Yesterday at the CEDIA video industry conference in Denver, CO. Toshiba (along with CBS) announced a special promotion for the upcoming release of Season 1 of Star Trek The Original Series digitally remastered for HD-DVD. If you buy the box set and a Toshiba HD-DVD player you will get a free ‘phaser’ remote control for your HD-DVD player (pictured right…larger version below). It seems that Toshiba are doing everything they can to pull out a win in this format war. Just a few weeks ago they ‘talked’ Paramount into going HD-DVD only and now they are touting Star Trek as one of the big exclusives for the HD-DVD format. They are so into Trek that Toshiba employees dressed up in Trek uniforms at the show (more details on the promotion and images below).
UPDATE: Toshiba has sent TrekMovie.com exclusive shots of the phaser (see below)
Free phaser + 5 free HD movies
Toshiba had already started a promotion giving away 5 free HD-DVD Movies for any purchase of a Toshiba HD-DVD player (details here), and this free movie program has been extended. Now they are offering an additional promotion of sending a phaser/remote control to those who buy both a player and the TOS box set. Right now the basic Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player
UPDATE: Phaser deal starts 11/20
The free phaser promotion starts November 20th (the day of the release of the TOS box set). If you pre-order your Box set now that will still qualify, but you must purchase your player on 11/20 (or later). Toshiba also just announced their ‘third generation’ of players which should be available by the time the TOS-R box sets arrive in November. These will come with 2 movies in the box (300 and Bourne Identity) and be eligible for the free phaser and 5 additional free movie promotions.
UPDATE: Exclusive new pics from Toshiba of the new phaser/remote control
(click to enlarge)
Details being worked out…keep receipts
TrekMovie.com talked to a spokesperson for Toshiba who says that they are still finalizing the details on how the phasers will be fulfilled, but confirmed that you can participate in both the phaser and free movie give aways. "Toshiba wants to make the consumers happy," said the spokesperson. This also goes for those who have already pre-ordered the TOS-R Box set [UPDATE: but the Toshiba player must be purchased no earlier than 11/20…see above]. For now she cautions for people to keep the box and the receipts. [NOTE: the current requirement for the free movies is to send in the UPC code from your box so it may be worth waiting until the details of the phaser/remote are revealed before participating in that program. Regardless Toshiba promise that you will be able to participate in both, but it may be worth making a copy of whatever you send for the free movie promotion]. When more details are available for the promotion we will report them here at TrekMovie.com.
Toshiba VPs…pushing Trek
Video preview of new HD-DVD courtesy of STARTREK.COM
…Season 1 of Star Trek on HD-DVD available for pre-order (at a big discount) at Amazon
Thanks to Matt Wright
Photos courtesy of AnandTech and Toshiba
Oh, now this is really CHEESY!!!
Cheesy? They just sold me!
Think about it… No more battling the wife for the remote.
There’s no way she’d be caught dead with that thing,
Those guys are marketing geniuses!
I want to point the phaser at the toshiba player..and vaporize it….sure makes the 2000.00 price tag for the player, the tv and the season one set sound appealing..just kidding..my computer monitor is my hdtv:)
I would actually suggest waiting a little while, Toshiba’s 3rd generation HD DVD players are just around the corner, and that was what the first part of the press conference was about. The 3rd gen players and the TOS-R boxed set should be shipping at about the same time. Also all 3rd gen players come with a copy of ‘300’ and ‘The Bourne Identity’ plus the 5 movies via mail-in rebate deal.
I’ve had nothing but problems with my two Toshiba DVD players.
Not even a Phaser Remote could bring me back.
#5, totally different beasts, these are Toshiba’s pride and joy, they are continually updating their 1st and 2nd generation HD DVD players with firmware updates, etc.
Toshiba’s basic DVD players are like most other commodity players around, which is a dime a dozen.
I’m not touching any HD format until the war shakes itself out. If you back the wrong pony you end up with a nice expensive paperweight. It’s also probably worth waiting for the price on the box set to drop. $140 for one season is absurd, HD or not.
Every time the wife asks for the remote, you could point it at her and ask, “what’s your pleasure?”
FWIW, the only reason to spend the extra cash (or credit) for the A20 player is if you know that your HDTV does a poor job of deinterlacing. The 1080i signal that the A2 outputs contains ALL of the information necessary to fill all of the pixels on your `1080p’ television set, but is sent 540lines at a time and then reintegrated by your tv.
The A20 simply skips that step and sends the 1080p signal directly to your tv.
Actually, I’m surprised at how cheap the HD-DVD player is.
“Cheap” as in “inexpensive”, that is.
#9, yep I thought about editing the article to say that, but I figured why mess with it, especially because so many HDTVs still don’t properly do inverse telecine of 1080i data properly. Deinterlacing 24fps material isn’t as straightforward as video (30fps) data.
set your faces to ‘stunned’
I would buy it if I didn’t already have my HD player… As to the format war shaking off……. that won’t be for a while and in the mean time you are denying youself a wonderful experience in HD…
Aaron R…
A free cheesy looking phaser remote if I buy a player and the set. Oh man. Who in their right mind would possibly forgo a great deal like that?
Better deal than “It’s a Wrap”‘s auction prices.
Hope those ‘combi’ players come down in price…
Also…I wonder if J.J.’s ‘hand phasers’ will still retain this excellent basic look somewhat…or just end up as another over-redesigned prop that could be from any kind of sci-fi franchise… This is still the best looking kind of ‘hand phaser’ around in my view.
Set your phasers to rip off!!!
138.95 dollars , that about 100 euros , hmm not bad , considering i dont have the tos on dvd , so its not like i am buying something i already have it came down to about 100 dollars which would be able 72 euros i would pick it up for sure.
Not worth it. Got my Samsung HD DVD recorder at Best Buy at around $180.00… NOT on sale. Sending it out DVI does make a huge dif even for standard format DVDs at 1080i.
Someone at Toshiba didn’t do their homework: they’re pushing TOS, and one of them dressed in a TNG uniform?!?!?!?
A Phaser/Remote…?
Too bad Elvis wasn’t a Trek fan, he could have used the phaser on his TV instead of a gun.
#21 Same mentality it seems that they always assume for Trek fans… we will swallow anything they throw at us as long as it says Trek somewhere then thank them, and ask for more.
Isnt this the same remote that was for sell a few years back? They also had a TNG style phaser remote.
Personally, Id rather have the free movies. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the TOS phaser 2…it’s design is timeless and very futuristic. Hands down the coolest weapon ever. I even own one of the MR replicas as well as the Art Asylum toy version.
But this, I can do without.
RE: #21 Didn’t do their homework… This is why Star Trek fans are looked down on my friend they are trying and all people will do is nit pick. God its like little nerds who just can’t stand it if something is not what they view as perfect. Personally I think this is one of the huge factors that led to the decrease of Treks popularity over the last 7 – 10 years. It is not helpful to a franchise when all its fan base does is scream at the top of their lungs things like “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! T Pols ears are shorter” or heres a good one “Blasphemy Shatner has to be in the movie or it won’t be remotely good! Boycot!” This nitpicking about little things like people trying to market a toy (because thats basically what it is) is not helpful to either the health of the franchise or the general view of Star Trek fans by the world. Plus # 17 Cervantes give it a rest what you are doing falls right into the same category… You think being negative and bashing the product (in this case phasers in prior movies or series) is going to help in any way Star Treks longevity? I doubt it even matters on this thread because guess what… If you watch closely no one really cares what other people are saying all people seem to be trying to do lately is scream loudest to try and have their voices and they all seem unaware that their voices will not really impact whats done. This is why I have stopped or at least slowed my posts way down because no one cares or listens much anyway especially if you have a slightly differing oppinion than them. Anyways in the end I know this minute post is really not good for much because the overall problem I speak of (which is very un-trek like when you think about i) is really a product of the information age and the internet really. Somehow people when they got online thought all of a sudden they had a voice of some sort to rival the professionals of the world and if they used it they would see what they wanted happen in their favorite TV show or movie… Well at some point in the process that didn’t happen so they felt they must not be saying it loudly enough… It works both ways good and bad for example the millions of dollars earned for not by the Save Enterprise campaign. Well I am sorry to tell you this but no matter how loud you scream online about something, no matter how many threads in different websites you hijack to sling your opinions around the world wide web, no matter how much you think its working…. Its not doing anything because in the end the big boys who make the big dollars for doing well at what they do are going to make the decisions unabated by anything anyone says especially on the web. I don’t ask that you stop what you are doing because I know that will never happen but if you have managed to read my post to this point and if any of this makes sense to you I just ask one thing. Since most people online think of only themselves and not the true stability of the franchise or the way its entire fan base will be portrayed… Just continue to think of yourselves and think a little deeper about what people will inevitably think of you and how people may very well be turned off by your actions.
Aaron R.
Teacher, Scholar, Writer, Director, Actor, Trekkie
25 – Thanks for the long-winded post there, but I was only making light of it, nothing more. I could care less which unis they were wearing.
(oh, and BTW, in my 35 years of being a fan, I have done more than use the internet to discuss Trek things with people, being a disagreement or anything else)
RaveOnEd
Writer, Musician, Recording Artist, Trekkie, TOS Phaser prop owner
wow that came out really negative because its been brewing for a while… I meant every word of it but I don’t mean it as an attack…
Aaron R.
Well, I think the TNG uniform is something pretty silly. While it won’t make or break sales, it’s something anyone would notice if you know anything about Star Trek.
Regarding the decline of Trek, it has nothing to do with the nitpicking. The reason Star Trek declined was because they stopped churning out a good product. Do the fans have anything to do with that? No.
Paramount’s belief that the fans will buy anything that has Star Trek attached to it was a HUGE problem. No matter how bad the show was, Paramount assumed the fans would come. While it took years for it to happen, finally, the fans had enough of the lesser quality.
TOS succeeded because it was a good show.
Trek didn’t decline because the fan base pays more attention to canon than the writers.
The writers were sloppy and put in a lousy effort.
Then they took a stuck up “love it or leave it” attitude. People left it.
These prices seem high, but not mega-high.
CmdrR.
Journalist, Father of 2 (soon-to-be-3), Love God
So does this thing make sound effects when you “fire”? That would rule
Women can’t hold guns properly in the future either
Who is going to play a young James Kirk???
Harry Ballz
Lover, Author, Shoe size 11, Likes pizza, non-smoker, wine drinker…..
Still no Mugatu casting news…Sigh.
Hello,
How come nobody has stated or noticed they made this Phaser/Remote based on the crappy inaccurate Franklin Mint Phaser sold about ten years ago. Are they insane or don’t do enough research? Not one of you has pointed this out. What kind of Trekkers are you? It is exactly the some one taken from that awful replica.(and yes I bought the piece of junk and need to get rid of some day). Are they kidding?
Who gets the blame for basing the remote on that crap? I’d get a little exited if they based it off of the Art Asylum version that is very close to the original prop, but this yuckoo, they can keep it. I’ll wait for the prices to go down. I won’t even want this poop on my coffee table it is so ugly. Come on somebody complain to the big wigs and get a better one out. Now that’s going to happen, NOT!
I love the TOS Phaser design too, it beats all of them. Let’s be happy we any Star Trek coming out fellow people. Feed Me. The HD war is so silly. The Blue – Ray guys haven’t even used the used the released BR discs up to their potential , with all the space they have on their discs they got put so much extras they could put on them, but no they have the same material on them as the HD-DVD discs. What gives? Devolution is real. We must repeat.
#25 “I think this is one of the huge factors that led to the decrease of Treks popularity over the last 7 – 10 years. It is not helpful to a franchise when all its fan base does is scream at the top of their lungs things like ‘Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!””
Hey, thanks for dropping by, Mr. Berman! We wish you luck in all your future endeavors.
#34 Are we not men?
If these are the same phaser remotes on the market a few years ago, they didn’t work all that well. Amusing as a knick-knack but nothing more.
I guess this could be seen as an incentive, but frankly it seems like “Let’s dangle some cheap plastic Trek-related crap in front of these slobs and they’ll jump at it, in spite of the inflated price!”
Which, okay, I’ll admit, generally works on me, BUT NOT THIS TIME!!
I am with Aaron on this one. Here we have a company that is giving something away free and all some people can do is bitch and moan…and it is the same people who seem to bitch and moan about everything. It is clear to me that some folks just hate everything.
the only saving grace is that i realize that comments are only a fraction of visitors and that this glass is half empty (or the glass is totally wrong and I am not even sure that the water fits within known canon) crowd are not really indicative of trekkies as a whole….if it were then Paramount, CBS, JJ Abrams and Tosiba should just give up now
#38
Hello Anthony ,
Whose is moaning the most? I like all the Star Trek of the past 20 years , even the bad ones. The Phaser Remote is copied from the terrible Franklin Mint version. Do you not agree that it is awful? I think it is great to have a give away something, but do the engineers(me),lawyers, and doctors Star Trek fans not notice these things and Paramount thinks they are morons or something? They even copied the silly silver and gold look of the goofy Franklin Mint version. I think constructive criticism is good. These people that complained didn’t even notice that the Phaser Remote give away was copied from a terrible copy. So they so they are not the elite of Star Trek fans so cares. The Paramount division responsible for this horrible Phaser Remote could care less and that is what worries me. The Great Bird Of The Galaxy would have cared. He was a perfectionist and they could have looked a Master Replicas fantastic version and they didn’t bother. Did they just do a quick Google or Ebay search and decide that Franklin Mint must know what they were doing copied that? I think people who love Star Trek want a better future and every detail is necessary to ensure a better future, even the fine details of the original Phaser prop are needed.
The release of the HD-DVD’s is a great acomplishment and glad it has been done. I would still like commentary on some if not all of the original actors and production people involved with the series though. Is Paramount low on funds to pay them to do so, or are these asking to much to do so? It has been Paramounts golden egg and to get more egg you need to give more egg.
thanks for the wisdom of devo. It makes me feel like i’m not the only one who listens to them. Nutra speaks
hey, whether a glass is half full or empty is one thing, but all I know is that sooner or later somebody’s going to have to WASH that glass!
God I hate dishes! Can I moan and groan about housework? :-) Anyways the point is the phaser remote is a fun novelty item not something to be seriously debated over and argued against.
Aaron R.
Agree with Comisar Anthony, what a bunch of cheapskate bitchers!!!
Sooner or later you are all going to have to upgrade to HD whether it be a converter box to downconvert the HD signal or to actually upgrade to an HD set. (most newer laptops are HD ready)
Toshiba’s HD players are cheaper than many standard dvd players were just a couple of years ago. $200.00 for an awesome way to view cinema. Plus 5 or 6 free movies. The same for Blu-Ray, $350.00 for a premium player and free movies. Doesn’t seem overly high to me.
I think the phaser remote is kind of a cool freebee. Maybe corney but considering I just sold my boxed Playmates classic phaser for $65.00 on ebay this past weekend it might be something you can sell to collectors to recoup some of the cost.
I won’t be purchasing the box set because they didn’t retouch the things we all seemed to agree were severely lacking (Balance of Terror and other pre -new model effects) I think this shows a lack of disregard for the project and takes fans for granted. Not the price though, pricing is right in line with other High Def disks and actually a bit lower than other sets.
Mugatu agrees with me as well.
Moaning — moaning — is — our business…
And c’mon throwing in a cheap plastic novelty to try and sweeten a deal is not my idea of added value. If they want to include a meaningful rebate for people buying both, then that’s a deal worth considering.
Moan.
For the amount of money they want for one season of Star Trek TOS-R, the included phaser should be gold plated!
Mike :o
PS: Hey Paramount/CBS..try discounting these sets by 50% if you really want to increase sales!
garth…i am glad you agree…but then you have your own moan. I agree that they should have fixed BOT, but in the end they really only needed to fix a couple of shots in a couple of episodes out of 29….probably adding up to less than a minute of total screen time. The rest is just fine and remember you have never seen this stuff in HD (even the stuff shown on digital channels)….it looks amazing in HD. Plus you are getting never aired episodes and full length. So would it be nice if they also fixed that minute or two of new effects…yes. But you can be pretty sure they never will which means you will never see TOS in HD.
And to others…this is a toshiba promotion not a CBS promotion. Lets face it Toshiba are giving you a free phaser and 5-7 free HDDVD movies with a player that costs about 240 bucks. To keep whining about being ripped off there is just….well ludicrous. If you dont want to buy a toshiba player fine, but with these promotions and the base price….they are clearly not \’ripping anyone off\’. There can be no doubt that Toshiba are taking a loss on every machine they are selling…especially after these promotions.
as for the box sets….yes they are about 50 bucks more than the SD ones were when they were first released. For that you get HD and new special features. If you cant afford it fine, but get over it.
The real expensive item is getting and HD TV….but even those are now down below 1000 bucks for a decent sized one
Anthony I think HD projectors are the wave of the future. A good friend of mine has one. Borgasm in a living room. I am talking about feeling like you are in a theater in your own home. Throw in a decent suround sound and you will never go back.
I am saving for my own.
Aaron R.
Oh…. I am pissed…not at any person in particular, mind you, but,
if Paramount is going to include a tribute to a classic prop, the LEAST they could do is check with the experts ON said prop in order to do it justice!! Yes, it’s based on the Franklin Mint phaser. Yes, it looks utterly ridiculous. And yes, it cements yet again into history the contempt the owners of the almighty franchise have for fans. (They could have talked to John Long, or at least the HMS guys re: phasers…)
This HD release is AIMED at old school fans who have the cash to spend AND WHO KNOW BETTER. I could go on, but what’s the point. I’ll just get shot down by long-winded people…
Contempt, my friends.
I’m on line. Hear me scream.
DRN- Photojournalist, make-up artist, actor, costumer, PHASER and other Trek-prop collector, and fan since ’66.
#45 Right, Don’t raise the bridge, lower the river.
Well, I hear that Shatner doesn’t have anything to do with this promotion, so fire up the righteous indignation. Or pick your battles. I, for one, do gobble up all the Trek that is thrown down the stairs at me as the alternative is no new Trek. Reruns are fun, but I get bored with the same thing all the time. I’ll watch new even if it’s bad, beacause it’s new and I might get a pearl amongst the ordinary.
Are we talking about free remotes shaped like phasers, or canonical arguments about glasses of water? I’m lost again.
Aaron, I have a Hitachi 57″ HD with the Toshiba 1080 HDMI DVD player and a Yamaha 5 way surround system. I couldn’t tell ya about all the bells and whistle aspects of how the signal gets translated as a video image, but I do know that it is FRIGGIN’ AWESOME. Get a high def projector or a high def big screen or whatever; just get one. It’s 2007, time for massive home viewing!
THX- Musician, recording artist, educator, prop and ship collector, sci-fi and fantasy enthusiast, father of six, good cook.