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$50 Wal-Mart HD DVD Player: Fact or Fiction? (UPDATED)

Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 07:03 PM ET
Tags: Hardware, Wal-Mart, High-Def Retailing (all tags)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Scroll to the bottom of this article for updated information on this story.

News that Wal-Mart was planning to sell a high-def disc player at the discounted price of anywhere from $50-$299 spread across the web like wildfire Friday, but at the end of the day, the unconfirmed report raises more questions than it answers.

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The news first surfaced Thursday morning in a post on AVS Forum which cited a Chinese news agency as reporting that Wal-Mart has signed a deal to produce two million HD DVD players to be sold at a discounted price of $299 a pop.

But as other online news outlets began to pick up the story on Friday (including perhaps most notably, Engadget), questions began to arise over which high-def formats (if any) the original Chinese report was referring to, as translations of the article show that it uses the phrase "Blu-ray HD DVD" or "Blue Light HD DVD" to describe the supported format of the reported disc player.

While the general consensus still seems to be that the rumored Wal-Mart player would play HD DVD discs (and not Blu-ray), without any official word from the retail giant itself, the story remains unconfirmed.

So why all the fuss? If Wal-Mart did choose to support one of the next-gen formats with a low-priced player (and did plan to produce them at these numbers) it could have a profound effect on consumer adoption and on the format wars in general. Wal-Mart is currently responsible for 40% of standard-def DVD sales, and has enormous sway with the studios as a result, so if the company were to exclusively back one of the two next-gen disc formats, it's not out of the realm of possibility that some studios might reconsider their format allegiances.

As of today though, Wal-Mart stocks both formats in limited quantities. And while recent reports have suggested that the retailer has begun favoring Blu-ray with more shelf space than HD DVD, Wal-Mart has made no public statements to suggest that it plans to be anything other than format-agnostic.

UPDATE:(4/30/07) After over a week of lingering rumors, Wal-Mart issued a statement to PC Magazine last week, denying the veracity of the reports discussed in this article, and reiterated its support of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD components in its stores and online, at least until a definitive winner in the format war is declared

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Related links:
Fuh Yuan will make two million HD-DVD players for Walmart [AVS Forum]
Wal-Mart $299 HD DVD player on the way [Engadget]
$50 HD-DVD players, Walmart goes low [Gadgetell]
WalMart to sell $199 HD-DVD player in Q4 2007? [IGN]


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