Wal-mart to Phase Out HD DVD
Posted by Dave Cowl
closeAuthor: Dave Cowl
Name: Dave Cowl
Email: dave@formatwarcentral.com
Site: http://www.blu-raystats.com
About: Originally from New Zealand, Dave now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Dave's day job
involves developing high resolution LCoS projectors.
Dave also has a strong interest in cinema and film making, and has
always been an early adopter - he still uses his Sony DVP-S7000 DVD
Player and also owns first generation Blu-ray, HD DVD and DTheater
D-VHS equipment.
Dave has been following the HD Disc format war since the beginning,
which resulted in the Blu-ray Statistics and HD DVD Statistics
websites, designed to track the studio progress with features as they
have released HD media product.See Authors Posts (314) on February 15, 2008
Filed Under: Blu-ray, Format War, HD DVD, Retailers
We read over at Check Out Blog today that Wal-mart is moving to phase out HD DVD and to carry Blu-ray Discs and DVDs only.
The move will be reportedly in place by June 2008.
According to the recent NPD report, Wal-mart is the third largest seller of HD Media in the USA.
Check Out Blog claims to be "Dedicated to bringing you the latest in gadgets, green, gaming, and more, Check Out is written by a group of expert Wal-Mart Associates." – so while informal, this would seem to be a fairly official word from Wal-mart.
Related posts:
- Wal-Mart Replacing Music with Blu-ray?
- Sears Expands Blu-ray Movie Section
- Wal-Mart Missing The Boat With Batman Begins Blu-ray?
- Hey Wal Mart, Your Blu-ray Prices Suck!
- Vudu Initiates Community Push, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter Included
How much longer will Toshiba, Universal and Paramount pretend that the world is not blue?
@ Dave Cowl: the move starting now, we’ll see some shift in 30 days, and it ends by June.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/15/technology/wal-mart_blu-ray/index.htm?postversion=2008021511
Wal-Mart said it would continue selling HD-DVD products, but over the next 30 days, customers will see a significant shift in emphasis to Blu-ray in both brick-and-mortar stores and online.
I guess it must be with their sheer volume of stores. Has anyone seen their high-def sections? Pretty pathetic at best. I just find it funny that they are considered the 3rd largest seller when they have maybe 50 titles between both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray at their “Supercenters”
Perhaps that is the aspect that is going to change…
Perhaps this is also why Best Buy is the number one seller of HD Media even with their higher prices.
Screw Wal-mart and thier over priced HD media! Tell the owner if he thinks carrying less product will help the struggling chain then let him hold his breath…until he’s blu in the face.
Looking forward to see a statement from Uni/Para/Toshiba soon
Wouldn’t be surprised if it comes from Toshiba first since they are the ones that suffer first hand from the losse incured to them by selling hardware at a loss.
All those, well I will not say it out load, people that really thought that Toshibas was able to produce HD-DVD players sooooo much cheaper than Blu, well think again !!!
Jonsson, their has been no offical report stating Toshiba is losing hundreds in its sales of HD DVD players. Infact im guess Sony lost the most money in the ps3 blu ray player, they were losing over $400 on every unit up until a month or 2 ago.
The idea of loss leading only works if you get an install base that buys into your product moving forward.
Unfortunately it looks like Toshiba took losses and will not benefit from that, where Sony with the PS3 even beat out the XBox in January, so it seems that their investment (in PS3 discounting) might pay off in the end.
That was because of 360 shortages. I haven’t seen many in the stores for over a month now.
Well it has been proven that the PS3 only beat the 360 because of shipment issues. Toshiba is hoping that software sales will spike since people are buying more players at a lower price. But their is a problem, some old HD DVD owners are also taking advantage of this deal, for reassurance players, those people won’t add to the attach rate any.
Proven is a strong word – depends how much you believe Microsoft.
The XBox 360 is an amazing product in my book – it has one of the highest failure rates in recent history for a CE product and yet people keep buying them.
I wonder if the shortages are caused by them having to replace so many, or if they finally have a reliable version of the system coming and it has not arrived before the older, unreliable ones were mostly sold?
It seems like a strange time in the product cycle to be having shortages.
Actually no, when they are replaced they are usally never replaced with a brand new product. This explanation actually makes the most sense
http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/jake_valhalla_festivus_ms_l33t_chinese_new_year_and_xbox_360.php