Toshiba second gen HD DVD players delayed worldwide

by Richard Lawler, posted Nov 15th 2006 at 12:43AM

Toshiba just couldn't let Sony hog all the high-def DVD spotlight with its delays, so it has pushed back its second generation HD DVD players in the US and abroad. Despite the lack of an official statement from Toshiba US, a dealer on AVS Forum revealed that due to problems with a chip from a third party supplier, the lower-end HD-A2 HD DVD player originally due out right about... now has slipped into the second week of December. The HDMI 1.3-equipped, 1080p displaying $999 HD-XA2 is now scheduled to just barely make a 2006 release in the last week of the year. In Europe Toshiba has officially announced the delay, now anticipating a "quantity of units" of the rebadged HD-E1 due in December and the HD-XE1 slated for 2007. Second gen hardware is generally expected to atone for the bug-ridden sins of its predecessors, so hopefully a short delay now means avoiding a quick patch later. In the meantime there's always the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on, or deciding which free HD DVDs to get.

[Thanks, Max]

Read - AVS Forum
Read - Pocket-lint.co.uk

Filed under: HD DVD, Players, Toshiba

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, delay, hd dvd, hd-a2, hd-e1, hd-xa2, hd-xe1, HdDvd, hdmi 1.3, Hdmi1.3

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highly Ranked

Steve Jr. @ Nov 15th 2006 1:47AM

SON OF A.....!!!!!

Scumbag 3rd party chip maker!!!!!!!!!!!

Highly Ranked

Dave @ Nov 15th 2006 3:01AM

Cool!
This gives Blu-Ray even bigger advantage :)

Highly Ranked

humpty @ Nov 15th 2006 4:45AM

Bad timing with PS3 now shipping.

Neutral

Addex @ Nov 15th 2006 7:01AM

Good news for HD-DVD.

Neutral

BruceOrlando @ Nov 15th 2006 8:58AM

With the reported PS3 problems in playing older games, I wouldn't count this as much of an advantage for Sony.

And besides, my older, "obsolete" Toshiba HD-A1 has been letter perfect, and never glitches or locks up.

What do you want to bet that the new Toshiba HD-DVD players will play older DVD's without any problems? :)

Neutral

Jay @ Nov 15th 2006 9:11AM

What do the 2.5% of PS2 games that have glitches have to do with DVDs? Multiple press accounts say that everything media-wise plays perfectly.

Neutral

Putter @ Nov 15th 2006 9:18AM

Toshiba should have paid MS to put HD-DVD into their 360, they could have had 5.5 million players on the market by now.

Neutral

pliepl @ Nov 15th 2006 9:21AM

Too bad they didn�t lower the price as well although the second generation does look a little bit more streamline than the first generation.

Dave,

Would you mind elaborating on how this is an �even bigger advantage� for Blu-ray?

PS3�s launch isn�t a reason as unless I�ve preorder, I won�t be able to get one well into next year. And any advantage it had is neutralized by the availability of the HD DVD add-on for the X360.

The last time I looked, there was no other Blu-ray player in the � grand vicinity, unless I�m missing something�

Humpty,

How is this bad timing?

What�s the possibility of me walking into a Best Buy (or any other retailer) the day of the PS3 launch or even a week or a month after and finding a PS3 on the shelf?

Is there or is there not an HD DVD counterpart to PS3�s Blu-ray (HDDVD add-on for the Xbox 360)?

Neutral

Chris Robinson @ Nov 21st 2006 4:28PM

yes hddvd xbox drive

Neutral

pliepl @ Nov 22nd 2006 9:06PM

that was a rhetorical question (for humpty).

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