HD DVD players become DVD upscalers in format war fallout
By Thomas Ricker 
posted February 21st 2008 8:02AM
posted February 21st 2008 8:02AM
Update: Looks like Circuit City's jumped on the bandwagon as well -- the HD-A3 is now listed as an "Upconversion DVD/HD-DVD Player."
[Via TechRadar, thanks David]
Read - Old listing (via Google Cache)
Read - Current listing
Read - Circuit City HD-A3 listing (old listing)
It's completely true... even if there's no longer a compelling reason to want the ability to play HD-DVDs, plenty of people are still just buying plain ol DVDs, and wouldn't mind an upscaling player.
Why not buy one of these if they work as upscalers, as long as they're similarly priced as regular upscaling players?
Heck in a month you'll be able to get these for $50 bucks. Hell of a lot better than $400-$800 for BlueRay. You people must have a lot more money that me.
I told them to do that. Glad they listened. J/K
It's all the way you phrase your product description...
I have bought a 2nd HDDVD player since the news of the drop has come. Come on you can get the 360 add on for $50 to 60 bucks and a new Toshiba player with 7 movies for $70.00. Your just a f_c_ing idiot if you need a new player or have many hddvds already and dont buy one at these prices. I still have my PS3 for BR and my HDA1 but one day that will die. Why not have both at these prices its less than the price of a game on the new systems.
I wish Engadget would stop with all the HD-DVD hate. I know you got advertisements for Blu-Ray players on your website but guess what? They are still too f-ckin high. And no I don't want a PS3 nor do I care that is does Blu-Ray movies and GAMES because I don't buy console to watch movies I buy them to play games.
I'll wait til Blu-Ray drops to sub $200 prices then I might bite. Guess I will be waiting for a long time.
The ignorant media has started reporting on "Better not buy that BluRay player yet". MSNBC has a story telling people that BluRay players are still $400-600 and that they all need to be upgraded to new players if you want to play movies coming out later. They site an analyst that was behind HD-DVD that is obviously mad about BluRay's victory.Then the article goes on to say that there is an alternative and that is upconverting DVD players and digital downloads.
The Microsoft sludge machine in full effect. Hey Microsoft if you are trying to hide your agenda you are doing a really bad job. I know you stole a page from Joe Kennedy's playbook on how to manipulate and influence the market, but this is just sad.
I mean wow. How fast everyone's abandoned HD-DVD...(insert faster than x celebrity going to rehab for x addiction joke).
It really is sad though...the celebrities.
Everyone who never has seen it would be surprised by how good your old DVDs are getting when you watch them from a HD-DVD-Player. Almost unbeliebavle. For this, 70 bucks is a hell of a deal.
its worse than that, he's dead jim
Michael, I dont think its people quickly abandoning hd-dvd, I think its hd-dvd people having nothing more to say..like its going to change anything.
AlexM, you're an idiot, HD-DVD does 1080p too.
Interesting concept even if that price still isn't great. Incidentally, Amazon just dropped the price of its HD DVD players to $99. And that's with 7 movies included:
http://www.techconsumer.com/2008/02/21/amazon-drops-price-of-hd-dvd-player-to-99-upconvert-dvd-w-free-movies/
I'm soo glad the format war has been decided with Blu-Ray the clear winner.
www.gaj-it.com
@ Riggs
Check these deals out!
Amazon has most of the systems selling below 100 new and 60 or so used. I read MS is planning on a $50.00 hddvd add on as soon as the buy a hddvd player get 5 movies thing ends in a few days.
What happens when a couple of million of these things sell?
What's the problem here? Previously you were able to buy:
1. An HD DVD player for £120; or
2. An upscaling DVD player for £60 (based on first in-stock play.com result for 'upscaling dvd').
Now you can buy:
1. An upscaling DVD player that happens to play a dead format, for £80
2. An upscaling DVD player for £60.
£20 / one third of the price seems a reasonable premium to be able to play a format that is around now but won't be around for much longer. You could probably save that by buying a few cut-price HD DVDs instead of their Blu-ray equivilents.
Has anyone here gotten an unlock code yet?
Buy an HD-DVD to use as an up convert DVD player? Why would you torture yourself waiting up to three minutes for power on, boot up, open, close, load, read, then menu on an HD-DVD player when a normal upconvert DVD player will have you watching in less than 30 seconds from power on to play to get the same end result?
I don't know if every model does the same but my Toshiba HD-DVD player won't upscale conventional DVDs on the analog outputs (YPbPr) if the disk is CSS encoded which most movie disks are. I don't really care because I have a professional 3 chip DLP projector that can resize things just fine but I would find it annoying if I needed upscaling to fill a flat screen that didn't have the necessary digital inputs.
Now the question is: If there are bargains to be had on HD-DVD disks do I take advantage and make existing player more useful or is that a foolish bet as someday it will fail and I won't be able to play them. Obv. I have to get a BD player at some point but I went with HD because BD was hugely overpriced at the time.
This unfortunately seems to be the standard these days. Stores get stuck with products so they down right LIE about the product to move it. This is a reflection of the state of the country in general if you ask me, but what do I know?
1) Open lipstick
2) Apply liberally to pig