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.

Comments

We have a winner!

[rednip]

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.

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 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.

Once more, with feeling.

[Murmer]

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!

Re:"Writes"?

[DrEldarion]

This is a horrible, horrible Slashdot post. Links to an extremely outdated article, says completely inaccurate information (There's already a $599 Blu-Ray player - the PS3), and on top of that the news about Walmart could have also been mistranslated. From Engadget:

Update: Pull back the reigns HD DVD fanboys, Akihabara now says that they've made a "huge mistake" with their translation: the original source called it "(chinese characters) HD DVD and (same chinese characters) means Blu-RAY." In other words, Blu-ray HD DVD. Huh? Word to the wise: since both formats use blue lasers, it's best to wait for an English press release before either camp celebrates. Way to go Slashdot!

Re:PS3, HDTV, and FCC's analog switchoff

[edwdig]

In February 2009, the FCC of the United States cuts off analog television broadcast, and Americans will make a run on the big box stores to buy spanking new televisions to watch the NCAA men's basketball tournament on. How many of those 3+ million PS3s will connected to HDTVs by the end of March 2009?

What do you think the odds are that the type of person who isn't willing to spend the money on cable or satellite TV is going to spend $500+ on an HDTV when they could instead spend $50 on a converter box? Don't forget the government subsidy on a converter box, making the cost as low as $10.

Also, how much of an intersection do you really see between the set of people with old TVs that don't spend any money on television service and the set of people who are early adopters for the PS3 ?

Re:"Writes"?

[Mr.Radar]

If you follow the link trail back to AVS Forum (and from there to the original press release in Chinese) it is clear that the press release, in fact, talks about HD DVD and not Blu-Ray. This has been confirmed by at least one person who knows Chinese who says the phrase translates to "blue laser HD DVD." An explanation for the awkward phrasing is offered in this post which says that there is an HD format in China that uses a red-diode laser, hence the specification of the laser being blue-diode.