Kmart Drops Blu-Ray Players

Lord Byron II writes "K-mart has decided to stop selling Blu-Ray players in their stores, primarily because of the high cost of Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD (now under $200). They will continue to sell the PS3 for the time being. Will lower prices speed the adoption of HD-DVD in the upcoming holiday shopping season?"

Comments

Re:No.

[Valafar]

WTF are you talking about? There's plenty of "content"; Just go to your local super electronics store and see for yourself. Every major studio release in the last 5 or 6 months is coming out on HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or both. What's more, there's a world of difference in quality if you actually own an HD TV. An up converting standard DVD player does a good job, but the difference with HD-DVD / Blu-Ray is definitely noticeable.

The backers of HD-DVD are being far more intelligent from a marketing stand point than Sony+Blue-Ray. Cheaper players, Combo discs (Standard DVD + HD-DVD in the same package) and they have better penetration into the markets that actually matter (Wal-Mart, for example).

WalMart has Toshiba HD A2 for $98.87 Nov 2nd

[jbridges]

WalMart has the Toshiba HD A2 for $98.87 as of 8am on November 2nd 2007.

http://holiday.ri-walmart.com/?u1=433093-2-0-ARTICLE-0&section=secret&utm_source=Walmartcom

I believe they may include the free 5 HD DVDs deal, which alone is worth $100.

I'd say that is breaking the price barrier holding back acceptance!!

(I know I'm buying two, one for us, and one for my inlaws for Christmas)

Actually...

[shirai]

Though they're specials, both Wal Mart and Best Buy are offering HD DVD players for $100.

Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player: $100, this Friday, Wal-Mart

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/toshiba-hd-a2-hd-dvd-player-100-this-friday-wal-mart/

Best Buy offers Toshiba HD-A2 for $100

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/best-buy-offers-the-toshiba-hd-a2-for-100-too-and-other-hd-dv/

Re: No Blue Light special on Blue Ray

[pyite]

This is a 1080i player, not 1080p.

I'm really getting tired of people who don't know what they're talking about making a big issue of 1080i vs. 1080p when it comes to a source device. Obviously, 1080i and 1080p are very different when it comes to a display. However, Any 1080p display worth its purchase price is going to be able to convert from 1080i to 1080p effectively losslessly. From Wikipedia: "Due to interlacing, 1080i has twice the frame-rate but half the resolution of a 1080p signal using the same bandwidth." In short, a 1080i signal and a 1080p signal contain the same data, just formatted differently. To go from 1080i to 1080p (this is simplified and doesn't account for various framerate differences), you take every two 1080i frames (540 lines each), weave them, and you have a 1080p frame.