This week has been a very significant one in the format wars as news came from Toshiba that it will stop making HD-DVD players and devices. This means the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD is pretty much over, and Blu-ray has been declared the winner. Thank goodness because as you all know high-definition televisions and players will be big sellers this year as we get closer to the DTV transition and the last thing we need is a format war. Now we can focus on buying our Blu-ray discs and players without much worry. But what about those of you who already chose HD-DVD players and bought a bunch of $30 DVDs? Unfortunately, if you bought an HD-DVD player in the last week, you might be out of luck as Toshiba issued a statement saying they wouldn't be giving any refunds or sweeteners to HD-DVD buyers according to SMH Australia."They [customers] understood that there were two competing formats and understood that one of them would probably prevail ... so they made the decision to go with HD DVD.''
Hey but at least you can round out your movie collection by buying HD DVD movies for half the price over at Amazon who's trying to get rid of them for a low price. The question is would you want to. Prices of Blu-ray players have actually gone up as Ben Patterson notes on
his post here. He says the Sony BDP-S300 has a $399 compared to the $299 price it had a few months ago, and the Samsung BD-P1400 is also $399 compared to the $270 price it had in December. Obviously, you're in good shape if you have a Playstation 3, but if you don't, you might want to hold off on buying that high-definition player until prices go down. Do tell us where you stand?
