Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD Player. £119.99

dc

I was told the other day that Paramount had gone all Blue too?

Unless you want an instant ready made home cinema now, I would wait as prices are dropping and even the major drive hardware manufacturers seem to be joining in.

New and at around £150, LG and Samsung have BD recorders for PCs that are also HD Roms . Blank media (50gig) is about a tenner, so beginning to look like it will take off quickly.

daggman

Yeah good if you want an upscaler (but cheaper ones can be had)

if you want a True HD player then this is (in my opinion) just not a good deal. Toshiba are having a Fire sale, getting rid of there stock before the format is dead.

Sales of bluray v HDDVD players just standalone are 93% blu 7% HDDVD. If they included ps3 in that it would prob be 99.9% Blu.

The only good thing about tosh lowering prices is that blu prices will prob get cheaper to in the next few months. I would personally hold on till then instead of having to invest in HD technology twice.

richardb70

Nah, Paramount (US) have just announced a load of HD DVDs so they're still staying "red". There's a rumour that a handful of Paramount Blu-Rays are "coming soon" on Amazon.co.uk but who knows...! Maybe they're discs produced before they switched to HD DVD last year? Or Paramount UK are doing their own thing?

As for cheap players, I don't know about PC drives apart from you need a seriously beefy computer to be able to handle the content. The falling prices of standalone Blu-Ray players in the UK (and US) is due to both the format war (so it's a good thing!) but mainly because most of these are the Profile 1.0 players that are officially "obsolete".

[I can't find the link at the moment, but Sony themselves came out with a comment at the recent CES show to the effect that they wouldn't recommend anyone buying a standalone Blu-Ray player at the moment]

richardb70

daggman wrote: »

if you want a True HD player then this is (in my opinion) just not a good deal. Toshiba are having a Fire sale, getting rid of there stock before the format is dead.

Sales of bluray v HDDVD players just standalone are 93% blu 7% HDDVD. If they included ps3 in that it would prob be 99.9% Blu.

Umm, trying to keep this civil and all, but I'd really love to know where you got those stats from!

And Toshiba are aggressively pricing their products to get them into people's homes. Yes, they're probably taking a loss. But Sony's doing the same with the PS3.

The truth of the matter is that both are good formats. I'm not a Sony hater. I've seen content on each that's excellent (and poor). I bought into HD DVD because it was finalised and because the catalogue of films available was more "me". I don't have any problem with buying Blu-Ray, but I'll be doing it when a "mature" standalone is released at the right price. (And no, I don't want a PS3. Sorry).

So far there's nothing in the Blu-Ray player lineup that competes with my EP35.

Adam_uk_3

daggman wrote: »

Yeah good if you want an upscaler (but cheaper ones can be had)

if you want a True HD player then this is (in my opinion) just not a good deal. Toshiba are having a Fire sale, getting rid of there stock before the format is dead.

Sales of bluray v HDDVD players just standalone are 93% blu 7% HDDVD. If they included ps3 in that it would prob be 99.9% Blu.

The only good thing about tosh lowering prices is that blu prices will prob get cheaper to in the next few months. I would personally hold on till then instead of having to invest in HD technology twice.

What utter tripe!

Hardware sales are about level- in fact I'm pretty sure HD DVD has sold more stand alone players.

You are quoting one weeks figures post the Warner move- shame on you! :mad:

BluMonkey

moggsy wrote: »

Sounds like you've got it all sorted then. The PS3 was definitely the best choice for a Blu Ray player at the moment - with the added bonus of being able to play games.

I think you deserve a medal for convincing your girlfriend to let you set up a home cinema in the garage. Good work fella!

link for my old setup and the building of my cinema http://www.domainmonkey.co.uk/cinema

jayok

Yep, nice set up. People should just enjoy what they have/like rather than try to convert others to their way of thinking. BluMonkey username says it all really.

Anyway, if this machine could play my hundreds of non-R2 DVD's, I would have bought one by now.

richardb70

jayok wrote: »

Yep, nice set up. People should just enjoy what they have/like rather than try to convert others to their way of thinking. BluMonkey username says it all really.

Anyway, if this machine could play my hundreds of non-R2 DVD's, I would have bought one by now.

Couldn't agree more.

As for the region coding for SD DVDs, there's some (unofficial?) firmware for some of the older Tosh HD models that does the trick. Got my fingers crossed that something comes out soon for the EP30/35....

BluMonkey

jayok wrote: »

Yep, nice set up. People should just enjoy what they have/like rather than try to convert others to their way of thinking. BluMonkey username says it all really.

Anyway, if this machine could play my hundreds of non-R2 DVD's, I would have bought one by now.

daggman

yep they were the one week figures but since the warner support for Blu exclusives only. HDDVD sales have collapsed.

NPD figurres are fact and Disc sales are more on Blu, and now standalone players are selling much better than HDDVD. But everyone knows the best selling Bluray player is the ps3 which is not included.

http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/15504/npd_blu-ray_sales_soar_with_warner_aboard