Pioneer this week ushered in one of the side battles that has yet to shape up within the Blu-ray HD DVD format war, by offering a $299 add on to a PC that plays Blu-ray disks.
Hewlett-Packard immediately struck back by saying that it will add a dual player to one of its PCs, but then omitted to say just how much it would charge for it, making the announcement virtually worthless.
Of course DVD players that can use the PC components to do some of the work are always going to be cheaper than stand alone DVD players, but the Pioneer device shows us just how cheap Blu-ray devices can go, and how quickly.
In the HD DVD format, such devices have been around since around August, but have not managed to take a significant lead in the market place and now that Blu-ray has a device this cheap, the last of an HD DVD advantage has evaporated.
Again the real edge that is winning the market for Blu-ray has been the boldness with which Sony has bundled the players into PlaySation 3 games consoles, generating more film releases on Blu-ray disks because there are more players and they are deploying faster. By contrast although Microsoft never agreed to bundle a HD DVD player, it brought an add on device to market at $200 late last year. However if people are not buying add on devices from the HD DVD camp when these is no equivalent in the Blu-ray camp, then they are certainly not going to buy one once there is a viable and relatively low priced device from the Blu-ray supporters.
The Pioneer BDC-2202 will be available next month and allows users to playback new Blu-ray film titles, but also to read and write their own DVD content and use the device for mass storage back up.
HP said it would be the first PC maker to ship a combined HD DVD/Blu-ray combo drive in its Pavilion Media Center m8010y series and d4890y series PCs using a GeForce 8800 video card and ATI’s TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, but gave no pricing. We would bet that dual format devices will remain sky high price wise for some time to come.