Walmart orders 2 million $299 HD DVD players, in stores soon!

[Zaphod]

And I thought I had stressed it enough, but apparently not: we are talking about lines that produce players. Players!

Bzzt. Sorry, but it is very likely that they're talking about discs. As you point out yourself: For hardware, why would they mention it at all? Whozers, we can switch from assembling DVD players to other ODD players in the same factory! Duh... That is not press release worthy and makes no sense. However, if you just got singed to make 2 million HD-DVD players, then playing up their advantages at the disc manufacturing end is a positive. Especially for a Chinese company putting out a press in China where the producers have been lukewarm towards Blu-ray because of the investments required. Toshiba certainly wants it mentioned as often as possible.

And what type of clear, concise information do you need besides all codecs, largest capacity, 90+% of all movie content, all hardware manufacturers in the boat except one? The players aren't even more expensive to make.

MPEG2 is undesirable for a next gen format, it has a better interactivity layer, it's large enough, has no region encoding, less obtrusive copy protection, disks are cheaper to produce, and the players are certainly cheaper to purchase?

Being vastly outsold in the standalone market, one might argue that the only thing Blu-ray has going for it at the moment is the PS3. And with the majority in total players no where near reflected in media sales, that this might not be all that robust of an advantage either.

See how easy that was?

PS: Please don't argue these points to me as I'm personally entirely agnostic in this format war and will be waiting out the winner. You have a preference, which is fine, just don't make it sound like a slam dunk. It is not. Otherwise discussions like this would be nonexistent, there would be only one next-gen format, and the people over at AVSForums would have nothing to do with their time...

I want it from a source that is liably bound to the truth (i.e. an English-language press release or official advertising material).

And that's different from what I said, how?

 

[RobertR1]

And I thought I had stressed it enough, but apparently not: we are talking about lines that produce players. Players!

Clearly you don't read too many press releases. Often after the headline is described, the release dicusses the technology and/or the company(ies) involved. Just some basic background info. In this case, they went onto talk about what HD DVD is and how existing DVD lines can be/are used to create the discs, which clearly tie it to HD DVD as this is simply not possible with Blu Ray.

 

[Random Digital]

Well whichever disc it plays, I'm curious to see the specs on the player.

Maybe it will be hackable like all those cheap APEX dvd players.

 

[Ruined]

Wal-Mart Names HD DVD the Winner

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback184.html

Snippet:

There is one retailer that has the power to call the winner of the protracted Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD fight and that vendor is Wal-Mart. Over the weekend they apparently leaked plans to bring in a massive number of low cost (possibly sub $200) HD DVD players for Christmas.

...

For Wal-Mart the only real metric is cost. Wal-mart doesn’t really make money off of the movies and do not sell high-end home theater equipment. They are known for aggressive prices and, as mentioned above, they subsidize their DVD sales. They needed something that could sell for under $200 soon and they needed the lowest cost of the new formats. This is where HD DVD shines, not only had Toshiba agreed to license to low cost manufacturers early on, but HD DVDs are pressed on the same lines that regular DVDs are, they require no major equipment change out and the blanks, when compared to Blu-Ray are less expensive as well.

This made the decision simple, Blu-Ray was just too expensive to make this work and any technical advantages were insignificant against Wal-Mart’s need for the lowest cost offering. For them it is about price and that is where HD DVD clearly has the sustainable advantage.

...

It means that any studio wanting Wal-Mart’s support after year end had better be selling HD DVD movies. Wal-Mart won’t be promoting Blu-Ray and, after year end, will increasingly focus their marketing on getting people to buy into HD DVD players and the related HD DVD movie from them.

In short, the Blu-Ray aligned studios will now have to either support both formats or risk losing much of Wal-Mart's business and given how material this business is to them, you have to think that an anti-Wall-Mart decision would have a material impact on their bonuses and career longevity. It certainly puts Columbia Pictures, which is owned by Sony, in a particularly uncomfortable position.

 

[willardjuice]

Big win for HD-DVD. I'm sure this will further persuade BD only studio's (Disney, FOX I'm looking at you; though I'd expect Disney to turn way before FOX does) to reconsider their stance and perhaps go neutral.

 

[vazel]

I hope this greatly speeds up the end of this stupid format war. Not going HD until one format wins. Until then I'll keep my $$$ to myself and get my HD fix from Usenet.

 

[Xenus]

It's likely to the exact opposite as Blu-ray shows signs of being the dominant format and this could possibly reverse that trend or set it back on equal footing depending on the price of Blu-ray players at the time.

 

[Sxotty]

It's likely to the exact opposite as Blu-ray shows signs of being the dominant format and this could possibly reverse that trend or set it back on equal footing depending on the price of Blu-ray players at the time.

That may be true, but the plus is once either side wins it will be difficult to increase the price on players.

 

[Rolf N]

Wow. HD DVD needed a miracle to survive this year. Looks like Walmart took it upon themselves to provide that miracle. Whatever brings in revenue I guess.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I can read Chinese but trying to translate that is like trying to figure out what's a Nintendo Playstation 360. It clearly says blue laser HD DVD and does not specify whether or not they meant Blu Ray or HD DVD.

My vote is that it's a new Chinese bootleg!!! Blu- Ray HD DVD!!!

 

[Ike Turner]

I can read Chinese but trying to translate that is like trying to figure out what's a Nintendo Playstation 360. It clearly says blue laser HD DVD and does not specify whether or not they meant Blu Ray or HD DVD.

My vote is that it's a new Chinese bootleg!!! Blu- Ray HD DVD!!!

Blues laser HD DVD = HD DVD.
HD DVD uses blue laser (just like Blue Ray BTW)

 

[patsu]

Wal-Mart Shoots Down Cheap HD DVD Rumor

Pre-mature.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2122715,00.asp

 

[Random Digital]

Pre-mature.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2122715,00.asp

Wal-Mart denied rumors that it had placed a substantial order with a Taiwan supplier for ultra-cheap HD DVD players that could swing the format wars in that direction.

I figured Walmart would say something about this one way or another.

Even though it's April, I'm still curious as to how this battle will turn out during this years holiday season.

 

[Ty]

Oh well, and here I was hoping that it would help to quickly end this war - I'd like to buy one of the players.

Anyhow, maybe just the whiff of this happening will make Sony drop BR prices quicker.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

As far as I can tell, the CHINESE article does not indicate that this is a rumor. I'm not sure how trustworthy is the Chinese article though.

 

[patsu]

The CEO mispoke. The company issued an apology after the "news" broke.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

To be honest, I never uderstood why the $299 player would have been such a huge deal. If Walmart is currently selling $350 HD-DVD and $700 Blu-Ray players, would it really have made that significant of a difference to conumers that the cost difference was $400 and not just $350? Is sub $300 the magical pricepoint for electronics for mass market entry? I wonder, because that seems to be a number a lot of people throw out for consoles as a target for mass appeal. Is the difference between $319 and $299 really something special?

Also, if players are $350 now, wouldn't we expect that to drop to $300 fairly soon anyway? Based on DVD player introduction and CD player introduction, the prices seemed to drop $50 or so a month, at least, for about the first year. The Denon DVD player I bought in '96 was $800, and a year later an equivalently performing player was $300. Similar for CD introduction. Shouldn't that Toshiba make it to $299 by this summer anyway?

 

[Malo]

Yes it's a crazy difference already. If you look at Walmarts website, they have 2 high def players. HD DVD for $350 and BR for $898

 

[quest55720]

To be honest, I never uderstood why the $299 player would have been such a huge deal. If Walmart is currently selling $350 HD-DVD and $700 Blu-Ray players, would it really have made that significant of a difference to conumers that the cost difference was $400 and not just $350? Is sub $300 the magical pricepoint for electronics for mass market entry? I wonder, because that seems to be a number a lot of people throw out for consoles as a target for mass appeal. Is the difference between $319 and $299 really something special?

Also, if players are $350 now, wouldn't we expect that to drop to $300 fairly soon anyway? Based on DVD player introduction and CD player introduction, the prices seemed to drop $50 or so a month, at least, for about the first year. The Denon DVD player I bought in '96 was $800, and a year later an equivalently performing player was $300. Similar for CD introduction. Shouldn't that Toshiba make it to $299 by this summer anyway?

The MSPR was supposed to be 299 with it on sale most of the time for 199 you know walmart likes to rollback prices . That is the key sub 200 dollars. Also I think selling at cost or 150 on black friday would of been huge.

The cheap chinese players are coming and I am sure walmart will be selling them.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

The MSPR was supposed to be 299 with it on sale most of the time for 199 you know walmart likes to rollback prices . That is the key sub 200 dollars. Also I think selling at cost or 150 on black friday would of been huge.

The cheap chinese players are coming and I am sure walmart will be selling them.

WalMart does not run sales except for the rare "specials" on holidays (and these are often items that aren't in their normal inventory). Their policy is "always low prices" and once an item is priced low, it does not rise back up during a "not on sale" period as happens at other retailers. It also does not, from my memory, play the MSRP game. Many of their electronics (most, actually) are made custom for WalMart, and they set both the retail price and margin for the manufacturer before the contract is ever signed.

So to the best of my knowledge, any press about a $299 player (fake or not, rumor or not) would be speaking of WalMart's actual selling price.

And if Blu-Ray really is priced at $898 then that is even more expensive at WalMart that the article above indicated. So again, would a fifty buck difference, going from a savings of $550 to a savings of $600 vs. BluRay really have that much of an effect on consumers?