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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.
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.
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.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/782/782476p2.html/
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.
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.
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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.
Yes, but you forgot to mention other facts about some of those companies:
m 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.
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.ht