Walmart will kill HD-DVD? (1 Viewer)

[Adam_R]

Anyone who thinks a WalMart employee/manager has a clue needs a clue.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

The same could be said of Best Buy or nearly any other B & M.

 

[Dave Moritz]

My roommate is the manager of electronics here in Phoenix and I was informed that his WM store offers both HD formats. So I do not think that the offering of HD media is very uniform at WM! Some stores have alot of Blu-ray and some HD-DVD's placed in a bad location and some like the N Phoenix WM have both formats side by side on a end cap towards the front part of electronics.

 

[Ric Easton]

Well, I went to another Walmart in my area and they had an end cap with both formats displayed. Not only that, but the Harry Potter movies are going for less than 20 apiece!

 

[David Wilkins]

Wal-Mart is the place for the best price when buying toothpaste, motor oil and baby-wipes. Leave it at that.

 

[Averry]

Hey man, my family owns an autoparts store (ok, my dad).


We're competitive alright .

 

[Brian W. Ralston]

The Wal-Mart 10 minutes from me in the L.A. area does not sell ANY HD-DVD or Blue-Ray discs. Their manager told me (when I asked) that they simply did not have the room right now and decided not to carry any of those "things." He seemed annoyed like he had been asked that question many times and regretted the decision to not stock them. It made me chuckle at first...then I was annoyed.

Although...the same store seems to have no problem selling the Toshiba HD-DVD A2 & A3 player over on one of their electronic aisles.

Another Wal-mart 25 minutes from me has a small "end" section with HD/BD. But, it was so disorganized. A lot of cases had fallen behind the wireframe rack where you can't get to them unless the entire end rack is taken off and dismantled. It seems the HD cases are just small enough to fall through the cracks of their shelving that was designed to carry regular DVD cases instead.

Needless to say, I have been very disappointed in looking for any HD-DVD/Blue-Ray discs at Los Angeles area Wal-Marts recently.

 

[Dave Moritz]

When my roommate got the job as manager of electronics he did not know anything about HDTV's and did not know much about HT gear. As we all know Wal-Mart does not train employees to know much about electronics. Before my roommate took over the department all the HD discs where blended in with the SD-DVD's. After giving my roommate a crash course about HDTV's and covering some of the merchandise that was in his department. I also recomended that he seperate the HD discs from the DVD isle. So at least my roommate is not totally ignorant of what HD is and how to sell it like most of the Wal-Mart associates.

I do not believe that Wal-Mart will kill HD-DVD, I think Toshiba is doing a good job of that all by themselves. If you look at the titles for next year and the fact that Toshiba is the only hardware manufacturer making HD-DVD players. I love my HD-DVD player but it does not look good from where I stand, just my personal opinion.

 

[bigluigi]

On the contrary...I think Walmart will be one of the major reasons for the eventual successful domination of the HD-DVD format.
Low cost HD-DVD players and Walmart are a "natural" together....remember that $99 HD-A2 Black Friday sale!!! Momma Mia.

 

[Dave Moritz]

There is to much inconsistency where Wal-Mart is concerned with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Some Wal-Marts seem to push HD-DVD while others seem to be pushing Blu-ray. While some others do not push ether one. I was informed by my roommate that its basically up to the sales manager what one gets pushed or not. While I am not saying Wal-Mart will not have an impact on the format war. I honestly do not feel Wal-Mart by themselves will kill HD-DVD or make HD-DVD the winner.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Unless one or both HD formats become real mass-market items (don't hold your breath), they won't be important enough for Walmart to really care one way or the other.

 

[TonyD]

is this conversation based on ONE Walmart?

isnt this a ridiculous over reaction.

when sd dvd first started moving from just CC and BB to walmart and Kmart and even sears, there were discussions exactly like this one.

"my walmart/kmart doesnt carry any dvds, or they are all locked up on their side so i cant even see them."
or they are all locked up in the display case with the cameras.

 

[Ric Easton]

Yes it is. I really didn't think that it would go on this long and I should have picked another thread title. I just wanted to share my experience at one Walmart and how it seemed they were doing everything possible to hide the fact that they sold HD-DVDs. I guess my point was... why bother, if you're going to hide them. I mean most of the employees in the electronics dept. didn't know where they were.

Anyway, feel free to go back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

[TonyD]

oh.

 

[Dave Moritz]

The sad truth is Ric that Wal-Mart does not seem to have a serious attitude about selling HDM. It seems to be up to the local sales manager how strongly they seem to push any particualar HD platform. My local Walmart has both HD-DVD and Blu-ray but might actually start dumping HD-DVD all together. The department manager want to just stock Blu-ray, so we shall see what happens at my Wal-Mart. So do not count on anything being properly supported equally at every Wal-Mart until one of the HD formats becomes more than a nitch market product. Then that HD format will not only get Wal-Mart attention but Wal-Mart will make it a point to properly market and sell the HDM.

 

[temproh]

Same here.

 

[1inxs]

My first thought when I shopped for HD DVDs at Walmart, was why is the HD section so small and hard to find with few HD DVDs to purchase. I agree Walmart isn't currently doing an adequate job at providing HD DVD selection. When I further searched the HD DVD rack I noticed the UPC tags, but the DVDs were sold out. My second thought is this could be a good thing. Walmart started with a conservative order and the DVDs are all selling out. I think it only a matter of aa short time before Walmart realizes this and increases their HD DVD orders. I also notice that there were more Blu-ray titles available then the HD titles, but it seems as if they are selling more HD from what I could see from the bar codes. Now this isn't a scientific study, I'm just trying to see a positive side to Blu ray and HD DVD supply.

 

[Bryan^H]

I'm pretty sure Walmart will stop selling them at some point. At my Walmart anyway the endcap does not change. There are the same titles week after week at the same high prices($29.77). How can you carry a product that doesn't sell. Let me rephrase that, the casual Walmart shopper doesn't seem to be interested in purchasing Hd titles. I know I don't buy my discs from there!

 

[Mike Frezon]

Just an update:

As I reported early-on in this thread...my Wal-Marts had adopted high-profile endcaps at their entrance to theie media-areas split evenly between both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.

FWIW, I saw, today, that the endcap at my closest W-M is now gone. All HD media is back to being locked behind glass in an end-cap buried in the media department. AND......all HD-DVD discs were gone! BD only.

I sure would be interested to hear if this is an isolated incident. Unfortunately, I did not have time to scope out their hardware situation.

Ric: This was in E.G.

 

[Shane Martin]

Mike,
Here in little Tulsa. We have endcaps which are more dominated by BR mainly because of the deluge of new titles that came out. I'd say WM here is 65/35 in terms of shelf space. Target is 80/20.