Wal-Mart, Fuh Yuan Deny $299 HD DVD Player Deal

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070427-wal-mart-fuh-yuan-deny-299-hd-dvd-player-deal.html' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070427-wal-mart-fuh-yuan-deny-299-hd-dvd-player-deal.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"In the endless sniping between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps, one bit of news involving HD DVD and Wal-Mart looks to have been overstated. Upon hearing news that Wal-Mart was placing orders for $299 HD DVD players, a number of news outlets and blogs reported that Wal-Mart was officially backing HD DVD, and that the move would be a big boon for HD DVD in general... As it turns out, Wal-Mart made no such orders. Fuh Yuan issued a statement clarifying the situation: Wal-Mart is shopping around, looking at options. Fuh Yuan said that they have not received an order from Wal-Mart. The company wants to know if and when Fuh Yuan could deliver a mass of HD DVD players, and at what price, however. In short, there's no set deal, no set price, and no clear notion of when HD DVD players might storm the hallowed halls of Wal-Mart priced at the low, low $299 mark that had everyone flipping out earlier in the week."</i><br /><br />Well, for those of us (like me) that were hoping to maybe get their hands on that $299 HD-DVD player from Wal-Mart may end up waiting even longer. Apparently, the whole thing was totally blown out of proportion and never happened the way everyone was reporting it had. Oh well. Rest assured that $299 player will come eventually, just not quite as soon as everyone was hoping...

[Jeremy Charette]

Actually there's already one available for $180 (with a 10% Circuit City discount via. Xbox Live Diamond Rewards), the 360 HD DVD drive! :lol:

[Felix Torres]

Same story, different spin:
http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/is-wal-mart-pushing-hd-dvd.html

What nobody denies is Wal-Mart is pricing components and contracts for building cheap HD-DVD players. No deal has been finalized but why would Wal-Mart be pricing them if they weren't *considering* taking sides in the format war?
Given that Wal-Mart is the number one distributor of DVDs and that they have aspirations to sell a *lot* of HDTVs in coming years it makes sense that they would look into the possibility of using a house brand HD-DVD player as a draw to sell displays.
This *could* be a ploy to pressure the BD-camp into giving them preferential pricing on BD-players but given the high costs of the current BD hardware there isn't much room to play there.

I suspect the driver for Wal-Mart here is to find an HD content source that would be a good match for the $399 32" LCD displays we'll be seeing this XMAS. And a $600 BD player won't get them where they want to be...
I don't think we've heard the last of this.

[jeffd]

screw that. I wouldn't pay $299 for what is effectively the bottom of the barre l on hd dvd players. $299 should be high end. $100 is what should be entree level.

[Felix Torres]

screw that. I wouldn't pay $299 for what is effectively the bottom of the barre l on hd dvd players. $299 should be high end. $100 is what should be entree level.

Sounds about right...
...for 2010.

At current sales volumes (10000 or so a month) and component prices ($50 bare drives) it ain't happening this year.