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$99 Toshiba HD DVD player on Friday at Wal-Mart?

Thought this was a nice find to share.

Ok this is just absolutely nuts. $99 for a Toshiba HD DVD player and $348 for a 1GB Acer Laptop supposedly this Friday at Wal-Mart and it isn’t even Black Friday yet. This is being advertised as the “Secret in-store specials” ri-walmart.com site which I’m not 100% sure is Wal-Mart operated but a whois.org search says it’s registered to “Wal-Mart stores”.

I guess it’s not really such a “secret” anymore if you’re reading about it here. If that’s the case, there’s a good chance people will be camped out for 24 hours in front of Wal-Mart. Heck for all I know people might be lining up there now and I thought the $170 Sears deal with the Toshiba HD-A3 bundled with 7 HD DVD titles was already outrageous. If this $100 HD DVD is for real and if there are no sub-$250 Blu-ray set-top players this, I’m starting to think the High Definition format war is all but over.

Speaking of laptops, the Asus Eee $299 4 GB Flash 512 MB RAM 7″ LCD model is now selling for $399 at full retail cost at Newegg. But that’s a full $100 higher than we were led to believe and we see these outrageous deals with 1GB laptops and large screens selling for $348. I would say there’s no point in buying an Eee unless they can get the price down to what they originally promised unless you absolutely need an ultra-small notebook.

If I were to take a guess based on last year’s experience, you won’t be able to buy one of these laptops unless you show up today no later than 4:00PM with some sleeping bags and get ready to wait 16 hours. Then again Wal-Mart might have more of these in stock and fewer people know about this pre-Black Friday deal so it’s possible you only have to line up 12 hours ahead of time. You can count me out but I would do it in a heartbeat if I were still a starving college student.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?cat=3

http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?sect...=wmall&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=holidaygif
 
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nice price

No 1080p though
No multichannel analog outputs (which I do want for when I listen on my 5.1 surround headphones late at night, so I don't wake my girlfriend up).

HD-A35 is far more appealing to me (too bad it costs a lot more)
 
Ahhhhh, let the price wars commence. This is going to be an AWESOME holiday season! :) I can't wait to get my new HTPC components tomorrow so I can watch my HD DVD's in 1080p over HDMI. It's going to be so fun. :) But if I didn't already have an HD DVD player, I'd definitely consider one of these deals. I mean, come on...you get a player for 99 bucks plus a mail in offer for 5 free HD DVD's. That rocks! And they say (including me) that format wars are bad for the consumer. I don't know...I'm starting to change my mind on that.
 
Question is there really a noticable difference in 1080i over 1080p? It would seem there isn't really much of a difference unless you plan on getting a 60" or bigger.
 
Question is there really a noticable difference in 1080i over 1080p? It would seem there isn't really much of a difference unless you plan on getting a 60" or bigger.

There's a difference, yes. I can notice the difference between my Xbox 360 playing HD DVD's at 1080i vs my PS3 playing Blu-ray's at 1080p. It's not a huge difference, but, it's enough for some people to justify spending 200 bucks more on a player. :) Granted, if you have the tv for it, 1080p is the way to go. It's why I'm building a new HTPC that's capable of 1080p. I'll be playing all my HD DVD's on it rather than the 360 for this reason. Again, the difference is slight, but, there is a difference.
 
Question is there really a noticable difference in 1080i over 1080p?

Yeah, I can see the difference on even a 46" screen. They say a 1080p television will take a 1080i signal and deinterlace it for you to 1080p, but for some reason, I do see the difference on Sony Bravias and Samsung 1080p lcd televisions.

Also the lack of 5.1 channel analogue outputs kills the deal for me (put probably not for most).
 
Yeah, I can see the difference on even a 46" screen. They say a 1080p television will take a 1080i signal and deinterlace it for you to 1080p, but for some reason, I do see the difference on Sony Bravias and Samsung 1080p lcd televisions.

I can see the difference on my 50" Sony LCoS tv, as well. It's not huge, though. And the reason you still notice it even though the tv's are supposed to deinterlace it for you is because some tv's have better processors than others for that kind of thing. The Sony's, IMO, are better, but, it's still noticeable.

Also the lack of 5.1 channel analogue outputs kills the deal for me (put probably not for most).

Get an HDMI receiver ya cheap *******! :D
 
I can see the difference on my 50" Sony LCoS tv, as well. It's not huge, though. And the reason you still notice it even though the tv's are supposed to deinterlace it for you is because some tv's have better processors than others for that kind of thing. The Sony's, IMO, are better, but, it's still noticeable.

This guy disagrees with me: http://blog.hometheatermag.com/geoffreymorrison/0807061080iv1080p/

But I'm still noticing it on high-end televisions.


Get an HDMI receiver ya cheap *******! :D

My 5.1 channel headphones use a proprietary amplifier . . . I'd explain it in more detail, but that wouldn't resolve my issue (also I prefer not having my signal run through two devices, but that's another conversation).
 
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This guy disagrees with me: http://blog.hometheatermag.com/geoffreymorrison/0807061080iv1080p/

But I'm still noticing it on high-end televisions.

Like I said, I don't think all TV's do the deinterlacing very well. I can also notice it but it's not a deal breaker for me. I'm happy to be building an HTPC that does 1080p on HD DVD's, but, that was most definitely not the only reason I did it. My 360 is more than capable of handling HD DVD at 1080i and it looks freaking amazing. But there is definitely a difference. However, now that we're discussing it I'm beginning to wonder something else....whether the difference is the 1080i thing....or the fact that I'm using component cables on the 360. THAT wouldn't surprise me to find out that's the perceived difference I'm seeing now that I think about it.

My 5.1 channel headphones uses a proprietary amplifier . . . I'd explain it in more detail, but that wouldn't resolve my issue.

Ah, ok, in that case I get it. I'm debating whether I should bother hooking up the analog sound output of my new HTPC or not. I probably will just to check out the difference it makes vs optical. At some point I'm going HDMI receiver. I can't wait but will definitely need to.
 
or the fact that I'm using component cables on the 360. THAT wouldn't surprise me to find out that's the perceived difference I'm seeing now that I think about it.

Yeah, that may be the case.

In my testing, I think quite simply Oppo dvd players and Toshiba 1080p HD-DVD players simply have better scalers and de-interlacers than some of these televisions.
 
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Yeah, that may be the case. In my testing, I think quite simply Oppo dvd players and Toshiba HD-DVD players simply have better scalers and de-interlacers than some of these televisions.

That's also quite possible. I wish my stupid cable company would use mpeg4 compression for their HD broadcasts. Then I could tell for sure as my cable box is 1080i using HDMI, but, because the bandwidth sucks so bad it doesn't even come CLOSE to the level of the 360's HD DVD playback. However, after tomorrow I'll know for sure whether 1080i or HDMI is the issue for me. If it's just HDMI, then there really is no reason for 1080p tv owners to worry about it.
 
That's also quite possible. I wish my stupid cable company would use mpeg4 compression for their HD broadcasts.

Yeah, I actually notice over the air 1080i HD broadcasts look better than cable 1080i HD broadcasts.
 
Yeah, I actually notice over the air 1080i HD broadcasts look better than cable 1080i HD broadcasts.

Yes, yes they do. I have a fusion hd usb tuner and it gets a FAR better signal for OTA that our stupid cable company gives us. Freaking sat companies are doing mpeg4, why can't the cable companies wake up and follow suit? You know much bandwidth that'd save them? We could easily get 100 HD channels that way using the same bandwidth we have now and get a FAR better PQ out of it. Idiots. Ah well, I'll stick to HD DVD and Blu-ray for super high quality video I guess.
 
BestBuy has also dropped the price for the HD-A2:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Best_Buy/Toshiba/High-Def_Retailing/Best_Buy_Drops_Toshiba_HD_DVD_Player_to_$99_Supplies__Very_Limited/1134
 
Joe Dumeasse (descendant of the French immigrant family Dumeasse) will not notice because he probably has a 4 year old hdtv that only has component. That means that 1080i is just fine for him. I think the main point of this is market penetration though. If they sell 2 million of these players this holiday season, sony's "hey- we have a blu ray player in the PS3" stuff wont matter much.
 
Yea, I agree, most people won't notice. The statistics of people buying an HDTC and hooking it up to "regular" cable thinking they're getting HD are MIND blowing. Even if they take this thing and hook it up to an SDTV I don't care. I'd rather see people buying a cheap @$$ HD DVD player and abuse it by hooking it up to svideo than not invest in the format. Eventually everyone will have an HDTV anyway because people foolishly believe the mandate to switch to "digital" tv automatically means HD. And if prices on the HD DVD player fell this much in the last 2 weeks, man I can't wait for the deals on 42" LCD HDTV's or lower this holiday season! :D My goal is to acquire a 32" LCD for the bedroom sometime in the future.
 
I think the main point of this is market penetration though.

Oh yeah, for sure, especially in the United States . . .
And you're right: the average person won't care about 1080p nor 5.1 channel analogue outputs (I was just talking about my situation).

I need a deal on the HD-A35, unfortunately. So, I'm going to have to wait.
 
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