Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD Player (Includes 7 Free HD DVD Titles!) £189.99

Warner Bros. picks Blu-ray over HD-DVD

So there may be some price drops in the pipeline. Whether its going to be worth buying HD though is debatable. And Sony can shove BR where the sun don't shine too

Just to make this clear, you get 2 free titles with the player, the other 5 you have to send away for. For now, I'd advise staying away from HD DVD, prices are going to plummet in the next few weeks why HD DVD try and flog the players off to try and gain some ground.

BlueRay wins a battle. The war continues..

Its certainly getting closer to the end, have to read this. They've dropped their consumer electronics show press conference next week.

But yeah, definately don't buy yet, wait at least a few more weeks. If HD DVD is over you've not lost out, if it isn't over then the prices will be dropping a LOT.

Amazon have the same deal at £188.98 and although I can't fault Play's return policy, Amazon's is excellent. They'll send out new items if faulty before the old item is returned, and everything at their expense.

Bear in mind that this player will give you a HD picture only, not HD audio. That is, unless you have a newer amp which can decode HD audio. My amp cant, so I think I'll get the E35 instead (when the price comes down), as it has a built in decoder for HD audio formats (analog output to my amp's 6 channel input).

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/04...ray-exclusive/

might want to bear that in mind if going to hd-dvd.

edit just realised this info has already been posted, silly me didnt read the whole tread. do you peeps think its worth going for hd now?

I'd like to make a wild prediction and say blu-ray has pretty much won this HD battle, and HD DVD is done for. I own a few BD's myself and with the PS3's built in blu-ray player they've got a really strong advantage. But thats personal opinion only.

New york times is also saying its the end for HD DVD too though. But I guess anything can happen.

Also another update just to show you how grave the decision of warner brothers was...

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/04/h...f-warner-anno/

You may want to consider waiting.....

i agree, i think it may be wise to wait. hd-dvd does look like the next betamax, and there’s no point buying into a format that going to flop. if you do intend to still go ahead and go for a hd-dvd you might as well wait and see if other studios drop hd-dvd, which looks likely and just pump your money in to a blu ray players etc.

on a side note, this is the best news for consumers, with one format (eventually) winning, there will be less confusion, cheap players and lower prices. Feel sorry for the early adopters of hd-dvd, but that’s the way this industry is.

Er no... No competition means they can keep the price as (artificially) high as they want in the knowledge that the punter HAS to buy their product or go without. I dare say 3rd party manufacturers would have to licence whatever protection BR has just to get their players to play the disks? That's how monopoly situations work. Would Sony have dropped PS3 prices if it didn't have competition from MS? What a stupid question eh? Of course not, they would have milked the thicko punter for all they could, just like they always do

Your still forgetting some of the major competition, what about DVD? They've still got to compete with that. And as HD adoption increases (and it will) prices for HD equipment will drop. The good news is this stops people buying stuff thats going to be useless, except for the early adopters, sorry guys!.

No i'm not forgetting DVD at all, infact i'm sticking with it The fact is though, DVD isn't a HD format so therefore it's not competition as such. People have the choice, stick with SD or be forced to whatever HD source wins, and based on Sony's performance in the past they WILL do thier damndest to make as much profit as they can, and sod the customer. We are assuming of course that BR will eventually win. The interesting thing about the sales figures on BR though that most people like to gloss over is that they include ALL BR sales including PS3 game disks....

At the end of the day, I don't really care who wins. I'll buy when the players cost sub £50 and the disks are under a tenner, till then they can all stick it

Incidentally I think Warners whole attitude is bloody atrocious.

So basically what they are saying is..

"We want this format to fail, but in the meantime we intend to milk as much as we can out of it"

Nice.....

Nah I think its just contractual obligations with Toshiba/Microsoft that they release films for so many months.