Wal-Mart orders 2 million high def? players.

[WriteSimply]

the HD-DVD side of AVSF is buzzing with news that Walmart had commissioned HD-DVD players from a Chinese manufacturer. Have any of you guys heard that?


fuad

[HDTV1080P]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

the HD-DVD side of AVSF is buzzing with news that Walmart had commissioned HD-DVD players from a Chinese manufacturer. Have any of you guys heard that?


fuad

I have not heard of any rumors like that. We need to watch what Sanyo does. Walmart gets lots of exclusive HDTV CRT’s and flat panel HDTV displays from Sanyo that other retail stores do not carry. If this rumor was true then I can almost guarantee Sanyo would be supplying either BLU-RAY or HD-DVD players to Walmart sometime in the future. Hopefully Sanyo will make BLU-RAY players only. It would be very bad if Sanyo went with HD-DVD since Sanyo makes cheap products that are usually good quality also. Some of the Sanyo HDTV CRT’s and flat panels are a good bargain for 720P quality.
Hopefully Sanyo will go BLU-RAY since Walmart carries a lot of exclusive Sanyo products. 40% of all the DVD movies sold in the US are from Walmart. Walmart can be a key player in this format war.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Wal-Mart CAN be a major player, but as of now they are not. First they have to have HD movies available in all their stores. I have only heard of maybe 2 Wal-Marts in all of Atlanta and surrounding areas that carry HD titles.

In comparison, just about EVERY (if not every) Best Buy in Atlanta and the surrounding areas have HD titles.

Wal-Mart is not a major player in this format war so far.

[blublublu]

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

Wal-Mart CAN be a major player, but as of now they are not. First they have to have HD movies available in all their stores. I have only heard of maybe 2 Wal-Marts in all of Atlanta and surrounding areas that carry HD titles.

In comparison, just about EVERY (if not every) Best Buy in Atlanta and the surrounding areas have HD titles.

Wal-Mart is not a major player in this format war so far.

Perhaps Atlanta is an exception, but every Wal-Mart around here has Blu Ray and HD DVD discs, and outside of some online sources, they usually have the best prices.

Here is the "rumour" link:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2&page=4&pp=30

How would Blu Ray react if indeed this has some truth to it? They seem caught off guard even by Samsung going combo.

And we have yet to see any significant movement to even challenge Toshiba's pricing.

[Ascended_Saiyan]

Originally Posted by blublublu

Perhaps Atlanta is an exception, but every Wal-Mart around here has Blu Ray and HD DVD discs, and outside of some online sources, they usually have the best prices.

Here is the "rumour" link:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2&page=4&pp=30

How would Blu Ray react if indeed this has some truth to it? They seem caught off guard even by Samsung going combo.

And we have yet to see any significant movement to even challenge Toshiba's pricing.

You must be on the West Coast.

As far as the 2 million HD DVD player are concerned, they can't really sell the $309 units they have now. What's another 100 bucks off the top?

[joeorc]

someone at the AVS is trying to pass off THAT the CHEAP HD-DVD PLAYERS ARE COMEING THROUGH WALL MART....

Fuh Yuan will make two million HD-DVD players for Walmart
The following site is in Chinese. It basically says that Fuh Yuan electronic corporation from Taiwan just built a new factory to manufacture blue laser HD-DVD cores. This core is independently developed by Fuh Yuan, and is a joint project with TDK. The production will be handled by Great Wall corporation in China. An interesting thing is that it mentioned that Fuh Yuan got a two million units order from Wal-Mart, worth USD$100 million. Since Wal-Mart does not sell blue laser core, I assume it would be players. Fuh Yuan's stock will be released by July 12th, and will be publicly traded next March. It is a press release.

Fuh Yuan has a similar news on its Chinese website, but not on its English version.

Link: http://www.ettoday.com/2007/04/16/320-2082635.htm

Fuh Yuan website: http://www.fuhyuan.com/

Edit: Possible price: $299, see link here (again, Chinese): http://www.udn.com/2007/4/16/NEWS/S...5/3804769.shtml
Edit: The price link edited. It works now

NOW NOTICE THIS

Tide Fuyuan Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd
Tide Fuyuan was founded in 1993 as one of the largest floppy disc manufacturers in mainland China. As an appointed manufacturer of Sony Discs, we share 70% of the floppy disk sales amount in Chinese market now. We also develop and manufacture other data storage products such as CD-R, DVDR discs and USB flash drives, etc.

http://cndatace.manufacturer.globals...2/Homepage.htm

Q: does TDK make HD-DVD disc's
Q: does TDK make Blu-ray discs



ps:

http://www.made-in-china.com/trade-o...al-Burner.html

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by MatrixS2000

We already know that BR accounts for 70% of the market (thanks to WB for telling us this), if this market share keeps growing, it will not make sense for Disney to release on 2 formats at additional cost to them.

Disney has historically sustained releases on only two main formats at a time:

Beta II and VHS SP
VHS and LD
VHS and DVD (the moment DVD arrived they dropped LD like flies)
DVD and BD

Don't see space for DVD, BD, and HD DVD there.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Chris Gerhard

Inception to date, the numbers are 58% - 42%, the 70% - 30% number isn't real and the most recent week I have seen was 61% - 39%.

What do you mean it isn't real? then the other two numbers you quote aren't real neither


If you mean the 70/30 aren't real because they are only this year, then the 61/39 isn't real because it's only last week. I don't see your point. You mean because HD DVD sold greatly last year when Blu-ray was introduced 2 months later and people only started to buy Blu-ray in great numbers after the PS3 was introduced 7 months later and before that they were led to believe the Blu-ray PQ "sucked", those numbers have greater bearing than the 70/30 ratio sold this year? That makes no sense. So explain me how they are not real.


btw nobody said there was a "3 format rule". I myself said that historically Disney doesn't do more than two main formats. When you say they released in 3 or 4 formats 20-27 years ago, that was the beginning of the home video era and was tabula rasa and the VHS/BETA "war" hadn't taught a lesson yet. Another point of this is that Beta/VHS are both 1/2 inch NTSC tape formats with almost the same quality (so one disappeared) while after the smoke cleared from all the 5 formats (there were 3 video discs, 2 tapes if not more) for pre-recorded movies there remained one tape format (VHS), and one disc format (Laserdisc) that was much superior to the tape one. That remained roughly for about a decade. Then another disc format superior to the LD appeared (DVD) and LD was phased out and for the next decade it was VHS and DVD. Now it's the same situation again, a Standard Def disc format and a superior quality High Def disc format. Adding yet a third format (another High Def format that, while not as big in capacity or bandwidth, compared to SD DVD has much more in common with the High Def disc format they're already releasing in, instead) would be going back to the Beta/VHS + Laserdisc years: in this case would be HD DVD/Blu-ray + DVD. In the end there was only room for one tape format. Now there'll be only room for one High Def disc format. If Disney starts releasing HD DVDs they'll only be competing with themselves and go backwards in time to the 10 year consumer uncertainty of the Beta/VHS years which I'm sure after Beta pre-recorded movies died off, the Hollywood studios of the day were happy to abandon. Why would they go back to that on purpose? Well today we know why. It's called Mucho $. Someone with much $ apparently wants to profit from the Beta/VHS stalemate dark ages... I would think a corporation like Disney with smarter heads would dance to their own beat.

But hey, If you're right and I'm wrong, well who here will be better off?

'll mean less movies for me. Or us.

[Chris Gerhard]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

What do you mean it isn't real? then the other two numbers you quote aren't real neither.

The 70 - 30 compares very few HD DVD releases with many Blu-ray releases The inception to date number compares a comparable number of releases we can expect in the coming year, and the recent week could be very indicative of the upcoming weeks with similar numbers from each group. The 70-30 number isn't a number I would use to judge past or future sales and the actual number ITD and last week are meaningful to me. The 70-30 number is no more meaningful than the 100-0 number in favor of HD DVD was before Blu-ray launched. I don't know why HD DVD had a drought of releases, but that is apparently in the past based on the recent and announced releases. In my opinion, use ITD or recent periods for meaningful numbers.

Chris

[MatrixS2000]

Originally Posted by Chris Gerhard

I don't know why HD DVD had a drought of releases

Maybe because it has fewer studio support....

[Deciazulado]

i think this thread is getting vague and aimless

maybe it's run its curse?