Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on January 16, 2008 at 02:29:39

In Reply to: RE: Front page of USA Today : " HD DVD. Toshiba drops price in HD war. $150 high-def player to battle Blu-ray " .. posted by ZS KEKL on January 15, 2008 at 20:33:26

It might be nice that they're fighting back in the US but here in Australia it's a different matter.

No price cuts here. 3 models of player and the cheapest is $649 Australian less $200 Australian cash back offer. That's the equivalent of roughly $580 US less $175 or so cash back so let's round it and say $400 US for their cheapest machine. Their most expensive machine is $1399 Australian, roughly $1230 US, and no cash back. There's another machine in the middle with a $100 Australian cash back.

The PS3 is $699 Australian.

Compare that to your new $150 US price for the cheapest Toshiba.

They can't win the war by winning only in the US and they are doing their best to lose it elsewhere by making customers elsewhere pay through the neck and they're probably subsidising their US losses due to those price reductions with their inflated prices here and elsewhere. In fact they never even got into the race here in my view.

As I said, this changes nothing. It's more of the same old same old. Price cuts in the US before Christmas and BD still performed better. No real action on price here. Now more cuts in the US and nothing here. Nothing has changed at all.

There's quite a few BD players here around the price of the middle Toshiba to slightly more, and only a couple costing more than the top Toshiba plus they're doing similar offers of cashbacks or free discs and you can see the machines on demo in the stores but you don't see the Toshibas on demo.

More losing efforts.



David Aiken