Toshiba External USB 2.0 HD DVD Drive, Blu-ray Camp Jealous
- March 15th, 2007
- Read 2572 times
- 6 Comments
Seemingly out of nowhere, Toshiba has started shipping the PA3530U-1HD1, an external USB 2.0 HD DVD drive. It’s not even all that expensive, either, appearing on online stores like Newegg for $370. (Yes, the 360’s external HD DVD drive is only $200, but that pigeonholes you into watching high def movies on the 360. You have more of a choice of where to watch with this one.) It’s quite slim, too, so it’s not hard to imagine toting this alongside your laptop in order to watch high def movies on all those long flights.
In addition to reading HD DVD discs, the drive can burn CDs, single- and dual-layer DVDs. Not a bad find, this. Too bad Blu-ray’s victory is inevitable, at least according to Sony.
Product Page [Newegg via PC Perspective]
When you realise that high def sales are just 0.5% (that’s with the formats combined!) you begin to understand just how ludicrous those BD/Sony statements of ‘we won’ are.
When you break it down further and see peak week sales of The Departed (big movie released on both HD-DVD & BD) you’ll see BD sales of 20,000 and HD-DVD sales of 13,000.
When the SD DVD sold in millions.
This only goes to show PS3 did not bring the flood of BD sales some predicted, it had an effect of course, buit only an idiot would have imagined it would not have had.
We’ll see how this develops in the coming years. China is to provide inexpensive HD-DVD players later this year (sub $200/£100?) and the HD-DVD PC burners are due very soon.
This ‘war’ is a long way from over - and there is a very serious possibility that neither format escapes the niche and that SD DVD remains king.
@ Interested Watcher
I refer you to this article:
http://www.mi6.co.uk/news/index.php?itemid=4836&catid=2
This is the Casino Royal Blu-Ray disk, that toped the top 10 on “all format” releases, the closes competition from HD-DVD was at #116. If thats that good enough an example, consider that current sales of HD formated disks are 2:1 in Blu-Rays favor.
The only, market not dominated by the Blu-Ray format is Europe which has a 80% use of HD-DVD, but after March 23rd and the release of the Ps3 that market should also be purged.
And consider some SIMPLE facts that its not SONY that is backing Blu-Ray… Disney, MGM etc.. are also supporting the Blu-Ray format. While, Microsoft, and Toshiba are backing the HD-DVD format.
You are wrong Nick, the xbox 360 hd-dvd player can be used in xp adding specif toshiba drivers, and it is supported without problems in windows vista..
can you tell me where i can buy the toshiber external usb 2.0 PA3530U-1HD1 burner
@ Tanbir C
Would that be the same BD sales stats where they resorted to lying about their reaching 100,000 sales?
Sadly that kind of spin, exaggeration and out-right lying is something that has characterised the BD publicity to date.
Wow, just look at what happened to Blu Ray since these posts…by by BluRay