Toshiba just couldn't let Sony hog all the high-def DVD spotlight with its
delays, so it has pushed back its second generation HD DVD players in the US and abroad. Despite the lack of an official statement from Toshiba US, a dealer on AVS Forum revealed that due to problems with a chip from a third party supplier, the lower-end HD-A2 HD DVD player originally due out right about... now has slipped into the second week of December. The
HDMI 1.3-equipped, 1080p displaying $999 HD-XA2 is now scheduled to just barely make a 2006 release in the last week of the year. In Europe Toshiba has officially announced the delay, now anticipating a "quantity of units" of the rebadged
HD-E1 due in December and the
HD-XE1 slated for 2007. Second gen hardware is generally expected to atone for the
bug-ridden sins of its predecessors, so hopefully a short delay now means avoiding a
quick patch later. In the meantime there's always the
Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, or deciding which
free HD DVDs to get.
[Thanks, Max]
Read - AVS Forum
Read - Pocket-lint.co.uk
posted Nov 15th 2006 12:43AM
SON OF A.....!!!!!
Scumbag 3rd party chip maker!!!!!!!!!!!
Cool!
This gives Blu-Ray even bigger advantage :)
Bad timing with PS3 now shipping.
Good news for HD-DVD.
With the reported PS3 problems in playing older games, I wouldn't count this as much of an advantage for Sony.
And besides, my older, "obsolete" Toshiba HD-A1 has been letter perfect, and never glitches or locks up.
What do you want to bet that the new Toshiba HD-DVD players will play older DVD's without any problems? :)
What do the 2.5% of PS2 games that have glitches have to do with DVDs? Multiple press accounts say that everything media-wise plays perfectly.
Toshiba should have paid MS to put HD-DVD into their 360, they could have had 5.5 million players on the market by now.
Too bad they didn’t lower the price as well although the second generation does look a little bit more streamline than the first generation.
Dave,
Would you mind elaborating on how this is an “even bigger advantage” for Blu-ray?
PS3’s launch isn’t a reason as unless I’ve preorder, I won’t be able to get one well into next year. And any advantage it had is neutralized by the availability of the HD DVD add-on for the X360.
The last time I looked, there was no other Blu-ray player in the ½ grand vicinity, unless I’m missing something…
Humpty,
How is this bad timing?
What’s the possibility of me walking into a Best Buy (or any other retailer) the day of the PS3 launch or even a week or a month after and finding a PS3 on the shelf?
Is there or is there not an HD DVD counterpart to PS3’s Blu-ray (HDDVD add-on for the Xbox 360)?
yes hddvd xbox drive
that was a rhetorical question (for humpty).