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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.
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.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
The International Herald Tribune "writes"? How about "wrote, a year and a half ago"?
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.
What will Wal-Mart do if one of there cheap and big seller players get blacklisted?
Ii would suck to be working there on that day.
I mean, if I can find it doing a 30 second search over at Sony, why can't the author, rather than implying that Blu-Ray players will be $1000 until 2008. The Sony BDP-S300 is due to be released in Summer 2007.
y /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-S tart?ProductSKU=BDPS300
Here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinit
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I mean: Radio -> HDRadio Tv -> HDTV DVD - >HDDVD Its just simpler for the consumer. Even the industry standard names for the damn aspect ratio is HDxxx depending on the resolutions. The poster also forgets, PS3 is a blue ray player and well under $1000 but that is beside the point. Truthfully, I hope Sony stops with the format obsession. The sad fact is that Sony would have been a lot better off just going with HDDVD. We would all be making money right now and not waiting for years while the consumer waits to see who is going to win. I'm not an industry specialist or anything, obvisouly, but I just don't see the next gen HD format being called "blu ray", when all others are HD-.
I can very easily see a scenario five years from now where Blu-Ray is the dominant format but consumers call it HD-DVD because to them (as another poster pointed out) it's all HD.
So, you're saying that the company that created Betamax, ATRAC encoding, the S-Link protocol, Minidisc players, Super-AudioCDs, Memory Sticks and Universal Media Discs might actually lose a format war?
Preposterous!
Mike Hoye
Of course, the "HD" in HD Radio doesn't stand for "high defintion" -- it stands for "hybrid digital," meaning that it co-exists with standard analog transmissions in the same channel. iBiquity is taking advtange of the fact that many consumers assume the HD prefix means "high definition," when there's no requirement for the digital transmissions to sound any better (especially if they use the bandwidth for additional subchannels).
On the AVS forum, no fewer that six native Chinese speakers confirmed that the news release was referring to HD DVD.
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.
I'm not sure if HD-DVD will proliferate to the same extent as VHS, or even DVD's.
VHS had no previous iteration - it was a completely new method of distributing media, so it was an easy sell.
DVD proliferated because of significant technical advantages over VHS - mainly startlingly better picture quality, and ability to output 16:9 widescreen formatted video.
However, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray only offers one advantage over DVD's: superior picture quality. This is only evident, however, on relatively new HD TV sets, which have not been widely adopted by the viewing public.
The fact is that DVD quality is "good enough" for many people, even if they own HD sets. So until HD-DVD and Blu-Ray hit the same price points as DVD's today, and HD TV's penetrate a majority of households, expect to keep seeing movies released on both DVD and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray. I expect the process will take at least a decade, if not more - about the same time it took VHS to become defunct after DVD's premiered.
So let me get this straight -- a deal that Walmart hasn't admitted to, with a format that may or not be HD-DVD (because it could be Blu-Ray given translation problems), with players that won't come out till 2008, will absolutely win the format war for HD-DVD, because no there is no reason for anyone to not buy HD-DVD now (at the currently higher prices) because they promise to win the war because these (without a doubt according to HD-DVD fanboys) are on the way. The same way they promised to win because HD-DVD's early to market strategy would give them an "Unbeatable" lead. And how "All" the studios would support HD-DVD because of the lower replication costs.
Unless the studios change alignments and go neutral by Christmas it is all over for HD-DVD. Period. I am dubious anyone can make an HD player for 50 dollars (say, how well does "Children of Men" play for you on your XBox 360?). Maybe the mechanism, but it takes a lot of horsepower to do all the modern codecs at full HD and with the DRM overhead.
I suspect this will all turn out to be a huge misunderstanding that is blown all out of proportion by the HD-DVD camp looking for any good news to hang their hats on after having gotten beaten badly 4 months in a row. Children of Men is out and Matrix preorder has also come and gone. HD-DVD doesn't have any more ammo in the content pipeline to compete with the big titles coming Blu-Ray's way in the next few months.
If you include PS3 players Blu-Ray sells more players every month than HD-DVD has sold in a full Year.
Having been to China, they call DVD9 HD-DVD on the street and on the packaging. I suspect we are talking a conventional DVD player that scales conventional DVD to HD resolution. This could definitely be produced for $50 dollars or less. I do not believe they can make $50 HD-DVD players that actually work. Remember this stuff has to have HDMI for God's sake. If it were possible to do the processing, they'd still probably still have to skimp by piping out component only and hope the Down Rez flag never gets set on future HD-DVD discs.
Blu-Ray also has two additional layers of DRM (and yes I know how much slashdotters all hate DRM) and these will be used for the first time soon. Since the AACS is now completely compromised, the studios will really be watching to see how well Blu-Ray's additional layers hold up. If they last even a few months, the studios will offer up HD-DVD on the altar as a sacrifice to the DRM gods.
It's not all about how cheap the players are. People that can afford a decent big HDTV (and it really does need to be big to see the BIG difference) can afford a $500 Blu-Ray players (and yes they exist now, pay no attention to the "$1000" player FUD, hell buy a PS3 for $600) and will care more about how many movies are available. Sure HD-DVD will be 100-200 dollars cheaper this Christmas, but Blu-Ray will have the movies and will eventually be considered a must buy item for good HDTVs. People that don't have HDTV or are satisfied with DVD don't need either.
Letter To Iran
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Samsung BD-P1000 $664.99 in store at Best Buy.
The same player for $699.99 at CompUSA
Sony 2x2x2 Blu-ray BD-RE, internal ATA drive $699.99 at CompUSA
The Samsung again for $699 at Circuit City
Or the newer Samsung BD-P1200 for $799.99 at Circuit City
Then there's the Lite-On Blu Ray Burner for $399.99 at Fry's
And the Philips BDP9000 player for $799.99 also at Fry's
Man, I can't wait for next year when they finally drop below $1000 at places other than every single major retailer.
That said, the original poster also misquoted the actual article. There was no mention of Blu Ray players as a whole not dropping below $1,000 until next year - simply that Sony themselves aren't planning on dropping prices on their own models until then.
Yes, a hypothetical glut of HD-DVD players at $200, if WalMart aren't trying to use the low cost to generate large per-unit profits, could have an interesting effect. Still, we're talking 2 million players total... The XBox360 already has a $199 player and a greater than 5m units capable of adding it - yet the format war's hardly been won or even taken a lead.
That we're looking at a Christmas with next generation DVD players hitting the $200-300 mark is interesting if nothing much more than people were expecting. Overhyping it by misreading, misinterpreting and misstating everything around it, to try to elevate the drama of it however is kind of a shame.
You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and your hysterical xenophobia
Actually, Fuh Yu will be making the players for Wal-Mart.