"HD DVD players will be available in March at prices as low as $500, beating Blu-ray Disc players to the market by several months and less than half the cost," reports Video Business.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Toshiba America Consumer Products announced its first two HD DVD high-definition models -- players only, not recorders -- will start shipping in March at prices of $500 and $800.
New Blu-ray Disc player models announced Wednesday by Pioneer Electronics USA and to be announced Thursday by Samsung are priced two-to-three times as high at $1,800 and about $1,000, respectively.
Comment: This tallies with what I've heard, and it's why I've become increasingly sceptical (or skeptical) about Sony's PS3 story over the past couple of months. I'd love to believe Sony will be shipping millions of $499 games consoles with built in Blu-ray players in the next few months, but if so, it must either have an amazingly cheap source of Blu-ray drives or unsuspected amounts of cash to subsidise PS3 sales. Throw in a Cell processor that costs $100-$150 to make and it looks even more unlikely.
And if Pioneer, Samsung and other Blu-ray backers believe Sony's PS3 story, you have to wonder why they think they can sell standalone Blu-ray players at $1,000 or more each....
