First Sub-$200 HD DVD Player Announced: Venturer SHD7000

Posted by Jason Chen at 6:30 AM on August 30, 2007

Is this it? The HD DVD stake into Blu-ray's heart that will signal a start to the resolution of these next-gen DVD format wars? We tracked down a price on the upcoming Venturer HD DVD player and discovered it to be $199, the magical price that everyone's been waiting for.

AU: No doubt that would end up converting to something around $299-$399 out here. Would a player hitting a certain price point tip you over the edge on buying an HD format, regardless of which format it was? Or would you still 'wait and see'? OR are you already committed one way or the other, even if you haven't already purchased? -SB

The SHD7000 will play back HD DVDs at 1080i, support Dolby TrueHD have HDMI output. It's fairly similar in functionality to Toshiba's low-end DVD player, but since it's from China, Venturer's able to cut the price down to the sub-$200 point. It doesn't qualify for the 5 free HD DVD movies like Toshiba players do, however, so that one still may come out ahead while the deal is still going on (or 8 movies, if you got in the Amazon deal). Calculating $20 per disc, the Toshiba player would actually be only $78 if you factor in the savings on those movies.

If Wal-Mart gets ahold of this by the 2007 holidays, well, it's going to be hard for Blu-ray to recover. [Venturer]

Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)

David D.

Posted August 30, 2007 3:14 PM

For some reason my heart says HD but my head says Blu-Ray. That was until it was announced Transformers was to be HD only so the XBOX 360 add-on seemed to be the way to go.

The problem with all this silliness is that no format will cover all studios. I know I want Transformers but it means saying by-by to Die Hard (I know, not a big loss to some people) and others. Then there is Blade Runner available on both.

I think a combo player is the only solution to this mess.