There has been speculation since the pricing was announced, and I’ve believed all along, that Toshiba was selling the players at a loss in an attempt to buy market share. After HD-DVD lost their planned six-plus-month lead over Blu-ray when they were both delayed, also missing last year’s holiday season, followed by defections from Warner and Paramount as they announced BD support – Toshiba needed to do something to have *any* prayer. They’re gambling that they can buy market share with the loss today, and make it up over time licensing HD-DVD if it survives. If it fails (and I think it will) then the lose all future licensing revenue. So it is big stakes gambling for them.
But check out what’s inside:
The HD-A1 shipped in the US in April. Soon after, early adopters took the machine apart only to find an Intel Pentium 4 running the show. The iSuppli analysis reveals there’s a Broadcom HD codec in there too and a set of four Analog Devices DSPs. The box contains 1GB of Hynix DRAM, a 256MB Flash disk from M-System and 32MB of Flash memory sold by Spansion.
