A1 player determined that even in quantity, Toshiba was taking a $200 loss on materials. The analysis is out there. Look it up.

And there's a lot more to developing a new format than just the physical cost of the players. Plenty of money gets poured into R&D.

And at the rate they've been slashing prices, well, you do the math.

Quoting Calidain:

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As if this guy knows better than a huge successful company like Toshiba!!! 

Well, believe it or not, Toshiba is the Sony of this format war. They should have asked Sony about the long-term success of their products that competed with the mainstream while going at it alone.

And like I said in another thread, DVD will get phased out in favor of the winning HD format. Not in the next two years, but certainly it's the long-term plan. Eventually, people will be replacing their DVD players when they die, and sooner or later that player will be an HD player, not a standard DVD player. The CE companies will see to that. Same goes for software.

I'm just using common sense here, a knowledge of consumer electronics format history and that of running a business (I run two) in terms of marketing, sales strategy, etc.

So are the general public more likely to replace their dead DVD players with a $200 or a $400 model? Just asking...

If HD players, blu or red, can't come down in price, then they are doomed anyway.

Quoting nolesrule:

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It's been nearly 11 years since DVD players came out, and you can get a DVD player for under $100 that is infinitely better than $1000+ DVD players in 1997. The same thing will happen to HDM players.

and the discs themselves 11 years ago,, were flippers,, or dual sided/ non anamorphic/ and over $30.00 on average..

Now that I think about it, my first DVD Player cost me $1500.00 and my first DVD over 30! (it was Fargo btw  ). My first Blu-ray cost me $460, came with a game and has the 80 gig HD. It has wireless connectivity, does firmware upgrades online and is a nice looking piece of equipment. With the Nyko remote plugged into my USB and the Harmony remote controlling all but the friggin off on the PS-3, life is good. I love the sound quality, being HDMI all the way! When I think back to the money I spent vs. the money I made then - I am still ahead with the new format. Insofar as the upconverting, the PS-3 does an excellent job, which means I will only replace the "fancy" DVD's I like, once the novelty has worn off. I really do like the PCM coming into my receiver, which then can process sound fields as it pleases. Yep, with just the upscaling and sound improvement, even my good quality regular DVD's are better. The Blu-ray discs can be fantastic or not so great - really does depend on the transfer - I am about to watch Omega Man... I will see what difference there is there... I do see it is Dolby digital MONO, but the receiver will take care of that! How good the video will be is about to be seen...

Quoting nolesrule:

Quote:
Quoting bob9000:

Quote:
Quoting nolesrule:

Quote:
Toshiba never will, having sold all their players at major losses, and that is not a smart move in the CE field.

I love the way these people throw out these big statements while providing inothing to back them up.

All I can say is, where have you been the last two years? It's been discussed to death... a teardown of the HD-A1 player determined that even in quantity, Toshiba was taking a $200 loss on materials. The analysis is out there. Look it up.

And there's a lot more to developing a new format than just the physical cost of the players. Plenty of money gets poured into R&D.

And at the rate they've been slashing prices, well, you do the math.

Quoting Calidain:

Quote:
As if this guy knows better than a huge successful company like Toshiba!!! 

Well, believe it or not, Toshiba is the Sony of this format war. They should have asked Sony about the long-term success of their products that competed with the mainstream while going at it alone.

And like I said in another thread, DVD will get phased out in favor of the winning HD format. Not in the next two years, but certainly it's the long-term plan. Eventually, people will be replacing their DVD players when they die, and sooner or later that player will be an HD player, not a standard DVD player. The CE companies will see to that. Same goes for software.

I'm just using common sense here, a knowledge of consumer electronics format history and that of running a business (I run two) in terms of marketing, sales strategy, etc.

I don't see Toshiba as the Sony in this format war!  Sony tends to go against the mainstream with its new technology, Toshiba didn't go against the mainstream, they took the existing DVD technology and built upon it to create HD-DVD!!! 

We will never know what really happened in the early days of Hi-Def development, but I am willing to bet that Sony threw a lot of incentive money at most of the studios and other major CE companies to form the BDA.  If anything Sony learned from their past mistakes of Sony vs. the World and decided to get many allies this time.  I am also sure that Microsoft's involvement also helped immensely in fleshing out the 2 sides!!!