Well, here's an interesting price drop for a product teetering on the edge of extinction. It seems that Toshiba's slashed prices on some of their HD-DVD players a mere ten days after Warner Bros. abandoned the format.
So, that means you can get the Toshiba HD-A3 for only $150 (that's half price) at Circuit City and Best Buy, but we found it at Amazon for only $133. Amazon's also got the next player up, the HD-A30, for $172, while the others still hover around the $200 mark. And naturally, all these are eligible for a SquareTrade Warranty.
But the question remains: should you actually get one?
That depends on whether you've still got a Betamax VCR hooked up to your 1080p HDTV. Except that this time, the people behind Betamax - i.e. Sony - seem to be in the winner's chair. Sony's Blu-Ray discs are currently poised to decisively end Toshiba's HD-DVD format, and it could happen within just a few months.
While it's not over until it's really over, let's recap. Even before the format war hit the retail market, the six major Hollywood studios fell in line with one format or the other, or agreed to produce DVDs on both. At this point in time, there are only two studios left that are producing HD-DVDs: Paramount and Universal. When Warners jumped ship, it activated an escape clause in Paramount's contract, and while they haven't used it yet, they've conspicuously not renewed their HD-DVD contract with Toshiba, which just expired. Universal is in a similar situation, though their Toshiba contract has longer to go before it's up.
Elsewhere, Microsoft will never, ever go in for Blu-Ray, because Sony's PlayStation 3 is a direct competitor to Microsoft's Xbox. Apple, however, seems poised to go Blu for their desktop and laptop computers. They have to respond to HP's decision to offer either format in their laptops, but all Apple's studio partners who provide downloadable TV and movies to the Apple Store are squarely in the Blu-Ray camp. Most have been from the start.
So unless you're extremely pro-HD-DVD, or anti-Blu-Ray, or physically cannot ignore a big discount like this, we'd suggest letting these deals pass you buy. On the other hand, these HD-DVD players are all backwards-compatible, so if all you need is a new DVD player for a normal price and don't want to upgrade to Blu-Ray, these will do you just fine.
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HD-DVD warranty, Blu-Ray warranty, Toshiba warranty
