I slept in last Friday and missed out on Walmart’s $99 HD DVD player. However, John tipped me off to a similar online deal through Best Buy for Business and I pulled the trigger. Between the stagnant order status page (“In Process”) and seeing 90,000 HD DVD units move last weekend, I figured I’d be out of luck. But… Best Buy has come through:
You are receiving this email because you recently ordered a Toshiba HD DVD Player (model: HD-A2) and your order was placed in a backorder status while we awaited additional inventory. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has discontinued this item and we are not anticipating receiving any more inventory. Because we value your business, we will be fulfilling your order with the next generation Toshiba HD DVD Player (model: HD-A3) that is replacing the HD-A2 in Toshiba’s lineup of HD DVD Players.
Nice job, Best Buy (and Toshiba?) — I’m impressed. 100% of the time, under similar circumstances, other (online) retailers have canceled my orders and left it at that.
At $100, the purchase was an easy decision to make… As Michael Gartenberg writes:
At that point, it’s not a competition between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, it’s a competition (correctly so) between HD-DVD and DVD.
Since killing the HTPC and dumping the LG STB (HD tuner + DVD player), we haven’t had any DVD playback capabilities in the living room other than the noisy Xbox 360. So, with a cost similar to many upscaling DVD units, it’s a no brainer to get on board now with HD DVD… even if Blu-ray ultimately triumphs – which I wouldn’t wager on at this point. Once the dust settles after the holidays, enough units of both platforms may have saturated the market that the industry will be stuck supporting multiple formats.