With the buzz around CES already starting to build, Toshiba thought it was a good idea to throw a hornet in the nest with an announcement about a pre-CES news conference on January 7th. Toshiba will be joined by other members of the group supporting the HD-DVD format to update everyone on their plans for 2007.

Toshiba introduced the first generation of its HD-DVD players at CES 2006 and recently released second-generation players, drawing speculation that price drops are coming soon. Which is a good thing.

Sales for both HD-DVD and the competing Blu-Ray format have been sluggish at best, due to the low availability of titles for either format and the price of the players themselves. For Toshiba, the first generation HD-A1 and HD-XA1 entered the world at $500 and $800 respectively. The new HD-A2 and HD-XA2 show no signs of relenting on your wallet with their $500 and $1,000 price points.

Have hope and don’t fear, Toshiba president and CEO Yoshihide Fujii provided some light on the topic of discussion for the aforementioned news conference.

At first I thought the price threshold is $499. Maybe coming next is $399 and after that is $299.

That’s about as vague as you can get, so form your own opinion. I already have. I’m just hoping that somebody is offering no-interest financing on a big honkin’ Plasma TV. Like a 60 inch. Yeah, 60 inch. Or maybe I’ll get real bold and go for the 100 inch. But that would require a new living room…

Read [CEPro] Via [PC World]