Wal-Mart Begins Massive Push For HD DVD

Several readers sent us word of Wal-Mart's ordering 2 million HD DVD players from China. Hans V wrote, "My kids work at Wal-Mart and the manager there has been talking about this. HD-DVD's are selling like mad there so I hear." Another reader sent us a few links in Chinese and summarized them this way: "The first batches of these blue-laser HD DVD players are to land sometime in 2007, with complete fulfillment of the order [from Fuh Yuan] in 2008. The deal could be worth up to $300 million US, which translates to $150 per player. If so, by the time Christmas 2007 rolls around, Wal-Mart could be selling these for less than $200 retail, although some speculate that the initial manufacturer suggested retail pricing might be in the ballpark of $299. Currently the cheapest high-definition player is a Toshiba HD DVD with an MSRP of $399." By comparison Blu-Ray players, manufactured in Japan, are not expected to drop below $1000 until next year. The International Herald Tribune writes about the risk Toshiba is taking by bringing in Chinese manufacturers to trump Sony in the format war.

Why do OPs so sledom verify before posting?

[FredThompson]

What is the translated Chinese? "blue laser HD-DVD" is only ONE way to translate the Chinese press release. HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? It's not clear because EITHER could be a proper translation.

Re:Its not that hard to believe...

[jmpeax]

PS3 is a blue ray player and well under $1000

Not in Europe. The PS3 retails for £420 (~$840) in the UK. Aren't we the lucky ones? HD-DVD all the way! All hail Microsoft!

Re:Hold off

[rob1980]

I won't be re-buying any of my already bought DVDs (about 220). They are all classics, and I'm in the process of converting them all to Xvid files so I can watch them on-demand.

How does converting your purchased DVDs to XVID make them any more "on-demand" than just watching the DVDs themselves?

Re:Its not that hard to believe...

[EinZweiDrei]

This is exactly where Blu-Ray loses. We have 'HDTV' in our vernacular, and 'DVD' is second nature. 'HD-DVD' is just so natural for people to want. 'Blu-Ray', on the other hand, sounds like some half-baked prototype, still bouncing around in R&D. Specs are meaningless. Videophiles are not going to be the ones deciding the market viability of either of these formats. People who like the sound of particular product names are.

Re:No, Sony will have a $600 player shortly

[ivan256]

Samsung also sells standalone Blu-Ray players for under $600.

I'd bet that by Christmas you'll find Blu-Ray players for under $300. The price ramp thus far has fairly closely matched DVD players when they came out, with the exception of the slight stall at the end of 2006 with the blue laser shortage.

Re:We have a winner!

[badasscat]

Will the person who picked HD-DVD in April 2007 for the next gen DVD format pool, please step forward to collect their winnings. I don't think that there is any chance that Sony and friends could over come this.

Sony has already overcome this in the form of the PlayStation 3, and the format war is all but over [tvpredictions.com] in favor of Blu-Ray. This doesn't really change anything.

I don't know why some people think that everything Wal-Mart touches turns to gold. They've been having all sorts of problems lately, and one of those problems has been their entry into the high-end electronics market, which has gone over like a lead balloon. Wal-Mart's customers just don't go there to buy things like HDTV's and HD-DVD players - they go there to buy cheap food, baby wipes and $4 prescription drugs. HD-DVD players may be "flying off the shelf" compared to other players at Wal-Mart, but that's not saying anything. Wake me up when all of Wal-Mart's HD-DVD players outsell one model of Blu-Ray player at any single Best Buy.

Also, Sony had had a $500 Blu-Ray player since November 2006 (at least refuting that nonsense about them not having a player under $1,000 until "later this year") called the PlayStation 3, and they've got a $600 MSRP standalone player coming in the next month or two that'll probably actually sell for $500 or less also. Realistically, though, I don't think the price of the players matters much. What matters is the movies available. Blu-Ray has a lot more content industry support, and that's not changing.

I mean anyone can make a device and sell it for $20 if they want to, but nobody's going to buy it if there's no content available for it. That's the situation to an extent with both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray right now, but Blu-Ray has more releases now and more releases in the pipeline, along with more studios on board.

So, despite this obvious bit of PR from the HD-DVD camp, it's still basically game over for them.

Walmart killing the PS3

[ConfusedSelfHating]

The justification for the high price of the PS3 is that it is also a Blu-Ray player. If Blu-Ray loses the format war, where does that leave the PS3? Don't even try to say that the PS3 is a superior game console to the Xbox 360. F.E.A.R. was just released on the PS3 and it has inferior graphics to the Xbox360 or PC. The PS3 version was released 6 months after the Xbox 360 version. Nearly every game released on both platforms has inferior graphics and no online for the PS3 version.

Simply put, the PS3 doesn't hold a candle to the visuals found in the Xbox 360 version -- especially considering the handful of bugs that have dead soldiers getting stuck in walls and twitching on the floor. The detailed environments and clear draw distances aren't found on PS3. If you had never seen the other versions of F.E.A.R., you still wouldn't be impressed with the PS3's graphics, but compared to the PC and 360, this version is graphically dead in the water.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/782/782476p2.html/ [ign.com]

We are looking at a $199 HD-DVD player in the near future. At $150 cost per unit, I think Walmart is going to charge $199 a piece. Walmart works in volume. If they do this, you're going to see $249 players from other retailers. I guess all of the people who are saying that they are waiting for a sub $200 HD player will be buying one soon. Is Sony preventing the release of cheaper Blu-Ray players or is it just taking too long to bring down manufacturing prices?

HDTVs are about to be widely adopted. On Walmart's website, they are selling a 37 inch 720p/1080i TV for $698. I'm not saying it's the greatest quality television, but it's not outside the price range of the middle class. So you can buy a HD TV and player for under a thousand dollars.

If Sony had joined the HD-DVD coalition, they would be in a much better position. There would have been no format war and the PS3 would have a HD-DVD drive which would be the certain high definition format. Sony would still collect some royalities, just less than a Blu-Ray victory. Sometimes the safe option is the best option.

Okay, I'll bite.. what is the big deal?

[zappepcs]

I am not a gamer. I don't particularly yet care about HD TV. What is the big deal? *IF* I used Windows, I would not be upgrading from XP yet as there is no real incentive. What is the incentive to care which of these formats win? Either one will slide into the player, I'll open my beer and sit back and watch the movie.

When it comes to back up, I don't use DVD. I use disk to disk to disk, or disk to disk to tape. Sure, the distribution disk for FC8 might fit on one disk, but uh, so?

For anyone but those interested in the bleeding edge or new technology, what is the big deal?

Better than DVD how again?

[mkcmkc]

Er, so why am I supposed to buy one of these? Do they come without annoying trailers? Do they allow me to skip forward at any time (no UOPs)? Do they allow me to play any DVD I buy (no region problems)? Do they allow me to back up my media, so that I don't have to buy another one when the kids ride the original across the floor? Anything?

Lot more than "just plastic"

[Kadin2048]

It's more than just the 30 cents worth of plastic, it's all the logistics involved in producing two separate discs -- so you're effectively doubling that supply chain -- and packing them together, keeping them straight (don't want to put two copies of disc 1 in there, don't want to ship any with just one disc, etc.) -- not to mention adding additional weight to each package that has to be taken into account during shipping and transport.

I'll bet that the cost of manufacturing a 2-disc set is significantly higher than producing a single-sided one; personally, I'd rather screw the artwork on the discs and save the money. They're just buckets for bits anyway.

Re:We have a winner!

[Babbster]

I've got to jump in here along with the above poster. Blu-ray is no more proprietary than HD DVD. In fact, my only issue with Blu-ray is price. If Blu-ray was competitive in that area, I'd be more than happy to support it because it truly is superior in terms of data storage. However, since I consider price a "trump card," my support remains with Toshiba and company - I truly believe that price is the determining factor for mass acceptance, and Sony, et. al. show no signs of trying to compete there.

Re:"Writes"?

[Joelfabulous]

No, you've got it all wrong. I know you were going for humour, but everyone gets hit with the FUDstick, for the most part. Tons of articles about Microsoft have defectivebydesign tagged to it. Every time there's a relatively small exploit in Mac OSX, we freak out. Nintendo, riding the high right now, can seemingly do no wrong, while Sony is effectively screwed. Yes, they brought this on themselves, but this is what happens when companies look too much at the return on investment and forget to make a worthwhile product. (I'm generalizing, but bear with me.)

Say what you will about companies making boneheaded decisions and glaringly obvious mistakes, but they are still run by people. People make stupid decisions, and they are also capable of making good ones. I'm no fan of corporate hegemony, so maybe they're getting a bit of a taste of their own medecine here -- they got greedy, overreached their bounds, and now this BluRay thing might bite them in the ass a bit. I won't speculate much -- most of the sides of that argument have been covered more eloquently than I can manage.

I'm not buying a Sony product any time soon due to displeasure with my experiences with their last few products, more or less after they became the media conglomerate, not the consumer electronics giant they used to be good for. The PS3 has some good things going for it - that distributed processing stuff is pretty sweet, and the Cell processor is by all accounts a nifty piece of hardware. Companies rise and fall. Once I, as a consumer who tries to make both ethical and sound decisions in my purchasing habits, see that Sony is turning around, then I'll give them another shot. Until then, I'm just a spectator.

Disney and Walmart dictate player direction

[SuperKendall]

Who out there thinks WalMart is going to stock in huge numbers a player that does not play Disney movies? Disney has firmly sided with Blu-Ray, and as Disney goes so too will go Wal-Mart. All you have to do is follow existing relationships to see what will happen...

Re:We have a winner!

[brandond1976]

Yes, but you forgot to mention other facts about some of those companies:
Apple - Makes DVD Studio, which includes support for making HD-DVDs
Dell - Only cares about data, not movies
Hewlett-Packard - Only cares about data, not movies
Hitachi - Only cares about data, not movies
LG - Released the first combo HD-DVD/BluRay player (which they have promised to update with better HD-DVD support).
Samsung - Recently announced that they are going to be releasing an HD-DVD player for the holidays.
Warner Bros. - Releases on both HD-DVD and BluRay, but is only releasing many of their most popular movies (including the Matrix trilogy) on HD-DVD due to the lack of interactivity available on BluRay players.

Sun - Only involved because they managed to get Java into the BluRay spec. Some of you may know what a pain it is trying to release Java programs that work well on different versions of the JDK. Well, guess what, it's even worse on BluRay. Read this link to find out how much fun it is for the studios trying to use BDJ, they end up writing the same thing 8 different ways in the hopes that one of them will work in the version of Java on your player: http://www.blueboard.com/bluray/qa_dragonslair.htm [blueboard.com] If this is any indication of what will be required of them then I imagine that most of the BluRay studios will soon be jumping to HD-DVD.