Who really buys their disks in a shop these days??? Or any form of electronic, for that matter? 90% of members in this forum will have bought their players online and will probably do the same for disks. General punters are getting far more savvy than we give them credit for. Key question would be how many HD disks in total have Woolworth sold? How much are they selling anyway of anything? Recent reports suggest that Woolworth' valuation is close to that of the value of their high-street properties, which makes them an easy takeover target. My other key quesation is: How many players and disks are sold by amazon, play.com and other online retailers.
At £120/£190 Toshiba players will continue to sell whether Woolworth agree or not. I am not a fanboy of any kind. The £190 I spent on my EP35 recently do not represent a huge investment in gear in comparison to my other investments in HiFi toys. And yes, I think a single disk format would be much better. However, given price vs quality I think the Toshiba players are ahead of BluRay. Also given, recent events in the HD content market who is to say that allegiances might not change again - driven by uptake of cheap hardware. Warner does what is best for their shareholders and not what's best for Sony or consumers!
The only problem with Toshiba and HD-DVD is the cost of and profit margins in hardware. No wonder stores stop stocking HD-DVD players when there is so little money in them and most punters buy them online. Specialist Hifi shops prefer BluRay - simply because there is more profit margin in it for them. One specialst retailer even tried to convince me that the upscaled image of the Arcam Solo was better than that of an HD-DVD played on an XE1! Same with manufacturers. At the current price levels it would be extremely difficult and unprofitable for any new-entrant to build and sell HD-DVD hardware.
Dixon did a survey of their customers recently about which platform they felt was preferable and the outcome was something like 53/47 in favour of BluRay - a much closer outcome than many of the BD supporters would want us to believe.
Statistics in the wrong hands is a dangerous tool!
Gorge