SlashGear Japan
In fact they are going to be selling them for about $198 each. That would make them the cheapest standalone HD format player available.
They aren’t some cheap knockoff’s either, they are the real deal Toshiba A2 HD-DVD players. So if you have an HDTV and don’t have an Xbox 360 that you could just buy and HD-DVD drive for, I’d highly recommend getting one of these.
Each Wal-Mart will only get 18 units a piece, and they are supposed to drop on November 3rd, so be ready. Sure, Blu-Ray could beat out HD-DVD, but honestly, with all the multi-HD format players that are being released, I don’t think either format is going to “win” but the studios that have already chosen one format or the other are going to stick with it, and then you’ll just have to get a PS3 or a Blu-Ray player for that standard.
HD DVD on the cheap [via CrunchGear]
12 Responses to “Wal-Mart to sell Toshiba HD-DVD players cheap”
Uiergrew October 25, 2007
18 in each shop? If this is just in Discount stores then if they sell out that’s a whole 18,000. WOW!!!!!! lol
I think the fact they are only going to have 18 in each store pretty much tells you how poor demand is for it.
BTW BluRay IS going to win. In The UK 1 in 20 homes already has a PS3 which means they have a BluRay player and by the end of next year around 1 in 5 homes in Japan and the EU and 1 in 10 in the US will have a PS3 and therefore a BluRay player. Those households are not going to choose HD-DVD if they already have BluRay and there friends and family will also be less likely to go with HD-DVD.
People might not be buying a PS3 to watch films on but that doesn’t change the fact that they own a BluRay player and they aren’t going to then go out and buy a rival format to something they already own if they do decide to make the move to HD.
-8Ed October 25, 2007
Blu-ray is a joke. Universal, Dreamworks, Paramount (and soon Warner) are were the smart moneys at. Sony can invent all the proprietary bull shit they want, unless you interested in kids movies HD DVD is the future.
+1SunKillMoon October 25, 2007
[quote comment="30279"]by the end of next year around 1 in 5 homes in Japan and the EU and 1 in 10 in the US will have a PS3 and therefore a BluRay player.[/quote]
You say that 1 in 10 homes in the US will have a PS3 next year.
Gimmie a friggin’ break. Seriously. You don’t honestly believe that do you!?
Put down the crack pipe.
HD DVD is here to stay and having a sub $200 HD DVD player in Walmarts across America will surely go a long way to help HD DVD win this latest war of “Sony vs. The World”.
+2John Smith October 25, 2007
“Sony can invent all the proprietary bull shit they want, unless you interested in kids movies HD DVD is the future.”
Most of the blockbusters the last 3 years are either Bluray exclusive or on both formats. So your trumpeting is baseless.
-2Uiergrew October 25, 2007
[quote comment="30283"][quote comment="30279"]
You say that 1 in 10 homes in the US will have a PS3 next year.
Gimmie a friggin’ break. Seriously. You don’t honestly believe that do you!?
Put down the crack pipe.
[/quote]
Sorry that was supposed to say 20 not 10.
There are apparently 110m households in the US and currently around 1.8m PS3s which means 1 in 61 households in the US already has a PS3 and a BluRay player. That figure will be more than 1 in 50 by the end of this year. On the other hand only about 1 in 314 homes has a HD-DVD player.
By the end of next year there will be well over 5m PS3s in the US which will make the ratio of BluRay owning homes more than 1 in 20.
There are 50m homes in Japan and 1.2m PS3s which means currently around 1 in 40 homes in Japan has a BluRay player. Once again its expected that the PS3 will have sold over 5m there by the end of 2008 which will make BluRay ownership there at more than 1 in 10 homes. No one has HD-DVD players.
There are 20m households in the UK. Less than 10,000 HD-DVD players have been sold in there compared to over 1m PS3s which puts UK BluRay household ownership at over 1 in 20 but HD-DVD less than 1 in 2000.
Remember this is only the PS3 we are talking about. There are stand alone players on sale that are getting cheaper and cheaper. While they aren’t as cheap as HD-DVD players the PR that the PS3 is giving BluRay will sell them in increasing numbers.
HD-DVD hasnt got a chance. Paramount have only joined HD-DVD until the end of next year because they were given incentives which meant they would make more money than they would from HD sales but they will be back with BluRay from then on.
There is also the little matter of recordable drives for the PC. There are loads of Bluray recorders on sale with prices dropping all the time and they are selling very well because it is obviously very useful for backing up. On the other hand try and buy a HD-DVD recorder drive for your PC.
-4Jason October 25, 2007
Anyone declaring victory, or even predicting it at this early stage should be ridiculed.
Both formats are still selling tiny numbers of software titles and the balance could quickly be tilted either way by lower priced hardware and just a FEW blockbusters available on either format.
Transformers sold 190K copies on HD DVD in North America in just the first week and is likely going to smash ‘300′ sales numbers by year’s end (’300′ has sold 400K copies on both formats to date).
That’s pretty good considering there are only around 600K HD DVD players in the US, so basically 1 out of 3 HD DVD owners bought Transformers in just the first week it was out or about a 33% attachment rate.
Compare that to ‘300′ selling 150K copies on Blu-ray the first week it was out. At that time there were an estimated 2 MILLION PS3s and BD standalones out and about, so BD only managed a pathetic 7.5% attachment rate.
Guess what? Studios are looking at these numbers closely. If you think studios want to sell dribbling little amounts of product to the PS3 crowd, vs. selling large quantities of blockbusters to owners of cheap HD DVD players, you are delusional. Don’t even get me started on the fact that the $500 and $900 Sony branded BD players released for November won’t even be compliant with the 1.1 BD profile spec. Current standalone BD players are a joke. No ethernet, no secondary video decoder, no easily programmed in movie experience capabilities. Nada, zilch, nothing that shouts “next generation”.
BD fans are really more ticked off than anything that the repeated shouts of “HD DVD is DEAD” were falling on deaf ears.
+6MikeHD October 25, 2007
The picture looks like it’s been edited. You can see an edge around the numbers where it looks like its been pasted on. I guess we will see next week……
-1Uiergrew October 25, 2007
@ Jason
It doesn’t matter what the sales of disks are doing or the attach rate of a player. It wouldn’t matter if no BluRay disks were even being sold. Disk sales and attach rates are something the HD-DVD group keep trying to make a big deal out of but they are completely irrelevant. What matters is getting players in peoples homes. HD-DVD are not doing that but BluRay are in massive numbers.
To try and explain it to you simply think of this hypothetical question. If every household in the US owned a PS3 do you think anyone would buy a HD-DVD player? Not many would because they already have a BluRay one and the studios would abandon HD-DVD. Of course we are never going to see that situation but you can surely understand why getting so many players into peoples homes is so important. You should also remember that a lot of households aren’t going to be upgrading to HD at any point so if you have a PS3 in 1 in 10 households by the end of next year that might represent 25% of the potential HD marketplace. Most people cant see a reason to switch to HD but Sony are making them choose a format before they have even thought of doing it.
More than 1 in 20 homes in the UK has a BluRay player already because of the PS3 but less than 1 in 2000 has a HD-DVD player.
I notice for some reason you completely ignored my point about PC HD recordable drives. BluRay recorder drives are selling very well and have been for over 6 months but HD-DVD cant be seen anywhere. Obviously once again the purchase of a BluRay drive for your PC will also make the household far less likely to buy a HD-DVD player. Conveniently for them the HD-DVD group not only try and divert attention from the PS3 swamping their marketplace with free BluRay players but the also ignore the PC BluRay drives from their statistics. If it were my job to do PR for HD-DVD I would be trying to ignore both of them as well.
If you think you really need to do some research and think about this a bit more because it seems you have been listening to too much anti Sony propaganda and not enough facts.
-2James Allan Brady October 25, 2007
well here’s something you didn’t research, a study not to long ago showed that less than a third of the people with HD capable game systems knew they had the capability
So attachment rates and actual disk sales do matter
+2Maylon October 26, 2007
@James Allan Brady
Your logic is on deaf ears, sir, because you are unwittingly trying to reason with sony trolls and fanboys in disguise as Blu Ray supporters.
+1Maylon October 26, 2007
@Uiergrew
Shame on you for saying the Ps3 is a free Blu Ray player, honestly. Do you really believe that?
Neutraleugene October 26, 2007
There are 30 million UMD players out there, so I guess roughly 200 million households, right? Is the UMD format a success for movies????
Neutral