QVC gets exclusive on Venturer budget HD DVD player
But misses pre-Chrimbo deadline
Venturer Electronics' promised cut-price HD DVD player will finally go on sale on 29 December, but you'll have to switch on your TV to buy one. The SHD7001 will only be sold through the QVC home shopping channel.
Venturer's SHD7001: buy it for your telly via your telly
Venturer launched the player back in September, pledging to make the machine available to buy by Christmas. The SHD7001 is capable of playing DVDs and HD DVDs at HD resolutions of 720p or 1080i.
For a "limited period", the player will come bundled with HD DVD copies of Hulk and Troy, Venturer said. It also comes with an HDMI cable, though the player provides component-video and composite-video outputs too. There's a 10/100Mb/s Ethernet port on the back for link HD DVDs to online content, and both digital optical and analogue audio outputs.
'Really, really good' price
Venturer didn't name a price, though back in September it said the SHD7001 would cost less than £200 - £199.99 is our guess. A company spokeswoman said the price would be "really, really good".
Its spec is pretty close to that of Toshiba's original HD-E1 HD DVD player, which is currently retailing for around £200. The Venturer machine is a more slimline model, however.
QVC can be viewed on Sky, Virgin Media and Freeview, but most if not all of its offerings are also available for purchase from its website. When we checked this morning, however, the SHD7001 had yet to appear.
COMMENTS
Venturer @ Asda?
I just saw the Venturer HD-DVD player plus 2 free discs at WalMart in Canada for $199.97. Surely they will appear at Asda soon for £149... though £99 would be a game changing price :-)
Regarding possible HD51 incompatibilities, I thought one of the reasons for the ethernet port on every HD DVD drive was for firmware updates?
@Rebadged Toshiba
Amazing how you tell someone who may well be interested in an HD DVD player to go off and buy a BR device, citing the only reason as far as i can see being incompatibility. Which is something you don't know... congratulations.
I shan't bother with the well documented BR incompatibilities, like v1.1, v2.0 discs, web content etc that won't play on earlier models.
Ooops, too late.
Toshiba E1 can be bought for £149 at the moment if you look hard enough, with the 7 free discs too, and whilst it may not be able to play HD51 (as i said, no one knows for sure) it's still a bargain.
Reg Hardware a bunch of 'Bluafiles'
We got an email today from one 'Tom C' telling us that because Reg Hardware has published a piccy of the Venturer showing "an error code", we've clearly got both feet in the Blu-ray camp and are out to "do anything to try and mislead people".
We hadn't spotted the error code, but clearly Tom has a point here - we *must* be Blu-ray Discriminators. Why else would we imply that sophisticated technology sometimes goes wrong?
Mind you, Venturer UK must be secret Blu backers too since they're the ones who... er... gave us the pics to print...
What they seem to do in the UK...
Is sell somthing for less that the price elsewere, call it "Extra value" or some such, and add painfull P&P. Just look at there website. Its just stupid, but they are relying on the consumer to not know any better.
One exaple is I got an Arcos MP4 player a while back, and they were chargin about £5.00 less than alot of on line shops, but then chaged somthing like £115 p&p, where as everyone else was doing free p&p becuase of the price of the thing.
Too Slow
You can buy a Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD Player online now for £199 with 7 free HD-DVD's.
Better brand and better spec!
That said, this machine will be down to £149 or better very quickly and may give the format a boost.
