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Wal-Mart Begins Massive Push For HD DVD
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 21, 2007 09:52 PM
from the 200-bucks-by-Christmas dept.
from the 200-bucks-by-Christmas dept.
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.
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Apple: Can Music Survive Inside the Big Box? 90 comments
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We have a winner! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We have a winner! (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw an ad in Entertainment Weekly pushing the idea of discs that had DVDs on one side and HD-DVDs on the other. Anyone want to bet that studios supporting HD-DVD will soon issue all their new (non-BluRay) films in this format? Those discs will play in ordinary DVD players, and they will be already adapted to one HD format if the customer decides to upgrade to HD. Backward compatibility and possible lock-in: what a beautiful combo for a marketing department!
Lot more than "just plastic" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:We have a winner! (Score:4, Insightful)
PS3, HDTV, and FCC's analog switchoff (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PS3, HDTV, and FCC's analog switchoff (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [com.com] 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:We have a winner! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're fooling yourself. Families often had multiple VHS players and now often have multiple DVD players. Even the hardcore AV folks are going to balk at spending $500+ per Blu-ray player after their first. Get a player under $200, though, and it looks far more attractive for the masses to replace a DVD player with an HD DVD player.
No, the price of the player is absolutely critical and if Wal-Mart is selling HD DVD players for half or less the cost of the cheapest Blu-ray player, Blu-ray will be looking at a disaster. Blu-ray has had a good few months thanks to [dumb] people buying PS3s but Sony has, in essence, raised the price of the PS3 by $50 (by killing the unit that was $100 cheaper) and still doesn't have great games to sell that system. Even if they can get a $400-500 Blu-ray player on the market, people aren't going to pay a premium for it over an HD DVD player with the same capabilities, and the [non-Sony] studios will follow the installed base.
Oh yeah, and if by "a lot more content industry support" you mean Sony and a couple other companies that haven't produced much, if any, Blu-ray content, then you're right. To me, it looks like the companies that have paid lip service to being on the Blu-ray bandwagon are still waiting to see how things shake out.
Re:We have a winner! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We have a winner! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:We have a winner! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
"Writes"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Writes"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Writes"? (Score:5, Funny)
sony [slashdot.org], haha [slashdot.org]
Re:"Writes"? (Score:5, Informative)
Why do OPs so sledom verify before posting? (Score:4, Interesting)
blacklisting (Score:5, Insightful)
Ii would suck to be working there on that day.
No, Sony will have a $600 player shortly (Score:5, Informative)
Here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinit
Its not that hard to believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
HD Radio (Score:5, Informative)
Once more, with feeling. (Score:5, Funny)
Preposterous!
Walmart killing the PS3 (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [ign.com]
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.
Pssst, wanna buy the Brooklyn Bridge? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Horrible Research Often Helps Dramatic Posts (Score:4, Informative)
Samsung BD-P1000 $664.99 in store at Best Buy [bestbuy.com].
The same player for $699.99 at CompUSA [compusa.com]
Sony 2x2x2 Blu-ray BD-RE, internal ATA drive $699.99 at CompUSA [compusa.com]
The Samsung again for $699 at Circuit City [circuitcity.com]
Or the newer Samsung BD-P1200 for $799.99 at Circuit City [circuitcity.com]
Then there's the Lite-On Blu Ray Burner for $399.99 at Fry's [outpost.com]
And the Philips BDP9000 player for $799.99 also at Fry's [outpost.com]
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.
Funny resolutions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Way to go- increase US dependence (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, Fuh Yu will be making the players for Wal-Mart.