Audio Video News

Starting April 1st that shiny HD DVD player might look a little shinier still. $100 to $200 shinier, to be exact. On that date Toshiba is dropping the price of its entry level HD-A2 HD DVD player to just $399 and cutting the upscale HD-XA2 from $999 to $799. The 1080p-capable HD-A20, which is to be released this Summer, gets an in vitro price drop too, going from $599 to $499. On top of that, if you buy any of these players by July 31st you can still send in a form to receive five free HD DVD movies, according to TWICE.

Although Toshiba denied speculation in TWICE that the price drops were a reaction to Sony's plans to have a $599 standalone Blu-ray player pout this Summer, it's hard to believe that Sony's plans to have cheaper players in the market aren't the catalyst for these cuts. In addition to Sony's $599 player, the entry level PlayStation3 is $499 and Sony execs have surmised publicly that $299 BD players will be in stores for the 2007 holiday shopping season.

This price drop comes at a time when Blu-ray is dominating practically all news regarding sales of next-gen HD on a disc. Early in the year Blu-ray surpassed HD DVD in the total number of discs sold from inception, and has gone on to outsell HD DVD by a 2:1 margin in January and February. In addition, first week head-to-head sales of The Departed, which was released by Warner on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, were reported to show a comfortable lead for Blu-ray and just two weeks ago Sony released the latest James Bond opus, Casino Royale exclusively to Blu-ray. The Casino Royale BD quickly became the first title from either format to crack the top ten for total DVD sales at Amazon.