In what turned out to be a pathetic attempt to resuscitate the HD-DVD market after Warner Bros. announced they were going exclusively Blu-Ray, Microsoft announced that they were lowering the price of the HD-DVD player add-on for the X-Box 360 by $50 to $129.99. The push was further enhanced by Amazon selling the product at an even lower $79.99, which led to Amazon running out of the console’s accessory within hours. Microsoft put a little icing on the cake by offering FIVE free HD-DVD movies with the purchase of the add-on accessory before February 28th.

Just a few hours later I got word that Pioneer stepped in to deliver yet another bitchslap to HD-DVD on behalf of Blu-Ray by lowering the price of their most popular Blu-Ray disc burner from $649 to a can’t-beat-it low $429 (over 30%). This move wasn’t really necessary because Blu-Ray already dominates the high-capacity disc-burning market. Why? Because no one has released an HD-DVD burner yet!

So let’s re-cap: Blu-Ray’s most expensive player on average runs $800, while HD-DVD’s most expensive player runs around $900. Blu-Ray has more player models available and the exclusive support from every movie studio except Paramount, which is expected to cave in soon. Blu-Ray has many disc burners available, while HD-DVD has none.

Posted on February 8th, 2008 by Enrique
Filed under: News, Technology