Is Wal-Mart Pushing HD DVD?

[admin]

Amidst a flurry of conflictive reports in A/V sites and blogs across the net, Fuh Yuan the Chinese manufacturer that reported the initial news that Wal-Mart had placed an order for 2 million low priced HD DVD players, quickly responded to the rumors by posting a disclaimer on their site stating the deal wasn't written in stone... just yet.


Discuss "Is Wal-Mart Pushing HD DVD?" here. Read the article.

[westcott]

Although no one likes the uncertainties that come with a format war, including me, the competition has probably made HD player prices drop faster than they would have otherwise.

I am not a big fan of Walmart but if it speeds up the format war and\or lowers prices, we all win.

[The Dukester]

Although no one likes the uncertainties that come with a format war, including me, the competition has probably made HD player prices drop faster than they would have otherwise.

I am not a big fan of Walmart but if it speeds up the format war and\or lowers prices, we all win.

I couldn't agree more. A lot of folks talked about which format porn adopted to be the deciding factor, but I believe that Waly World has more influence than porn on the issue. HD DVD still needs more titles and studios backing it to win, though, IMO.

[tomahawktim]

For the sake of the HD DVD format's future, I hope their manufacturing is better than their English.

A flood of crappy players could kill the format.

[BMXTRIX]

A company like Wal-Mart isn't dumb. While it is possible that they have decided to team up with HD DVD, they also likely have a fair bit of interest in Blu-ray as well. If I were with Wal-Mart and wanted to persue HD disc formats, I would be looking carefully into both formats equally and approaching both HD DVD and the BDA to find out what low-cost options were available.

HD DVD has been putting out great quality, but it has almost all been under very tight control from Toshiba and Microsoft. Going to a 100% Chinese solution with the cheapest players possible is not necessarily going to kill the quality, but it sure doesn't bode well for solid quality controls.

Yet, anyone who thinks these rumors, is anything but good news for HD DVD is crazy. Even the possibility that Wal-Mart MAY be looking into something like this is a very good showing for how the HD DVD format has been able to sustain itself against the BDA monolith.

If Wal-Mart does go this route, it would be very significant I believe... Especially if players come in under $200 while Blu-ray is still sitting around $500 for their cheapest models.

[GlocksRock]

Lets hope their players also include built in Dolby True HD and DTS-Master Audio decoders, and 8 ch. analog outputs... but I won't hold my breath.