Toshiba's HD XE1

Is HD DVD still an option for the budget purchaser?
Toshiba has pretty much pulled the plug on HD DVD with production set to stop and sales to follow shortly thereafter. Which means that there won't be much in the way of new releases for the format in the future (if any). Obviously this is good for the consumer in many ways, particularly since we now no longer have to take a guess as to who will win the format war.


But there's a possible side effect here that some may not have considered. Which is that without competition from HD DVD it may take Blu Ray a rather leisurely time to arrive at an affordable price point for the budget conscious. So where does that leave the High Definition yearniners who don't have fat wallets? Nowhere really, at least not until some of the cheaper players come out. But perhaps HD DVD can offer you something in the short term?

Now that Toshiba has dropped its support for HD DVD this leaves many retailers with stock that they will need to get rid of. I would expect sales of some kind in an effort to get rid of them and perhaps a reposturing of the machines as high end DVD players. Toshiba's own XE1 also has one of the best upscalers on the market which will upscale your DVD's.

So the price of the players should be reasonable (for as long as they last).
There's also a library of 800 discs available that can be bought relatively cheap off Amazon since they are region free.


So perhaps if you are in the market for a new DVD player and you're prepared to pay a little more than $75 for an el cheapo chinese DVD player than a decent HD DVD player might sweeten your collection and your image quality at a reasonable price.

Do you think HD DVD might still be an option for you? Even though the format is "dead"?