Toshiba HD DVD player: $99. Watching Fanboys Heads Explode: Priceless
November 1, 2007

Wal-Mart's decision to throw a $99 Toshiba HD DVD player into its pre-Black Friday Nov. 2 clearance spinned many a head. The same day that Wal-Mart published its slashed product pricing on its Web site, HD DVD backers were cheering an apparent Best Buy decision to also hack Toshiba second generation HD-A2 players down to $99. Yet by the time I checked out the supposed Best Buy link myself, the page was dismantled, indicating the bargain product either sold out, HD DVD fanboys overloaded the server, or Best Buy didn't want to spoil an upcoming sale secret. No matter whether the pricing still stood, the mere sightings of $99 players worked HD DVD supporters into a frenzy.
At the FormatWarCentral blog, a poster devised a scheme to use Best Buy sub-$100 pricing on HD-A2s to score sub-$100 third generation Toshiba players. Toshiba's latest models are priced at $299 at most retailers.
The poster claimed that Best Buy was accounting for HD-A2 sales as HD-A3. So take your HD-A3 disguised Best Buy receipt (which is really for the HD-A2) to Circuit City. As Best Buy's arch nemesis, Circuit City would have to honor the low pricing, and think it was for the HD-A3. You wind up walking out of Circuit City with a sub-$100 third generation player.
Feel free to try it...if those instructions alone didn't make your own head explode.

 

Posted by Susanne Ault on November 1, 2007 | Comments (0)