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Toshiba to Blu-ray: Game on, molls!

The pre-Christmas battlegrounds have been drawn as Toshiba announces an AU$400 drop on its budget HD DVD player, the HD-E1.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury
The Toshiba HD-E1 will now be available for AU$499 (with $100 rebate).

The pre-Christmas battlegrounds have been drawn as Toshiba announces an AU$400 drop on its budget HD DVD player, the HD-E1.

Toshiba is running a $100 cashback offer which reduces the price of the player to $499. The other models to get a discount are the two full 1080p players, which are the HD-EP10 ($699 after $100 cashback) and the HD-XE1 ($1,299).

Recently, Harvey Norman began offering the competing Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player for a significant discount at AU$795. The Sony PlayStation 3 will also come with its own price drop (at the sacrifice of some features) at AU$699.

With Samsung's dual-format player not due until at least Christmas, the HD DVD players' price drop -- and the prospect of blockbuster releases of the Lord of the Rings and the Matrix Trilogies on the horizon -- make things look considerably rosier for Toshiba's format.