Holy Moly Blu-Ray Disc Players below $300

The HD-A1 is a no longer available first generation very slow player. WE are on generation three now with gen 4 comin out in 08.

I clicked on the Amazon sales rank link mentioned above. When you subtract out PS3, Blu Ray is in trouble as far as hardware sales. Because PS3 is often purchased for gaming and not Blu Ray playback.

The actual DVD sales numbers are interesting. If you look at Planet Earth, released on BOTH formats; HD-DVD sells more of the same title than Blu Ray. Interesting.

I actually think the Panasonic Blu Ray player may be the pick of that bunch. As far as video scalers, I'd take a player with the Reon/realta video processor any day. They are in most but not all HD-DVD models.

HD - DVD players are down to 99 dollars.

Just an Update-

1. The A-2s were selling for 99 dollars but I cant find them anymore at that price ( might check Amazon for the A-2 and see if any available.)

2. The A-3s are 199 and the Venturers are 189 at this time.

3. The A-3 comes with some free HD-DVDs but those deals vary from 2 in the box to 2 in the box plus 5 free.

Hd-DVD A2. And the HD-DVD A3 when used to fill HD-DVD A2 ads. Also, Ventura, a new low cost HD-DVD entrant, is also at 99 dollars.

The rumor is that Toshiba will flesh out and stay in the middle ground, and leave low cost players to companies like Ventura and high cost players to Onkyo etc, which is probably why we havent seen an HD-DVD XA3.

I'll know more at CES in a couple of weeks.

The PS3 lags the Toshiba XA2 in video quality by quite a bit. This is due to the Reon Chipset in the Toshiba offering.

Future Shop has the Toshiba HD-D3 HD dvd player on sale for boxing day regular price $399.99 on sale for $99.99.

Yes its true. Its a market share fight for the future. HD-DVDs production/distribution costs are lower and they are pressing Blu Ray hard by forcing big losses on them just like Blu Ray came out swinging with their marketing and stuck it to HD-DVD big time, initially grabbing 70% of disc sales ( its since evened up quite a bit if you look at the past months Amazon sales rank data for top 100 Blu Ray vs HD-DVD)

I dunno J- I'd be carefully taking too much from your posts frankly.

Most of the Blu ray disks are 25 GB, not the 50 GB disks with greater storage. The yield rates from the two ( and there are only two) 50 GB disk plants are very low, making it very expensive to produce 50GB Blu ray disks effectively, with signifcant transport/distribution costs leading to Blu ray subsidiary studios in Europe to produce Blu Ray only titles on HD-DVD in Europe.

In addition, there is a current Blu ray thread over at avs, contributed to only by Blu Ray owners, on Blu Ray disk rot, with pictures. It shows some blu ray disks getting all of these spots on them and talks about certain disks not playing after this disk rot.

In the end, the difference between Blu Ray and Hd-DVD is the shell that holds the video and audio code, and not much else. The HD-DVD shell is simply more stable, and a lot less fragile. The data on HD-DVD disks is embedded at a deeper depth and is more protected from playback problems.

Also, the HD-DVD player specs for audio and video are in place, so you know you can play an HD-DVD disk and listen to present audio formats no matter what player you buy on the HD-DVD side of the fence. You have no idea what you are going to get on the Blu ray side.

Its my understanding that Blu Ray is introducing BD-J coding language on their disks next year, to better enable the presence of interactive features ( thusfar absent on Blu Ray disks but present on many HD-DVD offerings). Are you sure your PS3 will be able to utilize this language and actually play the disks? I am not sure at all.

I agree that both Blu Ray and HD-DVD disks can look great. But I do prefer the more mature lower cost format to win or at least have some decent dual format options and since HD-DVD only has to survive to win and not really win, I don't see this working out for Blu ray at all personally.

Thats an opinion of course. But a lot of what I am laying out in this post is fact.

I dont think the optimal Hi Def Player exists yet, and 10 lumen technology on the plasma side ( my display tech of choice) isn't out yet either. When these two things occur, then its really time to jump on the Hi Def bandwagon. In the end, its still a bit early by about 18 months, assuming someone alreddy has a decent set up for standard DVDs in place already.

Hi JK- Sorry but here is a recent post from a content producer. I have nothing to do with this person or the content of this post.

JBach Dec 20, 2007 2:24 AM GMT As a content producer I find there are three issues that wipe out Blu-Ray: 1.) Almost all Blu-Ray players cannot reliably render the content of an authored Blu-Ray disc. Authored discs play most reliably only on the PS3. The profile describing the requirements to build a Blu-Ray player is STILL INCOMPLETE, which is part of this problem. Reliable playback of a Blu-Ray disc being restricted to a PS3 player is a major issue in the business world. ADVANTAGE HD-DVD. 2.)Blu-Ray advanced authoring requires a Java-based programming environment. HD-DVD authoring is much like creating a web page. Blu-Ray becomes a programmer project, HD-DVD remains more of a web designer prosumer project. ADVANTAGE HD-DVD. 3.)The effort to retrofit a replication plant to do Blu-Ray is VERY significant. HD-DVD replication can be accomplished on a much smaller scale. While this is a one-time factor, the ease and relatively low cost of HD-DVD retrofitting makes more economic sense. ADVANTAGE HD-DVD.

I am sorry if you don't agree with these facts, but these type of concerns are well known and factual and appropriate for inclusion in discussion.

You are clearly an intelligent educated person with some capital behind you as well, but try and keep an open mind for discussion and realize some of us may know something too.

Thanks and have a great New Year!

Here is some information about storage capacities from JKalman's Wikipedia Link. This is exactly what I was referring to as far as most Blu Ray disks being 25 GB to Hd-DVDs 30 GB as an FYI.

As of November 2007, 44% of Blu-ray titles use the 50 GB disc and 56% use the 25 GB disc[90] while almost all HD DVD movies are in the 30 GB dual layer format.[91]

Not a huge deal at this point but does clarify and support what I was trying to say.