Buying at Wal Mart (1 Viewer)

[Sam H]

I've got two large Supercenters close to me within 5 miles and it's really tough to find the titles at both places. At one location, there's a small random stack of HD DVDs and Blu Ray titles on a discounted DVD shelf near the Musica Latina cd section; they're in a vertical pile on the lowest shelf about 6 inches from the floor. I had to REALLY look hard through the electronics section to find these. The Other Wal Mart only had a few older titles like Apollo 13 and Serenity and were simiarly hard to find. Saw 1 RCA HD-DVD player for $448 at both locations on the bottom shelf of the dvd players aisle of electronics (no Blu Ray at either). Again, nearly impossible to notice unless you're really looking for it like I was. Are the titles and players this obscured at your local Wal Mart(s)? They're going to have to do a lot better than this to launch a format as BestBuy and Circuit City are not where most people here and Middle America go to buy movies.

 

[Tim Glover]

My Wal-Marts have nada so far. I hope they will soon....

 

[Gregory Suarez]

No HD-DVD players or discs at all three of my local Wal-Marts. Two of the stores had no idea what I was talking about and the third claimed that Wal-Mart is "on the fence" about HD-DVD and Blu-ray and are waiting to see which one comes out the winner. I was told by a bloke I talked with at Best Buy that one of these Wal-Marts had HD-DVDs and much cheaper than Best Buy, but I must have missed them (and the clerk did not know what they were). Now, my local Target has both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, their HD-DVDs are priced much more reasonably than Best Buy, but their Blu-ray titles are about as high as Best Buy. This Target store, however, has a very small selection.

 

[Kyle McKnight]

My WalMart & Sams stores have them in the middle of the DVD sections.

 

[John Sparks]

Neither of my WalMarts carry them.

 

[Clinton McClure]

So far I have checked 6 Wal-Mart stores within a 50-mile radius and only 2 of them carry HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs (just 3 or 4 titles of each) and no players. The clerks are pretty clueless as to what the formats are and if they even have them. I asked one clerk if they carried HD-DVDs and he showed me a sanyo upconverting player, pointed to the shelf tag and said "It says hi-def". When I pointed out that the tag read it upconverts to near-hi-def, he rebutted, "Same thing. The hi-def format is a little prettier than normal DVDs but there's really nothing special about it. Besides, all hi-def is done in widescreen which doesn't fill up your tv and has those black bars on top and bottom covering up part of the picture. Most of our regular DVDs will fill up your screen without having black bars so you don't miss anything."

He never did show me any HD-DVDs.

 

[Tim Glover]

Funny quote there. Wal Mart DOES appear to by trying but good gosh they do have some rather uninformed staff.