The Magnavox and Sylvania branded Funai NB500 Blu-ray player were spotted at Walmart. The NB500 is Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player and it is price quite low at $298. It sports HDMI version 1.3, HD audio codec’s, and DVD upscaling. These units are obviously low end BD players and somehow outdated, but again the price point might lure some potential buyers.
[via engadgetHD]
The high-definition disc format war may be over, but the real losers aren’t those who bought HD-DVD players but Toshiba, the company behind the bested standard. The company has announced today that their net profit this past quarter dropped an astonishing 95-percent, thanks to losses prompted by the format pull-out. Overall, net profit scraped in at 1.25 billion yen (US$12m), versus 26.17 billion yen this time last year.
So Toshiba conceded in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle and all of their mates quickly fell with them. Since then things haven’t gotten better for the consumer. Sure your new PS3 comes with a Blu-Ray player and that makes it a nice format, but HD-DVD had affordable prices for both its players and discs, Blu-Ray players are still astronomically priced almost making the PS3 the most economical option.
As the war between two HD format has ended, concern arise about competitive pricing. I myself included have thought Blu-ray equipments will not take anymore freefall on its price. Well, I was wrong – Dell actually added Blu-ray to its Inspiron 1525 laptops and still put the machine’s pricing under $900 ($879 to be exact).
The Canadian retailer Future Shop is doing a good deed by trading your obsolete HD-DVD player with store credit and will donate them to charity. But the $100 credit is only good toward a Hybrid Hd-DVD and Blu-ray player, trade in for another soon-to-obsolete player? It’s seriously twisted if you take the charity part out of the equation.
No more Circuit-City’s secret handshake to trade in you HD-DVD for Blu-Ray, the electronics retailer is now officially launching the promotion according to AP. Circuit City will accept returns of HD DVD players within 90 days of purchase with proof of purchase receipt; customer will receive store credit or use it to pay the different for a Blu-Ray player. Again, this offer is not applicable on HD-DVD movies. Kudo to Circuit City. Now, only if I can get Amazon to take back mine.
While LG is still sticking to support HD-DVD with combo player, Samsung has decided to abandon its second generation Dual-Format Blu-Ray and HD-DVD combo player. The BD-UP5500 was announced in CES 2008 and scheduled to release around the second-half of 2008 to replace the BD-UP-5000.
Back in December Microsoft released an Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator, which ran $2,999. Essentially it allowed people that were working on HD DVD content for the 360 to test it out without having to continually burn (and waste) disc after disc. Well since the format war is over and Microsoft has killed off their HD DVD attachment, they are now offering the emulator for free.
So the word on the street is Circuit City is having a secret HD-DVD trade-in program for Blu-Ray player. According to electronichouse, Circuity City is not promoting the trade-in publicly, but if you ask, they will kindly apply the refund toward a new Blu-ray player as long as your original HD-DVD purchase is within 3 months. Sorry, hardware only folks, no news on HD movies trade-in.
Yes, the exciting Format War was over, but DreamWorks has awkward agreement trapped in HD-DVD contract. DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg told Reuters couple days ago that DreamWorks will follow the previous agreement; continue to support HD-DVD till the contract expired. Not anymore, The Parent company, Paramount has announced the final list of HD-DVD releases, with no future plan for HD-DVD title after next week releases.
JP
