Slashdot Mirror
High-Def Format Wars - Battle of the Freebies
An anonymous reader writes "It's come to this: eager to introduce the masses to the virtues of the next-gen DVD formats, the studios and manufacturers backing HD DVD and Blu-ray have begun giving discs away. It all started last month when Microsoft pacted with Universal to give away copies of 'King Kong' on HD DVD to consumers buying the XBox 360 HD DVD add on. Sony followed that up by offering a free 'Talladega Nights' Blu-ray with the first 500,000 PlayStation 3 units sold in the U.S.. Now today, HD DVD backer Toshiba has announced that it will give away *three* free HD DVD discs with every player sold for four months beginning on November 1st. With all these freebies, more people will likely have received free HD DVD/Blu-ray discs by the end of 2006 than will have actually paid for them."
I remember when I paid $199 for my Toshiba DVD player way back when, there was a free movie signup as well.
Lost in Space, Stargate, and Six Days Seven Nights were included.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
First the rootkit, then the PS3, and now giving away "Talladega Nights"... why does Sony hate us so?
Reminds me of the time I bought a Pentium computer in the mid 1990s that came with a foot-high stack of CD-ROMs. It was a nice attempt at an intro to the possibilities of the new format, but there were only so many different versions of "Virtual Rock Gardening," "Compton's Interactive Encephalopathy," "Mavis Beacon Teachs Self-Neutering," and "The Adventures of Poorly-Rendered Cutscene Man" I could really get any use out of.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I doubt if it makes too much of a difference to their bottom lines, they can either give those movies away or let them sit on store shelves unsold.
...but I'm more likely to be swayed by the first company to offer me a break on a display that can even view this high-def content ...
...
:-)
As far as I can tell in a cursory glance over the net, the cheapest "TV-sized" display that will do 1080P with HDMI is the Westinghouse for $1100 shipped, and the cheapest panel is $800 for some 24" display
That means I'm spending around $1500 for this "experience" they're peddling, all told. Sell me the display for $400 and we can talk.
--
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Simple reasoning would tell us that you're an idiot. Just because the technology is similiar does not mean the units should have the same price. Further more I do remember when DVD players were 500 dollars a pop. It was nearly ten years ago when the technology was new. It's only now that they're 25 dollars. I wouldn't be suprised if in 2015 we're buying HD or BluRay drives for $50.
If you play an 8-track on the nicest stereo system in the world, its still going to sound like "shite"
These pretzels are making me thirsty.