Tosh to tempt laptop buyers with free HD DVDs

Want five free HD DVDs? Then hop on over to Toshiba's website and pick one of the manufacturer's HD DVD-friendly laptops. Buy it and the company will send you the discs - worth £75, it said. To claim your hi-def bounty, you'll need to enter the serial number of your computer on the Toshiba website. The catch is that you can …

[Danny]

So

The HD DVD lot are scared they are losing the format war so they try giving them away free to generate interest. It might work if they were to offer some decent titles, but these? I wouldn't even buy those on DVD with the exception of Serenity

[Thom Brown]

Not just laptops

The offer applies to a range of Toshiba HD-DVD devices, like the XBox 360 external drive, and the standalone player models HD-XE1, HD-EP35 and HD-EP30. There might even be a few more I haven't listed.

[Tom]

Toshiba and Hollywood will be happy to hear...

that AnyDVD support HD DVD. Not because it's better, but because the copy protection is crappier then Blu-ray's protection.

"6.2.0.1 2007 11 20

- Note to people considering to invest in HD media: Please buy HD DVD

instead of Blu-ray. HD DVD is much more consumer friendly (e.g., no region

coding, AACS not mandatory, no BD+). Don't give your money to people,

who throw your fair-use rights out of the window."

[Greg]

They're Panicking

5 discs? They must really be losing the format war, then. When you reach the point where you're giving away more discs to a customer than they've actually bought (5 as opposed to 3.8), you're getting a wee bit desperate, methinks.

"Pleeeaaasseee buy our inferior format. Please! It's sooo much...er...cheaper? No....more capacious? No, not that either.... Well, just...erm...."

[Anonymous Coward]

hold on...

these are the same DVDs that MS are giving away in their 5 free hd-dvds thingy, do i hear rotor blades

[Frank Bough]

Incoming FUD Alert

No doubt these 5-per-player giveaways will count as disc sales when they next come to count them. I think we can look forward to Tosh claiming a massive pre-xmas sales spike and spreading that FUD around using Microsoft money.

HD-DVD is OK, it just isn't as good as Blu-ray. Why bother with it when the hardware and software is so lacking?

[Ian Ferguson]

Oh I see

I thought they were completely free, but I see you have to buy a laptop.

Mind you, I probably wouldn't bother if they were free - can't see an incentive to buy high-def yet.

[Colin Wilson]

Available titles

Am I missing something, but are about half of the titles on offer over ~four years old (more resampled shyte to "make" them HD ?) - and the newer titles being distinctly "average" in their IMDB scores ?

I wonder if this is more of a case of dumping old stock they can't otherwise sell wrapped up in an "offer" to make it sound interesting.

Add to that DRM that prevents you from doing what you want with a legitimate purchase - i'd rather use a blag copy and be able to watch it anywhere !

[Tone]

re: Incoming FUD Alert

"No doubt these 5-per-player giveaways will count as disc sales when they next come to count them. I think we can look forward to Tosh claiming a massive pre-xmas sales spike and spreading that FUD around using Microsoft money."

The same as Sony did last year..

[Bas Scheffers]

How about some good players?

If Toshiba wants to make HDDVD a success, maybe they should sell me a good player. I mean, here in Oz they are still flogging their first generation players for double the price of what they ask for their second generation players in the US.

At $400 I'd buy one in an instant, but paying $800 for an obsolete model is just retarded.

So for now I'll just keep downloading HD movies and playing them from my MacBook Pro via DVI/HDMI into my 720p TV and Toshiba nor the studios make any money. Well done guys.

[James Prior]

It's not unusual ..

.. when DVD was new and VHS sales were still strong Panasonic started doing "3 Free DVDs" (Wallace & Gromit, Queen Live and some other bad title) with all DVD Players to try and tempt people away from VHS.

What's so different about Toshiba doing it now ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time the HD-DVD group has something to say...

...ignore it, unless it contains the following information, or at least accurate estimates of it:

Number of blu-ray/HD-DVD standalone players sold

Number of PS3/360 add-ons sold

Number of computer blu-ray/HD-DVD drives sold

Then for each of the three categories above:

Number of movies sold

Number of movies given away

Unfortunately, I believe the above statistics would at this time be heavily favourable to blu-ray over HD-DVD, which is why all we get is figures that either exclude the PS3 where favourable (e.g. in players sold), include it where favourable (e.g. attach rates), and include free movie giveaways in those figures too. I think that says more about the lack of confidence from the HD-DVD leaders than the plain figures would. What are they hiding?

[Scott Mckenzie]

Shhh...

....you can't have a go at Sony, they do no wrong, the fact they started the fun and games of giving films away (and still do) doesn't matter.

I've said it on here before, don't let facts get in the way of voicing your own opinion.

[Ian]

lol @ Bluray fanboys

I love how when Sony give away free Bluray discs to gain marketshare everything is okay but as soon as the HD DVD group do it suddenly the sky is falling and it's obviously because HD DVD is failing.

If I were a Bluray fanboy I'd be more worried that Sony has gone from claiming victory, to claiming stalemate in the HD format wars, that if anything is the most telling comment right now.

The HD DVD promotion group has woken up to the tactics Sony has employed such as giving away free discs with hardware, paying Blockbuster for Bluray exclusivity and is now playing the same game with their buying off of Paramount and also giving away free discs. As a result the Bluray camp is running scared, especially as HD DVD stand alone players were greater in number than Bluray was even before they started using such tactics. Sony's latest comments about a stalemate only goes to confirm that Bluray isn't holding up quite so well anymore.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Raw deal

So they want ME to help them to get rid of the useless crrp recorded on a useless discs in a useless format and to do it for FREE??? Not only that, but these HD-DVDs will most likely come bundled with Vista-infected useless piece of hardware.

They will have to PAY me to do this.

[Gavin Hamer]

Tough if you already bought one

Very generous, but it's tough titties if you already bought a Tosh laptop with HD DVD, the offer only applies to new sales. Grrr!

Also...

lol @ the Sony fanboi club