Funai's NB500 Blu-ray player sliding into Wal-Mart for $298
By Darren Murph 
posted May 12th 2008 1:30PM
posted May 12th 2008 1:30PM
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posted May 12th 2008 1:30PM
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The $460M write-off is net. It includes any money recovered by selling discs to people who bought subsidized players.
Anyway, something like 1.5M HD-DVD players (including 360 add-ons) were sold, meaning they lost net $300 per unit sold. NET.
That means if you bought a 360 add-on at $250, the amount net lost was more even than the amount of revenue they took in.
There's usually a rousing business selling $100 bills for $10, Toshiba isn't the first to discover this business model.
Yeah well naturally it was only inevitable that someone would come in & do the simplistic math (1.5 million divided by 460 million = 300 per unit) and come up with a guess
(which is all you did).
Dividing everything up by the number of units sold does not in fact give you the answer as to how much was made or lost per unit as it obviously involves costs far beyond the individual unit pricing.
You just don't know.
You didn't compile nevermind read the accounts nor have the slightest idea what was or was not included, what was or was not off-set.
There are also other considerations too.
Just because they packaged everything up into a 1-off cost does not mean it is all so neat and easy
(tho obviously in another sense they thought it was for them to get it all over with all asap).
For instance that certain items (like elements of the R&D or hardware manufacture for example) which may have had other wider applications/uses and which might not normally have been included may well have been because of the tax implications/advantages/benefits.
@ tifosiotaku
You can't begin to imagine how hard I'm laughing at you & your pathetic whining whimpering to stop me saying the things you can't bear to see here.
What do you think this is, a standing joke site like blu-ray.com?
Pathetic.
.....and you know what I said was 100% on the money, $300 for a POS no-name Blu-ray player is a joke.
If Sony & Samsung couldn't get any real significant interest in the mass-market going last X-mas with players below that price how the f*ck do you expect anyone to bother with garbage like this Funai?
Wake up.
TT: So, maybe the $300 loss per player isn't the exact loss relative to manufacturing costs...maybe it includes the R&D, free movies, and other figures that you don't think should be included. So what? Most companies do generally price products to recoup R&D expenses...and not doing so is a loss. So What?
If you know so much about the issue, with all your reports and accounts you've mentioned, why don't you tell us what the exact figure is...until you do, quit bitching about the nice round estimates that the rest of us are satisfied with...you still haven't proved them wrong anyway.
Those round estimates can't be too far off anyway:
They were selling HD DVD players for $100, including, what, 7 free movies? And a couple months earlier those players were $150...$200? At least for those particular sales, we are looking at a couple hundred dollars in loss, especially when $150 worth of free movies is accounted for. That is a loss....and with a $50-$100 loss per player for manufacturing, plus the $150 worth of free movies, we're in the $300 ball park. So what if it was only $200 or $250...it's obviously there.
It doesn't matter how I do the math. Toshiba lost their ass selling players.
They were giving enough money away with each unit that no one else could afford to enter the market with an HD-DVD player.
If Toshiba was willing to give away $100 in order to get an HD-DVD player out there (and make it up in software sales), then who wants to come into that market? You sell your player at best making no money because you have to complete with Toshiba's player's subsidized prices. And by doing this, you do Toshiba a favor, by getting a player out there for them to sell software to and they didn't even have to lose $100 to do it!
HD-DVD was dead from day 1. There was only one hardware maker and only ever would be one. That's not going to lead to low player costs.
Toshiba in its desperation even managed to undercut its own OEM's Venturer A3 clone. It's no wonder CEs ran a mile. There was zero profit to make in HD DVD when Toshiba are selling them below cost.
@ why not the LS2LS7?
A fairly unusual once-and-for-all 1-off payment of costs @ $460 million is hardly
"losing your ass" for a company like Toshiba.
Be serious.
You can dress the math up however you like but no-one would seriously
relate total costs down to a unit price in the manner you have
suggested.
Imagine if Sony & the rest of the BDA did that.
Every PS3 would 'really' cost well over $1000 each
(in view of the years of several hundred $ losses Sony alone has
announced over Blu-ray).
To try and say that is little more than a totally artificial stunt.
Several insiders were saying (before the plug was pulled) that they
reckoned Toshiba was either making a little money or losing only a
little money per unit.
Sadly the ignorant fanboy element here just wants to pretend that the
Blu-ray drive is pretty much the same as the HD DVD (or for that
matter SD DVD drive).
It isn't.
The have to use a more precise, expensive and higher spec'd mechanism
because of the smaller pits they use/read.
Blu-ray is necessarily more expensive than the HD DVD & SD DVD units,
even if they did use a very similar blue/violet laser.
It's also worth pointing out that the Blu-ray units were built down to a price and unlike SD DVD & it's close cousin HD DVD we have no idea yet what that means for the longevity of the units
(I guess we'll be starting to hear about that in the coming year or 2).
All those kids who used they PS3 for lengthy periods of gaming &
movie watching may well come to regret the all-in-one choice.
We already know the blue/violet laser began a substantial part of
it's 'life' in production with a very definite and not exactly
generous 'life-span'.
Sorry Truth Teller, I have to bow out here. I have a strict policy against arguing with boneheads.
How you can say a BluRay player (1.0!) costs more to make than an HD-DVD player is beyond me. Both have all the same parts, except the HD-DVD player has to have two HD-video decoders instead of one, and audio and video mixing processing plus the RAM to do that in.
HD-DVD players cost at least as much to make as BluRay players at the time, and yet Toshiba was selling them for less. They were subsidizing the hell out of them (hoping to make the money up on the back end), and that made it impossible for any other hardware company to enter the market.
If you suddenly turn reasonable, maybe we can chat again.
... and why isn't Engadget permabanning Truth Teller (such a misnomer if there ever was one) and kicking him to the curb yet?
Have faith - the future is Blu Ray...
There's nothing wrong with profile 1.1. Many people don't even want to hook their player to ethernet anyway just to get T-shirt offers.
This player seems like a pretty good deal in the current pricing climate (which I wish were better).
Yeah of course, in Blu-ray/PS3 fantasy-land only Toshiba subsidised
their HD DVD players.
Not a word about the subsidy on each and every PS3 sold (which is
still the case today), eh?
....and btw IIRC according to many serious industry watchers that's a
subsidy running @ several of hundred $ per unit.
Oh, and not a peep either about the subsidy on Blu-ray discs & disc
replication either, eh?
nobody is *complaining* about subsidies. They're just pointing out their existence.
It's not *bad* that Toshiba subsidized their HD DVD players. It was a risk they took, and it turned out badly for them. End of story.
Consoles have been subsidized for decades with the hope of making it back in game royalties...the PS3 happens to also be a Blu-ray player, and thus, a subsidized Blu-ray player.
This is not a bad thing. Nobody thinks artificially cheap products are bad...but to compare the price of an obviously subsidized HD-DVD player (reminder: $100 with 5 or 7 or 10 free movies included) to a Blu-ray player that may or may not be subsidized is not a reasonable comparison. That is the only reason why people keep bringing up the subsidies Toshiba had.
LOL..EQC
It turned out bad for them because they subsidized players?
I swear to God, no wonder this world is going to crap when you have huge amounts of people both young and adults with total disconnect with reality.
Let me ENLIGHTEN you. Toshiba made good choices about everything. The corporate backstabbing and payoffs and retailer blackmailing is what made them fail, not losing $900 million in subsidization for player that ONLY consumer benefited from.
Seriously. Jesus.
Sony has lost between $6-7 BILLION on pushing Blu-Ray and PS3 and probably another $1-2 billion on payoffs. So your whole point has total disconnect with reality of things.
What's sad about HD DVD is that Toshiba didn't want to go ripoff route as many CE companies and actually thought that relying on cheap production for DVDs, cheap players, combo format, mass adoption would be done quickly and transition would be painless for consumer in the long run. In addition, they had their technology read and finished and all we needed even almost 2 years ago for studios and everyone to start publishing movies. Consumers voted in favor of HD DVD too. The studies have shown that as well. 45% of sampled consumers said they wanted HD DVD and only about 20% said Blu-Ray.
All that was squashed by payoff to Warner and Fox to continue ripping consumers off and we see very well why. $40 movies. That's why.
HD DVD was consumer oriented. Blu-Ray isn't.
I'd like to ask those Warner douchebags what they think now about adoption of HD since they were so loud to say that their payoff from Sony was in the interest of consumers when even the birds on the tree know that Blu-Ray won't come to HD DVD levels in every aspect until 2010 at least.
It's a disgrace that there are people who actually justify this type of business practice that goes directly against consumers and is purely fueled by greed and rip off. What boggles the mind is people saying that it's normal to pay $40 just because you paid higher prices 10 years ago for DVD as if the leap from DVD to HD is the same as it was from VHS to DVD. It's absolutely ridiculous.
But hey.. as I said.. I don't care.. Blu-Ray will die within 2-3 years anyways because nobody will use optical media anymore anyways and everything will go digital as we already see it will, but I just can't understand people justifying this corporate greed by pointing out something that was actually in the benefit of the consumer. I really don't.
eqc-
I said that subsidzed players were bad. So I did argue that.
By artifically setting the selling price to low it discouraged manfufactureres from getting in the game. HD-DVD set such rapid price drops that they could have no partners.
I will always wonder what would have happened had toshiba won. Would consumers have accepted an increased player price from $100 to the 200-250 rage after Blu's defeat.
The ps3 was a good life boat for bd but with this player you can be assured of 200-250 players by Christmas. The manfacturing cost will be such that the cheap players will be prices less then tha ps3.
NFinity: I'm a rational guy, I'm not pro-blu or anti-HD DVD...you misread what I was trying to say.
When I said: "It was a risk they took, and it turned out badly for them,"
I did NOT mean that Toshiba's subsidies *caused* things to turn out bad. (They may have...I don't know...joe may be right that Toshiba's low prices kept other manufacturers from wanting to make HD DVD players...but that's not my point).
But, what *I* meant that they subsidized players try to gain market share, and that, when HD DVD lost, it ended up being financially bad for them. They took an initial loss on the subsidy in hopes of winning the war and making the money back later...when Blu Ray won (whether or not the victory was fair...), that took away Toshiba's ability to make the money back later in the way they likely planned (again, I am not trying to say Toshiba would have ripped us off or anything...but if they took a loss, it was because they thought it would lead to a way to making more money later. That's business).
What I'm saying is not pro-blu or anti-HD DVD. If we agree that Toshiba was losing money on their players (at $100, including 7 free movies, they must have been), and we agree that the end of the war made it so they didn't have a chance to make that money back (ie: via HD DVD royalties, or whatever their plan was), then we can agree that Toshiba's subsidies happened to turn out bad.
I won't touch the rest of your discussion...I agree that the whole back-room deal sucks, and I don't have any of the facts about who paid off who. I believe it happened on both sides, but I don't know who started it or who paid more.
I do remain confident, though, that prices will drop soon enough. and in a year or two they'll be in the range where I'll be interested in buying...
How can a person argue anything coming from you Joe when you say as a certainty that $150 HD DVD would players would go up to $300 if HD DVD won. How can anyone take you seriously. That's Sony's tactic as we've seen. They held the MSRP sky high but sold players at $100 or more discount and then when the final payoffs were made and they won, they went up back to MSRP prices.
The fact is that Toshiba had an MSRP on players at $149. This price would not fall, just as PS3 price didn't go up for almost 2 years losing Sony billions.
Toshiba was going simple and very logical route. Lose money on hardware and get money on royalties. Consumer gets cheap and great product, CE eat adoption costs for a while and it's all good in the long run. Now, what CE companies and BDA want is for YOU TO SUCK UP THE COSTS of adoption and then make more money on top of that. Only an individual with extremely low IQ can't understand this.
With HD DVD, The ONLY one who might've been a bit upset (they would get over it pretty quickly anyways) would be other CE companies because Toshiba would be the major holder in the patent pool and with full right. Fair game.
But I don't see how they are happy now producing $500-$700 players while Sony is kicking them in the nuts on a daily base with $400 console (soon to possibly drop again). I mean let's get a grip with reality here.
This is why Blu-Ray will fail. You can only drop prices if there's a demand and there's ZERO demand for Blu-Ray standalones. Prices won't drop by themselves.
In the meantime HD digital download infrastructure is expanding at a lightning rate. All major backbones for streaming and online downloads have upgraded to HD capabiility and enough bandwith to supply consumers. Sure it won't be 1080p right away, but in 2-3 years it will be. But let's face it, for regular person (99% of consumers) the jump from DVD to 1080p is maybe 30%-40% in quality.. a jump from 720p to 1080p is like maybe 10-15% in quality improvement. For most people this is simply totally transparent.
What you wrote Toshiba would've done is totally unfounded especially when we knew their strategy from the start. What we also knew and is happening now is with Blu-Ray and Sony. The ripping off part and still unfinished specs that will take another 2 years to iron out.
Toshiba's real problem was like the good old days of Apple vs Ibm which Ibm won because they let other companies make their pc and Apple didn't. How many companies made Blu players vs HD-DVD players? Big, old and stupid mistake on Toshiba's part! Same as vhs vs beta, JVC let everyone make vhs right away and they won too. Sure there are other factors in HD-DVD's demise, but eveyone seems to forget what I just stated and with HD-DVD's head start, things may have been different if you saw many different brands of HD-DVD players and a version of the 360 with a built in player! It didn't work out that way and the consumer's sales ended up choosing Blu-Ray so why do you guys argue the same old shit over and over again? ..move on and enjoy Blu if you want HD on a disc, if not, wait for DD to becaome a reality.
There's one big thing that you fail to see about the PS3: If/when Blu-ray fails (not so sure it will), these PS3 owners have lost nothing. It still plays games (its main function). It still plays Blu-ray. It still plays DVD. Not to mention, if digital download takes off, it's poised to do well in that respect as well. Why you care so much that they enjoy what they've purchased is beyond me.
Do you really care this much about any of this? I sure hope not. Not sure why you seem so fit to trash Blu-ray in this "mine was better", pissing-match you keep trying to perpetuate...bitter much? It's gone from funny, to sad, to just ridiculous.
Nfinity,
Well I actually said that a $150 player may go to $250.
You can completely argue with me. I have no idea what would have actually happened and said as much.
funny how just months ago, the HD-DVD farm was riding high and feeling invincible when Walmart annouced they would carry cheap chinese HD-DUD players and which would essentially kill BD to oblivion.
LOL, the HD-DUD farm better have been smart enough at selling Toshi stocks short back in Jan...but obviously, that didn't happen.
Haha, more and more players hit the market but the stupid hd dvd fanboys see this as the end of BD. Just ignore them!
No Dave, it's more like -
"ha ha, a handful of standalone players come into the market and the buying public ignores them".
At least be honest about the huge dive in (an already tiny) number of standalone sales in the USA .
TT, of course standalone sales have dropped...why buy one when you can get a PS3 for less $ (this unit being the exception)? Even if you're not a gamer the PS3 is currently the best choice. It will play BDs, DVDs, CDs, store music, pictures and videos on its hard drive and has a built-in Internet browser. And if you are a gamer, then it will handle those needs as well.
Still, I would love to see prices drop on these standalone units sooner rather than later, as well as prices for the BDs.
Vic I realise you and a load of other PS3 fans will never get this but some of us will never put a game consol on our a/v rack.
Why the hell should I even consider buying an over-priced, sometimes noisey (depending on who you read but the initial tales of their silence have vanished now), limited, power-hungry, fugly looking odd thing when I have zero interest in the bulk of it's abilities?
(nevermind the fact that I will not buy into & support the anti-consumer BS that is Blu-ray)
I don’t give a crap who looses several hundred dollars per unit as long as its not me. Thanks Toshiba for subsidizing my HDDVD player and thanks Sony for doing the same thing on my PS3.
Its not like they have not earned their money back on my 130 hddvds or 50 br / PS3 games.
I won't waste a lot of time debating Truth Teller or nfinitard but I will say this.
Come Memorial Day, 4th of July & Labor Day the Funai & numerous other Blu-Ray players will be discounted or offered with movie bundles.
There are ANOTHER 10 Blu-Ray players being released over the next 4 - 6 months...there are low end, mid & high end players so no one is left behind:
Panasonic DMP-BD50 Blu-ray Player Profile 2.0 debuts May 01, 2008
Sharp BD-HP50 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts Q3 2008
Marantz BD8002 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts Q3 2008
Sylvania [Funai] NB500SL9 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts April 30, 2008
Philips BDP7200 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts April 2008
Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts Summer 2008
Pioneer BDP-05FD Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts July 18, 2008
Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray Player Profile 1.1 debuts June 2008
Sony BDP-S550 Blu-ray Player BD-Live Profile (2.0) Fall 2008
Daewoo DBP-2000 Blu-ray Player BD-Live Profile (2.0) Debuts Q3 2008
The Daewoo profile 2.0 should price similar to the Funai and keep your eyes open for an OPPO Blu-Ray player before the year ends.
Truth Teller or nfinitard you can only delay the inevitable.
Exactly. It's quite obvious except to HD DVD crybabies that most of the sales, marketing, promotions happen in the latter half of the year. That's when the new players come out, that's when the old players come down in price, that's when the stores start discounting to capture more sales, that's when a glut of new titles appear.
With virtually every CE producing a new generation of hardware plus a few cheap no-names there are going to be no problems at all getting bargains. Brand name players will be down to $300 by Christmas and the no-names will be down to $200. Competition at work in other words.
I'm just very sad about HD-DVD losing. They WERE much cheaper to produce than BD players. (See avsforum) Toshiba was not really subsidizing them nearly as much as Sony is with BD. They really were marketed well towards the consumer. They wanted to create an affordable mass-market format. Sony didn't.
Sony BD was superior in some aspects, but they very rarely have the consumer in mind when they go off pushing various short-lived technologies. They spend billions in R&D and don't care what they need to charge consumers when they finally reach the market. All competitors are always cheaper than Sony. Sure, they market towards the innovators and gotta-have-it's, but you can't do that with a mass-market format. People will find other ways.
The death-call for HD-DVD was the hiring of Stringer as the new CEO of Sony. He flat out said in interviews that Sony was NOT going to loose another format war, no matter how much money they spent. So they bought off Warner and many, many other players. Back in the days of the PS2 vs. XBox, I was rooting for Sony, but now I'm not. This rampant spending cannot be good for Sony's bottom line net income, and it's certainly not good for consumers when they have to pay for it eventually.
* QUOTE
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 13th 2008 1:33PM
How you can say a BluRay player (1.0!) costs more to make than an HD-DVD player is beyond me. Both have all the same parts
=====================================================
Er, no, they don't.
The Blu-ray drive itself is made to a higher, tighter and more costly spec because they ised pits of a smaller size and needed the more precise drive to do it.
Sorry but this is very elementary stuff and you clearly do not know what you're talking about.
Bonehead. :P
JDS with few exceptions (the expensive Marantz for instance) you're simply just listing news of replacement stock to take over from exisitng models.
The existing Blu-ray models are over-priced & not selling in the mass-market and the replacement models will be just as over-priced & still won't sell in the mass-market either.
Oh, and good luck with that POS Daewoo, don't you guys know anything about the garbage electronics goods they make?
.....and wtf was that ludicrous "you can only delay the inevitable" comment meant to be about?
I'm giving my views about this stuff, how the hell can I "delay" anything by commenting here.
Are you insane?
It's a blog on the net.....that ought to be hint enough not to take any of this too seriously.
Jeez but some of you game console kiddies have the most laughable & absurdly over-inflated delusion about yourselves and what your comments here amount to.
Truth Teller
I am not a "game console kiddie" as you put it. I am a 38 year old man. You recklessly through around these terms & titles as if you are dictating the direction we are all going to adopt as if you know everything & we are simply waiting for your manna from heaven to enlighten us.
The "you can only delay the inevitable" statement means there is nothing, zero, nada you or your alter ego nfinitard can do to stop Blu-Ray from being the next dominant format. The entire industry is on board it is already decided.
Your statement about some of the models simply replacing existing models is not accurate as many Blu-Ray manufacturers only have profile 1.0 players that are being replaced by 1.1 players or 1.1 players being replaced by 2.0 players in a logical progression. Not quite the same thing as going from 1.0 to 1.0 or 1.1 to 1.1 etc...
Regarding Daewoo I would never buy it, but if they are priced around $199 then drop from there, MANY consumers will consume them and be very happy with them. [Ignorance is bliss]
Lastly, once there are a dozen or more 1.1 players on the market we will see great deals due to competition. The retailers won't want the inventory sitting & will run sales to lure people in etc....Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day etc...all we be big sales for Blu-Ray heading into the holiday season....Maybe Wal-Mart will run another Pre-Black Friday sale or some secret sales like they did last year.
Nothing can delay the inevitable that's why it's inevitable
Yeah, as I thought, when it comes down to it in the end it's just the usual 'belief'.
Blu-ray isn't "inevitable" to or about anything.
In fact with the prices they expect and the start it's had coupled with it's total invisibility in the mass-market it's more likely that it never progresses beyond the high margin niche
(which it would appear is exactly how many expected & suits the industry down to a tee).
They sure as hell aren't doing anything to displace (or threaten) their cash-cow SD DVD - which despite all the chatter about falling sales & profits remains a vast seller making all involved huge sums of money.
Truth Teller
What color is the sky in your world?
Say hello to Seargent Pepper for me.
Call me when the shuttle lands.
Ah yeah, well of course.
It's the people who point to the reality of Blu-ray's minute sales,
high prices and total reliance on a kids game console that are the
delusional ones......
......but only here to the sort of nut-jobs here who claim that SD
DVD with its 750+ million annual sales is going to "inevitably" be
over-taken by a video system which has yet to break into
double-figure (million) sales for 1 year alone
and
which is unable to convince large parts of the buying public that the
improvement it offers is worth the high premium it demands.
You've been set up to be a high-margin niche and you guys 'supported'
it.
You're getting exactly what you deserve.
LMAO.
Truth Teller
And what does that make you as a HD DVD supporter besides wrong?
I am getting what I deserve? Have I been a bad boy?
You sound so utterly ridiculous.
You must be really bored or really bitter.
Either way I think I'll watch something on my "kiddie game console" it's fun.
And by the way, the kiddie game console you constantly denigrate...it single handedly won the format war so what does that say about what you have?
You keep putting down what won & cling to and defend what lost....interesting logic. You must be VERY successful in life.
Keep up the good work.
Truth Teller
Blu-Ray is worth the improvement it offers and the high premium it demands. Which is really not that high...if you can't afford it TFB.
Blu-Ray is 1080p, SD DVD is 480i.
The PQ enhancement is more than twice the lines of resolution and goes from interlaced to progressive.
The AQ difference is beyond comparison, DVD is not even in the same realm as Blu-ray regarding audio. [HD DVD was not in the same realm as Blu-ray regarding audio either. That extra 20 GB storage really comes in handy.]
You can play it down all you want because it suits you but DVD to Blu-Ray is JUST AS significant a jump as VHS to DVD.
In fact the jump to Blu-Ray is even more significant as VHS resolution was 240i going to DVD @ 480i literally twice the resolution.
DVD @ 480i to Blu-Ray 1080p is greater than twice the resolution and goes from interlaced to progressive.
It took SEVEN years for DVD to overtake VHS.
Blockbuster ANNOUNCED that they were pulling VHS in DECEMBER 2004 based on DVD FINALLY out performing VHS in BOTH rentals & sales. The actual VHS titles wre not even pulled until Q2 2005.
The process takes as long as it takes.
You can only "HOPE" to delay the inevitable
Very good points...
Also: To add more to your discussion, don't forget that those VHS tapes at 240i were still played on 480i CRT TVs. We all love new plasmas and LCD's...but an old 480i CRT was great at upscaling and hiding flaws in the picture of VHS. Even look at CRT computer monitors -- you could run them at practically any resolution and they'd look fine because of the way the pixels worked. Run a new LCD monitor at a non-native resolution, and the picture will look blurry and out-of-whack.
Granted, a VHS tape would deteriorate the more you played it...but I would say that viewed on a decent 480i 27" TV (probably about the standard in most homes 10-15 years ago), you'd be hard pressed to see a huge difference in the picture quality between DVD and new VHS tape.
Also, don't forget that a widescreen DVD, played on a regular 4:3 CRT, is going to be crunched down to only 360i for 16x9 picture...so that's even less of a difference compared to the 240i VHS.
On the other hand...anybody with a 40" or bigger HDTV will likely notice picture quality issues. Not only is the TV bigger, amplifying imperfections, but it's also got square/rectangular pixels (versus the more amorphous pixels on a CRT). The image from a regular DVD player looks awful on a big HDTV, unless by some miracle that HDTV came with its own high-quality upscaler (which is rare).
Getting a good upscaling DVD player is an option, then, but that still isn't the optimum since an upscaler can't create extra detail. Making things even sillier, the highest quality upscaling DVD players (made by OPPO) sell for over $250 anyway...and that's approaching Blu-ray player prices.
Having a true HD video source is the best way to make use of an HDTV. That may mean HD cable/satellite for some. It may also mean HD downloads for some. For watching movies on disks, now that the war is over, it also means blu-ray. And now, with this Funai player, a combination blu-ray player and 1080p DVD-upscaler can be had for little more than the price of the OPPO (the upscaling in the Funai is likely worse than the OPPO, but the blu-ray picture will be better).