Toshiba A2 HD DVD Player for $200 at Circuit City

When they say "competition's good," they obviously meant "competition means cheap HD DVD players": Wal-Mart's $198 Toshiba HD-A2 has been copied by Circuit City, which is now selling the same player for $197.99 online. Add it to your cart, and see for yourself. As one tipster said, with deals like this popping up this early, signs are looking good for one helluva Black Friday.

[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]

[engadget @ Oct 27th 2007 4:29PM]

And dont forget Circuit City has their "24/24" guarantee that says if you Order Online and select in-store pickup for delivery, they will have your product ready within 24 minutes or you get a $24 Gift Card.

When they have a run on a popular product and get down to the last 1 or 2 left in the store, they tend to have the most problems with fulfillment.


At prices like this, it makes me want to skip getting an XBox 360 with HD-DVD backpack and just get this A2 instead.

[andrew @ Oct 27th 2007 4:33PM]

right now with all the promotions they are running on the 360 dvd player (free heroes, 5 free movies), it is still a much better deal if you already own a 360.

[JohnTitor @ Oct 27th 2007 4:35PM]

"At prices like this, it makes me want to skip getting an XBox 360 with HD-DVD backpack and just get this A2 instead."

ah, but will just the A2 play Doom?

[Mark Olenski @ Oct 27th 2007 4:43PM]

Is there a 1080p firmware update for this?

[FrankTheCrank @ Oct 27th 2007 5:38PM]

Yay!! CLEARANCE SALE!!! WOOOHOOO!

[Mickey Jones @ Oct 27th 2007 4:49PM]

OK Sony, now it's your turn.

[william @ Oct 27th 2007 5:16PM]

Sony doing realy well right now so i dont expect to see them grabbing at straws unless things turn around.

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Oct 28th 2007 1:20AM]

@William: Blu-ray is doing well, yes. I was at two Best Buys tonight and it's clear that Blu-ray is starting to edge HD-DVD in terms of selection, etc. (Blu-ray easily had double the shelf space and titles HD-DVD did).

BUT... that could change if the Blu-ray folks don't have a player that's competitive with the lower-end HD-DVD players. I'm not saying that they need to be on the same price level, but a Blu-ray player at $249 would make a lot of difference right now.

Sony and the other Blu-ray manufacturers do have to answer this price cut, and the 40GB PS3 isn't the answer (even with the free Spider-man 3). Otherwise we could be talking about Blu-ray's demise in a year's time.

[Ben Hobbs @ Oct 28th 2007 1:13PM]

All the HD-DVD's were sold out.

Seriously, I haven't been keeping up to date on the US pricing but $199 is very good value, Its a great DVD player anyhow so for ANYONE thinking of spending $200 on a DVD player, its a no brainer.

Does make me wonder what the entry level for the Chinese players is gonna be in 6-9 months time, $99?

[Jeebus @ Oct 29th 2007 8:45PM]

"Does make me wonder what the entry level for the Chinese players is gonna be in 6-9 months time, $99?"

That'll be a long time. The only reason the player is $200 is because it's heavily subsidized by Toshiba. There's more competition on Blu-ray players and they contain pretty much the same hardware as an HD DVD player, yet they are not that cheap yet.

[buttabean @ Oct 27th 2007 4:53PM]

the xa2 and a20 has 1080p24hz capability not the a2. walmart also has it for sub $199 mark

[mfed3 @ Oct 27th 2007 4:58PM]

wow nice job. please just end this damn format war and get sony the hell out of the hd optical disk game. remember america is walmart and the sub $200 players. this will catch on when they start to understand the correlation betewen dvd and hd dvd as its successor. the consumer has no idea what blu ray is. blu-ray sales thus far are just from ps3 owners experimenting with the disks, sales figures are like 100k to 90k and are totally irrelevant, while dvds sell in the millions.

[Michael @ Oct 27th 2007 5:10PM]

Uh, blu ray discs outsell hddvd 2:1...

What are these 90-100k vs millions you're talking about?

[Lee @ Oct 27th 2007 5:14PM]

I wish the HD-DVD fans would make their minds up. On the one hand they're saying that PS3 users only play games and don't buy movies, and now you're saying that the reason Blu-ray discs are outselling HD-DVD's globally on a continual basis is down to PS3 users experimenting??

[Kamokazi @ Oct 28th 2007 12:31AM]

It really doesn't matter if Blu-Ray is outselling HDDVD 100:1 right now. It's still miniscule compared to standard DVD sales, because most people do not have high def players. Just the geeks like us.

And people like you and me aren't going to decide this format war. Not even PS3 owners will number enough to decide it (I really wish I could find the article, but like 30 something percent of them thought Blue Ray was a way to make thier games read from the disk faster...). It's going to be the average joe who doesn't really know or care that 1080p is so much better than 1080i, and has no idea that his 19" computer monitor has a higher resolution than the 720p 37" generic LCD he just bought on sale as Walmart/Bestbuy/Circuit City. And he's going to stroll through Walmart some day and see a high def player for $200 and say what a deal...as far as he knows, Blu Ray is just some brand name, and over twice as expensive. And he's going to go home, fat dumb and happy, and start buying HD DVDs, and so are the others hundreds of millions like him worldwide. And the few million people that know better are going to go with what the hundreds of millions pick.

Even though it's full of junk that breaks easily and comes from China, Wal Mart is the king retailer because of price. And even if HD DVD was a truly inferior format (everything I've seen can't decide either way, other than raw data capacity), if it can keep the lower price, it will win this format war.

[K_G @ Oct 27th 2007 5:04PM]

This isn't quite a crazy a deal as when it was $250 but came with a free $100 gift card that CC ran a few weeks ago..

[kenjix @ Oct 27th 2007 6:40PM]

1080i is a rip, but by all means enjoy :)

[SHopkins @ Oct 27th 2007 8:37PM]

Broadcast HDTV maxes out at 720p and 1080i but still offers huge gains in image quality. 720p and 1080i on the A2 offers an amazing picture with not just resolution gains but, most notably, a larger color space than DVD. Market penetration of 720p/1080i displays is also much larger than 1080p sets... most of the market looking for a $200 player don't have a 1080p TV anyway.

[kenjix @ Oct 27th 2007 9:26PM]

if you only want 1080i then buy an upscaling dvd player at 1/2 the price on the hardware and on the software.

otherwise if your going to start buying 1080p media get something that will let you see it at 1080p.

[Chris @ Oct 27th 2007 9:30PM]

I have the A20, and on my 56" Panny DLP, there is no visible difference in image quality. You're basically saying every football game you've seen on HD broadcast (in 1080i) is crap? Believe it or not, HD movies look freakin sweet in 1080i.

[kenjix @ Oct 27th 2007 9:36PM]

my previous reply will cover your and all other justification responses for getting a 1080i hd-dvd player as opposed to an upscaling dvd player or spending the money for a full hd 1080p capable piece of hardware.

[Chris @ Oct 27th 2007 9:41PM]

No, it absolutely doesn't.
Tell me whats better, a 1080p source deinterlaced to 1080i, or a 480p source SCALED to 1080i?
Trust me, a good upscaling DVD player makes old movies look nice on an HDTV, but its pale in comparison to an HD-DVD at 1080i!
Why is this so hard for people to understand? Trust me, I have tried each combination.

[shawnmos @ Oct 27th 2007 10:54PM]

Wrong. 1080p is a rip when 1080i60 can send all the information the TV needs to properly deinterlace a 1080p24 signal with NO LOSS IN PICTURE QUALITY. Movies are only 24fps.

[Andrew Fong @ Oct 28th 2007 1:00AM]

The average American can't see the difference between 1080i and 1080p anyway.

[Carbonize @ Oct 28th 2007 9:13AM]

Given that most people sit at least six foot away from their TV what difference does it really make? At that distance you'd be hard pressed to see any difference between 720P and 1080P.

Anyway it's all irrelevant since they've already said they are working on the replacement for current HD and it's four times the resolution but current methods can't transfer the data fast enough.

[Jason @ Oct 27th 2007 9:03PM]

Saw it today in Sam's Club for $148.

[Doug @ Oct 28th 2007 12:53AM]

With the $200 mark finally being reached, and Wal-Mart selling players, the war is finally on. Neither format could have caught on with a price tag over $200, and sales numbers are definitely saying that: both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are failing miserably when compared against DVD.

But now that players are starting to get cheap enough where the average Joe starts to think about buying them (and are being sold in mass retail outlets), high definition discs might have a chance, with HD-DVD breaking through the first price barrier way ahead of Blu-Ray, giving it a pretty significant edge. BR will have to follow suit or it will just fade into the past like virtually every other format Sony has invented. It's the price-conscious mass market that makes or breaks a format, not a relatively small group of game console owners, and HD disc/player sales have been telling us that since they first came out. Now we just need to bump that price below $150, and finally below $100, and we're finally gonna get somewhere with high def disc adoption. The general public won't pay $500+ to play movies in HD no matter how gorgeous it looks.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Oct 28th 2007 11:58AM]

Thought crossed my mind.

The $200 price mark might attract customers.

But from my own experience, it doesn't mean that I would buy cheapest option. To me $200 is only sign that technology reaches wider adoption.

I'm absolutely unsure that I attracted by the ads would end up buying the player. Or even that what I would buy HD DVD. And I think some people would behave that way too.

Still, $200 is sweet price. Movies are also getting cheaper and cheaper definitely reaching critical price mark. If BluRay camp doesn't react, its exclusive deals with studios would go awry: all such deals include some market performance insurances to make the deal viable. If BluRay would start loosing HD player war - the deals would be rendered ineffective too. BluRay will have to react to the price drop - just to keep those exclusive studio deals alive.

Now real question is "who is loosing more money on all the promotions" - HD DVD or BluRay.

[Johnny @ Oct 28th 2007 1:26AM]

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM! These motherfuckers deceived me into buying from them through false advertising. Don't believe anything they advertise. Circuit City is known to be a bunch of scam artists, especially when it comes to rebates. I bought one of those Vonage VOIP phone adapters at CC in September of 2006 because of the Circuit City $50 Gift Card by Mail rebate. It is now late October 2007, and I have yet to receive the goddamn rebate. I've written to them over a dozen times, called them about half a dozen times, AND I've just recently reported them to the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.

[John Doe @ Oct 28th 2007 2:54AM]

For the record...

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are both stored on disc at 1080p24...

A 1080i60 Player:

The 1080p24 source is converted from 1080p24 to 1080i60 by the player... and then from 1080i to 1080p by your tv... now keep in mind... 1080i has maintained ALL data present in 1080p24...

A 1080p60 player:

The 1080p24 source is converted to 1080i60 by the player... the 1080i60 video is doubled to 1080p60 at no visual improvement...

The only player where there might be a slight improvement would be the latest generation of lcd tvs with 120hz refresh rates such that they can display 1080p24 natively... Then a 1080p24 output is of slight benefit... but because the 1080i60 signal still contains all data... any decent tv will have a processor more than capible of converting back to 1080p24 almost perfectly...

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Oct 28th 2007 12:06PM]

Real difference would show up when movies will be shot at 50/more fps.

As actual movies go, 1080i or 1080p makes little difference.

I was demoing my system to my friends and from sofa 4 meters away, one can hardly tell any difference. Some even said that 720p looked better. Higher details of 1080i/1080p are not so visible from greater distance. We had no chance to look at HDTV as in Germany there is no free HDTV right now.

[Shibathedog @ Oct 28th 2007 2:55AM]

Well this is definitely good for HD-DVD.

To be honest I don't give a shit which format wins, but there CANNOT be two, having two is causing so many problems and annoyances. One of them needs to die and soon.

[Mike @ Oct 28th 2007 12:49PM]

Nice deal. It's going to be a fun Black Friday this year.

All the Black Friday info you need: http://www.bf-07.com

[Mark @ Oct 28th 2007 4:23PM]

I placed an order for this online and picked it up at the store.

I just realized today that they screwed up, and gave me the $350 HD-A20 for $200. But I'm not complaining.

[tekdroid @ Oct 29th 2007 8:03AM]

200 US dollars for a player? It's still early adopter time, I see.

Wake me when one of these formats relegates itself to a reliable rewritable PC storage format for that price.

You know; its true calling.


Inside every digitally restricted device there's a small voice, crying out to serve the people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD#Digital_rights_management

[Onefastgta @ Oct 29th 2007 6:40PM]

Interesting, 169.99 HD-A3.


http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/BlackFridaySales/Store/Sears/Category/All/Rebates/yes/EarlyBirds/yes/Page/5

[j-Dawg @ Oct 30th 2007 1:29AM]

1080i is indistinguishable from 1080p in 99% of cases. Jump on this player, I have it and it is amazing!

[xrecar @ Nov 2nd 2007 12:37PM]

98 dollars today at walmart (secret sale). plus 5 free hd-dvd's thats a nice deal.