Toshiba: HD DVD Stand-Alone Players Back on Top

[admin]

Acknowledging recent Blu-ray victories in set-top sales, Toshiba says it reclaimed the stand-alone player sales lead in late September.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Hardware/Toshiba/Toshiba:_HD_DVD_Stand-Alone_Players_Back_on_Top/1055

The figures don't include the PS3, Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive or computer drives, which makes the figures somewhat pointless. The PS3 is clearly the best Blu-ray player around at the moment (and soon to be one of the cheaper ones in Europe/Australia at least, with the 40 GB PS3), and the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive is the most affordable HD player for Xbox 360 owners and the most affordable HD-DVD-ROM drive for PC owners.

Standalone sales are important, but probably not at this stage where so few players are being sold.

[admin]

Coming Soon: Sub-$1000 HD DVD Notebook

Since HD DVD was first installed on a Toshiba Qosmio earlier this year, prices have fallen precipitously on notebooks equipped with an HD DVD drive. That early notebook debuted at $3000; today's prices hover at around $1500.

By the end of the year, in time for Christmas, said Pinto, "you'll be able to buy notebook computers at retail stores for under $1000."

I wonder if it isn't sensible to use a notebook as a media center component, if it costs $1000 and supports HD playback. If it has HDMI output plus optical audio output, add to that a HD reader drive and suitably powerful hardware, then it would make a good media center, considering the low profile, low noise setup, and it's portable too and comes with it's own large LCD screen. A Shuttle XPC barebone case costs well over $300, and building a HTPC from it with HD playback will cost more than $1000 for sure.