Walmart orders 2 million $299 HD DVD players, in stores soon! (1 Viewer)

[Rich Allen]

Very wishfull thinking. You can easily tell who the Blu-Ray fanboys are.

 

[Cees Alons]

Just suppose ... suppose, that indeed next week it appears that the article was wrong and Walmart was going to buy 2 million < $299 Blu-Ray players.

Then of course, it's still probably not true, and highly, highly, highly inconsequential, but it's a nail in BD's coffin and the Japanese manufacturers will have stop producing BD players. Not to mention the disgusting cheapening of the BD product. As if BD needs an inexpensive cheap player or the help of Walmart to survive!
Etc.

Or perhaps no longer about all that?


Cees

 

[Rob_Walton]

you don't get somethin for nothin, as my mumma always said. cheap chinese players in bulk now will not be wooing the japanese heavyweights into the hd dvd camp, which means enthusiasts on that side of the format bridge will have to make do with toshiba players for the forseeable future, or maybe the lg or samsung combos (yummy!). from the perspective of the format battle as a whole it's a possitive for hd dvd, no doubt, but from the selfish perspective of individual av enthusiasts (who may be willing to fork out a little more green for a more competently designed device) it's a slight retrograde step.

 

[Vincent_P]

Did cheap Chinese DVD players stop high-end manufacturers from making high-end DVD players?

Vincent

 

[Rob_Walton]

dvd players were made by the main japanese companies before they were licensed to chinese companies. a small detail perhaps to us, but a huge one when your company wants to see a return on investment.

 

[Vincent_P]

That makes some sense, but if that was/is the case, then why are Japanese companies supporting BD when Sony basically pulled the rug out from under them by releasing a cheap BD player in the PS3?

Vincent

 

[Austan]

The PS3 helped the members of the BDA. Since its release, BD titles have been outselling HD DVD. Now that the tides have turned and the constant media blitz (propaganda), it makes more sense for CE companies to produce BD players.

PS3 will continue to eat up Blu Ray discs (25gb variaty) thus lowering cost of production. In the end, more people would rather have dedicated stand alone BD players.

 

[Jerome Grate]

I have to admit, Wal-Mart has changed the game in regards to electronics in general. The biggest thing I believe are it's t.v.s, heck I just bought a 37 inch LCD Magnavox HDTV w/HDMI on Sunday because my 27 inch t.v. in the bedroom died. The point here is that Walmart will be very instrumental in opening this field to the masses. I agree a large factor will be software based cheaper HD-DVDs but the push is on for everyone to jump into HD and with these Chinese Manufactured players will be quite instrumental.

 

[Shane Martin]

This sounds like a BR fan. Both formats could fail. Walmart is taking sides with one they think will win. Whether that's right or wrong is not my risk. I'm actually going dual format next week

 

[ChristopherG]

Read it again slowly, you couldn't have misinterpreted this more if you tried.

 

[Mathew_M]

Sony tends to screw up their proprietary formats. In the case of Blu-ray they chose chose to saddle the PS3 with it which in turn made it too expensive for the average video game buyer. Blu-ray also as a descriptive title doesn't exactly say what the product is or does. From a business stand point niether format makes much sense as consumers want cheaper media that can be ripped easily to their computer or iPod.

I think HD-DVD would be the preferred format for most enthusiasts based on it's more open source and that it's less expensive. Also enthusiasts are more likely to be anti-Sony.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

If it really turns out, that this soon in the product life cycle, Walmart is going to be selling a cheapo Chinese Blu-Ray player, I think it would be as negative for 'HD' as it would be if Walmart was selling cheapo Chinese HD-DVD players. Also, I think the Japanese Blu-Ray manufacturers are not going to be really thrilled with such a development. With the profibality of DVD hardware having become very little, they were really looking forward to making a decent profit for atleast a few yrs before the Chinese got into the act.

PS: I wonder if this is what this thread is alluding to. I sincerely hope not.

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Click on Image to see a larger size Image.

 

[Tim Glover]

Might be the best barometer of all...Great post Cees.

 

[Cees Alons]

First result in, already, Tim!


Cees

 

[Rob_Walton]

a man called keith jack, who is marketing director of sigma solutions, who provide single solution decoding chips to both formats has just made an interesting note on avs. he acted dissapointed that nobody had speculated these might be dual blu-ray/hd dvd players, or that walmart might not want to have disapointed customers who bought a one format device and then complained that they couldn't play certain discs. given the tone of the man's posts, his inside knowledge, and the likely constraints on him saying anything directly, this is quite an interesting post. would certainly be an unusual development if true.

 

[Cees Alons]

Apparently that man doesn't read other forums.
See post #3 of this thread.


Cees

 

[Jerome Grate]

I'd be honest with you all, if this scenario about the possibility of this new cheap player would be a dual format player for 300 was true, I would be all over it. Discounting the built quality of the player, and discounting possible small ( I mean small) video issues like the ability to play all features of the disc. It's not impossible obviously, look at LG's version of the dual format player. It will be very interesting to see what they are actually talking about based on the so-called expert post at AVS. Any way I don't think it will be a dual format player but if it is, I'll let you guys know what it's like.

 

[Tim Glover]

Of course lets remember how much some of spent early on our dvd players then to only realize a few short years later one could achieve the same quality playback with a player costing $75. Granted, this wasn't in the first year or 2 of dvd though.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Good point, I spent 300 for my 2nd generation Pioneer 414. This new player may very well rival the current models for less. I get a great picture for a cheaper price is a strong factor to take in when I consider these players when the come out, and I will be strongly considering it.

 

[Todd H]

This story gets more and more confusing...

http://www.fuhyuan.com/ev/action/mai...23&Action=Show