RCA HDV500
Thompson’s Toshiba HD DVD Player Re-branded
Thompson Electronics, otherwise known as RCA, will release an early bird HD DVD player sometime around April, 2006. The HDV500 will cost around the same as one of Toshiba’s early HD DVD players, specifically the HD-A1. Toshiba has two players coming out early in 2006 that will be among the first available HD DVD players: the HD-XA1 and the HD-A1. The HD-A1 is going to be the budget model costing a couple of hundred less than the XA1 premium unit.
The new RCA HDV500 is a re-branding of the Toshiba HD-A1. RCA’s price will be about $500, which means it might be even lower than Toshiba’s, depending on where you receive your information. RCA specializes in budget models of just about everything they sell. $500 for an HD DVD is an amazing value for the first ever high definition disc player in the history of optical storage set top box makes.
The RCA HDV500 is a bare bones HD DVD playback device. It’ll decode with all the necessary codec’s, including Mpeg4, 2, AVC and VC-1. A/V outputs shall include digital audio brought to you buy the well known coax and optical digital. The choice of both puts it on par with most DVD players on the market. Analogue audio will include 5.1 RCA audio outputs. There will even be an HDCP compliant digital output, HDMI of course. For reverse compatibility with standard Television, the HDV500 will come equipped with a composite and an S-Video output.
This rock bottom price represents RCA's strategy to stay competitive through providing a technologically advanced product at a low price. Toshiba and RCA will sell players at a strategic loss for awhile. This is likely a sound strategy for Toshiba’s HD DVD. So far HD DVD looks to be losing the battle in the Great War for next generation domination. HD DVD technology hasn’t garnered the studio support for movie releases that Blu-Ray has. So far this hasn’t deterred companies who use HD DVD technology and shouldn’t. In the future, there may be an opportunity for collaboration and for the return to one format.
The wisest word of advice in the format war is to not participate until the manufacturers have sorted it out for themselves. The early adopters will buy no matter what and a lot of them will be wasting their money. There are many interesting developments, like high resolution eight channel audio formats and more, that are supposed to become available as a result of the huge bandwidth and capacity of HD DVD and Blu-Ray. It would be a shame to spend $500 dollars on an early rendition of a player that isn’t going to have many of the features that will be common in two years.
