Complain about a product or service

HD DVD Owners, Retailers Mull their Options

Blu-ray's victory leaves Toshiba loyalists in the lurch

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

March 11, 2008 

While most consumers with HDTV sets waited for the battle to end, many couldn't wait to get their hands on what was in 2002 and 2003 revolutionary equipment, paying as much as $1,000 for one of Toshiba's HD DVD players.

"If you bought an HD DVD player, you pretty much made a wrong choice and you have to eat it," Dan Ackerman, senior editor at CNET.com told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The two technologies are almost identical, but Sony, with its Blu-ray format, was able to prevail because it incorporated the technology in its PlayStation 3.

Toshiba quit producing its HD DVD players and movie studios have all but abandoned the format.

However, the players are not completely useless as they are still able to play standard DVDs, which are by far the most popular format, and Toshiba has promised to continue to honor its warranties for the machines.

Consumers are not the only entities struggling, as retailers try to move HD DVD products off their shelves at a loss and Netflix is forced to update its library.

On Amazon.com, all HD DVD products including the DVDs themselves are priced at half their initial price if not less.

“We will continue to carry HD DVD titles for those customers who wish to purchase these products and per our recent announcement of Amazon's support for Blu-ray, we will continue to carry the earth's largest selection of Blu-ray DVDs,” Amazon.com representative Tammy Homey wrote in an e-mail.

Netflix updates

Netflix, the mail-order rental service, is now preparing to update its library and clear the thousands of HD DVD discs in stock.

The company expects to add 1,300-1,500 Blu-ray discs this year, according to online tech publication Silicon Alley Insider. But that will likely come at a cost as Blu-ray DVDs, which have always been more expensive than HD DVDs, will cost Netflix about $5 more per disc than standard format DVDs.

The company has not said yet whether it intends to raise prices, create a tiered rental program or eat the costs as more and more consumers conform to the Blu-ray standard.

Microsoft, which planned to offer an add-on HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360, is now forced to rethink that plan and is in a bit of a quandary because Blu-ray is developed by its video game competitor, Sony. But both Sony and Microsoft have made remarks that indicate Microsoft plans to develop a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360.

“We've already been working on, for example, in Windows, device driver support for Blu-ray drives and the like, and I think the world moves on," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the Mix '08 conference in Las Vegas, according to GamesIndustry.biz, an online video game publication.

“Toshiba has moved on. We've moved on, and we'll support Blu-ray in ways that make sense,” he said.

Report Your Experience
If you've had a bad experience -- or a good one -- with a consumer product or service, we'd like to hear about it. All complaints are reviewed by class action attorneys and are considered for publication on our site. Knowledge is power! Help spread the word. File your consumer report now.

Back to the top |