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Toshiba’s HD-A35 HD DVD player
So was the $2.7 million worth it for Toshiba and HD DVD?
The leading HD DVD manufacturer booked the 30-second ad space during Sunday’s Super Bowl XLII between the Patriots and Giants.
The commercial did not air nationally (at my Massachusetts home I watched most of the commercial breaks but do not remember seeing the Toshiba spot), but we know now that the game was the most viewed Super Bowl of all time, reaching 97.5 million households and ranking second behind only the final episode of M*A*S*H as the most watched program in TV history.
That’s a pretty wide audience to reach, even if it wasn’t a national pull for Toshiba and HD DVD. The ad wasn’t new, but a re-packaged product that we’ve seen that tries to draw viewers from watching high-def football to watching HD movies now that the football season is over.
The commercial ended by showing that prices for the HD-A3 start as low as $149.99 at major retailers.
So as Toshiba tries to spur the consumer toward HD DVD and reach the mass market, as Blu-ray has also been doing with commercials of its own, do you think the Super Bowl ad amid the second-most watched program in TV history will produce any traction?
Check out the commercial for yourself.
Ok, true, yea it is sad to see that this format is failing. And you are right, mainly due to sh*tty marketing. If they would have started out the gates with better marketing, they would be in much better shape today.
Of course, all of us know that even the 1080i channels out there look like crap often compared to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray at 1080p, due to the compression needed to transmit the digital signal over limited bandwidths…
“Mostly all the sports channels you watch are broadcast natively at 720p, what’s your point?”
My point was exactly what I said:
“If their goal was to convince people the technology is worth buying they certainly screwed up royally, since most people will end up walking away from the commercial thinking HD-DVD doesn’t look any better than upscaled DVD.”
In other words, relating their 1080p technology to a 720p broadcast was sort of stupid advertising on their parts. I certainly wouldn’t be very impressed if I didn’t know much about HD and walked away from the commercial believing that HD-DVD looks like the FoxD 720p broadcast instead of like some of the 1080i HD channels out there.
I would fire the advertising agency, they are incompetent IMO, and HD-DVD doesn’t have a lot of chances or time left to get the “right” message across before they fade into oblivion…
@ Jeff Kalman….
Mostly all the sports channels you watch are broadcast natively at 720p, what’s your point? Like I said before, the whole idea was to get the message out that HD DVD is cheaper then DRM-ray, so go out and buy one.
@ Obed
LOL, are you kidding me? They have more exclusives then that.
Exclusive titles to come:
American Gangster
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Beowulf
Bee Movie
The Jack Ryan Collection
Star Trek: The Original Series - Season Two
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
American Pie (1,2, and 3)
Atonement
Scarface (1983)
Forrest Gump
The Blues Brothers
Coach Carter
Those are just a few off the top of my head, sure DRM-ray has more exclusives and that’s only because of the studio support.
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Wow goodswipeHD:
Guess we’ll see those movies now in BD since HD DVD died.