Wal*Mart will surely decide this war!

[LynxFX]

I just went to a couple of our largest Walmarts looking for Blu-ray and HD DVD to see how they were doing with getting joesixpack into HDM. What I found is very telling about how much they are going to decide this format war for us.

Walmart Supercenter:

Their Blu-ray and HD DVD selection:


That's right, 4 titles. 1 HD DVD, 2 Blu-ray and the sold out one is the Blu-ray Wildhogs. Wow, that is quite the selection. I did see a Heroes HD DVD stuffed in the bottom of the Xbox 360 case.

Regular Walmart:
Nada. Not a thing on the shelves.

So this is the store everyone is clammering over getting to support their format? I still can't believe that Walmart is responsible for nearly 40% of all DVD sales. They only have a single isle dedicated to DVD! Every store I go into, that's all they carry. 1 isle and a couple discount bins. It's amazing they do that much biz. Judging by the bins, I think the bulk of their sales are those 5.99 and less titles and doublefeature/triplefeature packins for $10-$15. Blu-ray and HD DVD will be shunned at these stores with their $25 and $30 pricetags.

[buckshot]

I was going to post something about walmart but I didn't want to start a new thread. I was at my wife's walmart today and I saw blus on display for the first time. they had 3 titles in with the ps3 games and 1 other titles on the other side of electronics underneath their ipod display. I was looking for hd dvd but couldn't find any anywhere. until we were walking out and I spotted 1 copy of heroes on hd dvd. but it was mixed in with gilmore girls dvd sets and was in fact in the gilmore girls slot.

[ifg]

Different walmarts have differant selections. the walmart in my town has about the same amount of blu-rays as your picture, but then when I went to another walmart in another town, they had a really nice setup with a lot of BD and HDDVD's. In addition, to displays showcasing each. So it is going to be different from place to place.
It was amazing to see how many people stopped to take a look as it was right in front of the electronics dept.

[Papi4baby]

Mine aint got jack either.

[LynxFX]

I think it just shows how slow Walmart actually is in getting this stuff out. For every one store that has that dual format displaycase we've seen pictures of, there are probably 20 stores that look like the one I pictured above. They just aren't the demographic yet. I would hope the BDA concentrates more on Target, CC, BB, etc.

[Maxell]

wal-mart is really inconsisitent among its stores. One store by me has a good selection of blu-ray and hd-dvd (in the richer area) and the ones in the poorer areas have a slim selection if any.

[Manco]

wal-mart is really inconsisitent among its stores. One store by me has a good selection of blu-ray and hd-dvd (in the richer area) and the ones in the poorer areas have a slim selection if any.

That's fairly obvious.

[blackhawktraffic]

Yeah the Super center in town has zero blu ray or HD DVD titles yet the regular one has a good amount, about 25-20 blu ray which surprised me.

[Kyot]

Im from Toronto, Canada and the walmarts here have 2-3 rows of blu rays while HD has one, but they are really dumb because they mix all the BD titles together until the column is full and so its impossible to see what titles they have in the middle section, let alone trying to get them. They have to smarten up with their displays. But even still the BD's are way too expensive in stores in Canada, thank god for Amazon.com

[Mericalis]

Originally Posted by Mericalis

Wow, where do you people live? JK

Believe it or not, my local Wal-Mart has never supported HD-DUD (never have had a player and very limited space for the videos). However, they have a nice area for the Blu-rays and they carry Sony BD players.

Thought I would post this here as well. I have had a pretty good experience with our local Wal-Mart and their support for BD. Maybe it's just the sales associates in other places or something.

Edit: BTW, my town is one of the largest between Houston and Dallas, so I know we are between them, but people travel a great distance to come by our Super Wal-Mart.

[martinp1]

imma head 2 my local wal-mart tomorrow 2 see how it looks over there.. pick up a blu-ray.

[beavis667]

My walmart has only BD, no HD-DVD. Lets hope it stays that way.

[becomingwater]

my walmart had about 7 titles in Blu-ray and a few HD-DVD which was 300 and Heros. Walmart is slow at getting things in, especially games they dont even release them on the day they are to be released they usually release them on fridays.

[ESUNintel]

My local Wal-mart ha 5 rows of Blu-rays (with about 20 or so titles, as many are out of stock), and three rows lf HD-DVD's (with about 12 different titles, and some Blu-rays on the HD-DVD side). They also have a PS3 display and a Blu-ray movie display (no player).

[BStecke]

I have two Supercenters within 10 minutes of my house, both with the HD-DVD/Blu-ray display people have posted pictures of. I have yet to go for a new release and not find it, and the prices are usually within a buck or two of Amazon. The only downside is that, due to the fairly small size of the display, they've started replacing some of the catalog/older titles with the newer releases as they come out. I went to get Training Day the other day and no such luck, the tag was gone and everything. But . . . overall, Wal-Mart has been my first stop for Blu-rays for the last few months.

[Kousakuya]

Both Wal-Marts near my home do not carry HDDVD or Blu-Ray.

Then again, I live in Colorado. Nothing here but mountains, smokers and dubious fast food stores.

[GasCat]

Feel free to correct me but I believe Walmart reacts to demand, they do not push it.

[Vonscoot]

My Wal-Mart (I manage the Electronics areas) currently has about 28 BR's and 12 HD-DVD's, and we get almost all of the day-and-date releases with the DVD. I can tell you Wal-Mart is watching the HD formats closely and is looking to expand the selections even further. All the stores in my area are trying to get traited for 4 feet of HD, which would break down to 30 BR and 18 HD-DVD, in addition to what gets put out on the endcaps (like in that pic above).

As far as a 2:1 ratio? Not so in my store. Blu-ray sells at a roughly 5:1 ratio with my customers. All that without any display setup for it.

[jw]

Our Wal-Mart is HD deprived, No HDDVD nor BD discs that I see

[MOONPHASE]

at my wal-mart there is about 4 Blu-Ray movies and like 1 or 2 Hd-dvd titles