Actually my SD-3109 Toshiba bought in 1998-99 works like a champ. And that is a dual disc player as well.

Its been sent to the family ski home, but still works great.

What... are you are 8 yrs old and took my comment about Toshiba as a personal attack and felt the need to defend yourself.

His remark was a little on the snide side, but your post is the one that reads much more like an attack, so cut it out.

Very interesting thread.
Overall I don't really care, I own both formats, so what happens, happens. In the future I would love to see a Toshiba duel player to help save space, but thats a ways down the road for me, my PS3 still works great, and my HD-A2 still looks amazing. And I will still continue to buy HD DVD's, they will still work now, they will still work when I eventually get a duel player. Win win for me.
What I am really looking foreword to is cheap fire sale HD DVD's I still have a grip I need to get.

The Hollywood Reporter article has been out for more than 24 hours and Toshiba is still only saying "no comment." Yikes.

The exact quote is: "We are aware of the speculation, but have no comment – there is no information I can give you at the moment."

Yep, Toshiba is saying "business as usual"

Well, it's that business as usual bullcrap from Toshiba that prompted me to buy a ps3 and about 25 blu-rays in the last month.

Since you are the second person to ask whether or not I retired from the forum, for good I assume, during the last 48 hours I am going to give you a direct answer. Once. Hopefully it addresses whatever "concerns" you or others for that matter may have with the issue.

The answer is no! I exited the forum to heal from a very personal and utterly degrading series of accusations, four to be specific, which insisted that I admit my financially vested interest in one of the two formats.

Here are the two relevant quotes from my statement which should have addressed your curiosity:

and...

Had you read my statement in its entirety you would have also known what exacerbated my disappointment.

With the same individual who produced the initial accusations (an IP address could reveal a lot) insisting that I "retired" for a reason I made a point to use his description of my decision when I reentered the forum.

Now back to the original topic...

Pro-B

It's good to see it might all finally be coming to an end. If nothing else it will stop all this endless bickering.

Looks like I am going to be buying an extra Toshiba HD player soon.

par for course...

You might want to hurry as Toshiba is planning to stop production.

Here's a report from NHK in Japan.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssC...27196120080216

now, the question is, if you like the format, already have a decent bunch of HD DVD's, and plan on buying the bargain priced HD DVD remnants that will inevitably be coming down the line, do you grab a cheapy $100-200 dollar backup HD DVD player in case your primary one tanks?

That indicates Toshiba may be on the verge of joining the BDA and my "wild guess" of Toshiba offering an interim lower-cost combo player soon and true Blu-ray players late this year isn't so far-fetched any more.

is it finally over?

Why does everyone here think that HD DVDs will be $5 a piece? IMO they won't ever get that cheap. They will simply stop making them and sell what they have at small discounts. If Universal and Paramount sells people a bunch of HD DVD titles for $5 a piece, then the people who bought them won't buy them again on blu-ray for $20 a piece. With all the bad press that HD DVD is getting lately, I wouldnt be surprised if Universal and Paramount had already stopped manufacturing older HD DVDs. Sure they will make new movies on HD DVD for awhile, but with catalog titles things change. I wouldnt expect to any more older titles from Universal or Paramount released now. They will more than likely only sell new releases till this war is over. Which is happening really really soon.

Don't HD DVD and Blu-Ray require different lenses to read them? If so, wouldn't any Blu-Ray player with legacy HD DVD support need both like any other combo player?

I could see this being cost-prohibitive from a manufacturing standpoint, especially since Toshiba will be smarting from the financial losses they've incurred. I would think they'd be cutting corners on cost everywhere they can, which would give me pause about buying any next-gen device from them.

I also don't think we're going to see massive blowout sales.

Hell, when the format had its last real chance to compete, they still couldn't see fit to do a BOGO.

If every store you went to had dozens and dozens of copies of every title, they might have to go fairly low to eventually clear them out. But given the number of HD DVD player owners out there, if they do a BOGO now, that may be enough to significantly reduce stock.

I also doubt the studios have a massive stock of these titles waiting to ship. If they do, then they would need to find a liquidation avenue for them.

No No, we will all be bickering about how Toshiba was really the superior product and how they F'd up for years and years. I'm ready!

LG already manufactures a low-cost dual format reader that has been mass-purchased and rebadged by HP. I got it for $200. If that is retail cost, I'd imagine the drive itself isn't very expensive on a large scale.

Good to know.

Ever heard of Amazon?

We'll see an Amazon BOGO. I have no idea when, but a guess would be in the next 30 days, which is much sooner than what I expected. I'm sure there is a rather large stock of titles which were anticipated for one reason or another. Of course, that's not to say some titles are OOS and may not be available unless via a private owner.

I would imagine the only people buying HD DVDs now are sincere HD DVD owners, who have more than a few HD DVDs to justify their purchases. On the other end, you have nobody buying them. So, you have a situation where you have HD DVD titles bottlenecking at the smaller number of HD DVD owners. Retailers are still trying to get as much as they can, but they know it's risky, because they stand a chance of not selling them at all at some point. Right now, we're in the middle of this situation, and prices will begin to fall more.

Retailers just return them...no risk or losss on their part.

Well, Amazon likely won't take stock of the studios' hands at this point unless it's at a drastic discount. Why should Amazon use their infrastructure to clear out studios' warehouses unless there's a financial incentive for them to do so?

Sure they can liquidate what they have, but I don't see them taking an additional 1,000 copies of Blades Of Glory from Paramount for instance if they can't get them for dirt cheap.

Not always. Depends on the deal. Most large retailers probably get this consideration, but I think the return window is only so long - maybe 90 days?
Otherwise, it becomes an accounting nightmare for the studios or independent distributor. At some point they want to know a sale is a sale and not a return waiting to happen.

Well, that's what I'm getting at. If the studios cannot get rid of their titles at regular prices, they will begin to discount. That time is near. We already have DeepDiscount ordering directly from the studios, so once they can't get enough orders to clear out the stock, more discounting will happen.

This totally reminds me of the Laserdisc days, when I bought $10 LD's at Blockbuster. Only this time, I won't be driving all over the place.

Also, I'd wonder about these press releases altogether. Because once a studio announces "HD DVD no longer", it automatically makes people buy titles for fear of them not being available ever again. So, if a studio announces their plans ahead of time, they can squeeze more cash out of their stock over a longer period. Which is probably happening now as well.