Wal-Mart will sell only Blu-Ray movies
Wal-Mart Stores Inc has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp. The move by the world’s largest retailer, announced on Friday, caps a disappointing week for HD DVD supporters, who also saw consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc and online video rental company Netflix Inc defect to the Blu-ray camp. In a statement on its Web site, Wal-Mart said that over the next few months it will phase out sales of HD DVD systems and discs. By June, it will sell only products in the Blu-ray format which was developed by Sony Corp.
“We’ve listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases,” said Gary Severson, a Wal-Mart senior vice president. The move affects 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores in the United States, as well as related online sites. The stores will continue to sell traditional DVD players and movies. The so-called format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has been a thorn in the side of retailers, which have had to commit shelf space to devices from both camps even as they field complaints from frustrated and confused customers. Next-generation DVDs and players, boasting better picture quality and more capacity, were expected to help revive the $24 billion global home DVD market. But Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on a consumer’s DVD machine.
Source: AP
Comments(72)
RIP HDDVD
bugger! still, i’d rather stick to HD rather than $ony as it always likes to come 1st places in everything. but why can’y you americans buy a dvd player that just plays both formats, that would be so much simpler
RIP Physical Media.
WujouMao – Blu-ray is not Sony – it was developed by an association of 18 big companies.
Really was only room for one HD format. This “war” has only delayed consumer adoption of any format.
1st – RIP HD-DVD
2nd – RIP Blu-Ray
3rd – RIP Physical Media
You can’t beat downloading…… you just can’t…… the independence of the internet ensures that…… Sony, Toshiba, doesn’t matter who wins, no one will buy as long as they can download, it’s a fact of life……
HD-RAY Rocks
@WujouMao
You hate Sony because “t always likes to come 1st places in everything.” Irregardless of whether they have the superior technology/product,you still hate them to come out on top.That doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s not just about movies you know… it’s about storage too. Yes downloading can’t be beat, but what are you gonna use to store those large HD files you downloaded? A normal DVD? I think not. Physical media will never die, even with TB hard drives available.
I think that the war between HD DVD and Blu RAY has been great for everyone…
War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left.
I don’t get it. HD-DVD is so cheap in many ways. I can’t understand why stores choose the more expensive Blu-ray over the cheaper HD-DVD format.Looks like one of the first victories for Sony in the brawl over a medium. [Anyone remembers the flopped Betamax, or their Minidisk player?]
like a wise man once said in Iraq,
The War is finally over:
@11, BR discs are also cheap for storage purposes.
meaning the argument of HD-DVD is cheaper than BR is soo 2006
lol i saw 20% of all hddvds in some shop today and laughed so hard… yep
@ 11 (Don Salmonella)
Sony invented BOTH Betamax and VHS home video tape recording but opted for the best picture quality format: Betamax with its U-Load (later the favored pro U-Matic system) and lost. They lost because people chose lenght of recording over quality. Now, people are applying the same logic to the HD/Blue-Ray debate. What goes around goes around and Sony needed a winner being out of the money for quite a while.
The HD vs. BlueRay war was over longa ago.Warner Brothers almost descided the winner just a few months ago, now this? HD, i am SO glad i never paid for you…
always the same, betamax = better quality it lost,laserdisc better than dvd it to lost, and sound dts is better sound dd5.1 more popular
OK ppl WTF didn’t we realize cd/dvd/hddvd/bluray SUCK??? 1 scratch and its over! memory cards are the only intelligent way to go.as soon as we have 20+ Gig mem cards they’ll all be obsolete. and downloading HD movies would be a good idea as soon as some1 comes out with a player that can connect to HDTVs and play MKV. cuz having a computer hooked up to a tv just for movies is a waste of a good computer(unless ur rich)and watching an hd movie at your computer is pretty retarted!!
I agree 100% with the comment above by ‘a’.
CD’s and DVD’s are stupid, always have been.
USB sticks are the future.
Blu-ray and HD-DVD both SUCK.
Well… so long HD-DVD. Never really thought it had a chance… 25 gigs or 50… humm….
And anyways, I believe that flash and usb drives are the way of the future. Downloading speeds will probably be in the gbps for average users, so downloading HD movies will be quite easy. Then just throw it on a usb drive (lol, probably be at least 100 gigs soon. 32 has hit the market already) and watch it on your TV. BRING ON TEH FUTURE!
We need a disc format to get our games on, its not like were going to start getting games released for consoles online from the developers. Sure we download them after they are released but people who buy the games for ps3 and 360 need discs. Blu-ray winz.
HDD wins…
Sony did NOT invent VHS, it was invented and developed by JVC. However Sony did develop the CD format in partnership with Philips so you already have Sony to thank for all optical disc based formats based on CD.
The BluRay association is an independant body of 18 (originally) hardware and software companies. Sony developed the original format but it is the BR Assoc who are the ones who continue to development, market and promote the format. Toshiba developed HD-DVD but again, it is an independant association of hardware and software companies (although shrinking all the time at the moment it seems) that are currently responsible for the continued developed, marketing and promotion of the format. It is hardly Sony vs HD-DVD. It is either BlueRay versus HD-DVD or Sony vs Toshiba for the conspiracy theorists.
As for downloads destroying all physical formats, that might be a long term goal but it is a bit pie in the sky for many, many years yet. In most countries outwith the US, Japan and South Korea broadband connections simply are not fast enough for real time, streaming HD broadcasts and wont be for many years. Couple that with traffic shaping by ISPs and possible bans on filesharing in some countries (France for example, currently trying to introduce such restrictions and now talk of the same in the UK) and it makes it even more unlikely for many countries. There is also the cost of storage, HD movies at the same resolution/quality as HD-DVD or BluRay will of course take up similar amounts of space. Say 20Gb per movie, having a collection of a couple of hundred movies (as a huge number of people currently do with DVDs and probably soon BluRay) will prove to be very, very expensive, too expensive for most people. In many countries ISPs have a monthly cap on downloads, downloading ONE full HD, two hour movie would use up most people’s download limit straight away. And even if you can afford all that storage, what do you do when you want to take a movie on the drive to a friends house to watch but your wife/partner wants to stay at home and watch a different movie that happens to be on the same drive?. You will then have to go to the time, trouble and expense of copying the movie to a physical medium, assuming the restrictive DRM on the purchased downloads even lets you do that. There is also the huge number of people that just like to have the physical medium, with coloured cover, storage case, inserts and booklets.
Sorry, but a physical medium of some time is here for many, many years yet.
“Irregardless” is not a word. Funny though, reminds me of the snl Boston skits.
seems HD DVD is now the betamax of 2008
@2
It’s always “Why can’t you Americans” (insert selfish desire that will not be beneficial to Americans or America). Well, why don’t you wannabee-Americans go develop your own tech?
tbh rather buy 2TB more harddrive space
Sorry MrTee, but as a long term Laserdisc fan (I have over 500 LD movies) I can honestly say Laserdisc is not superior to DVD. Laserdisc was originally developed by Pioneer/Philips under the Laservision name in the late 70s/early 80s but never really took off until the late 80s/early 90s with the advent of CD quality digital sound being incorporated onto Laserdisc. The name was also changed at this time from Laservision to Laserdisc. Soon after Philips completely abandoned the format and it was left to Pioneer to continue development, marketing and promotion (although a couple of other companies such as Sony, RCA and Magnovox also produced players). They did it fairly well too as Laserdisc even developed a half decent market in the UK where it had been pretty much ignored for over 10 years.
A movie also had to be split as even in the longer play CLV format one side of a disc could only hold 60 minutes. CAV format allowed trick play features but then one side of the disc could only hold around 30 minutes. The advent of dual side players helped a lot but it is still annoying when there is a break of between 10 – 30 seconds while the player changes sides (cheaper players took longer). Being an analogue video format Laserdisc also suffered from the odd “sparkly” and the maximum resolution was 500 lines (lower than DVD). Sorry but a well encoded DVD does beat a well encoded Laserdisc everytime. Then there were the problems when 16:9 widescreen was introduced. Laserdisc players could not output A 16:9 movie with generated black bars on a 4:3 TV like DVD can. Anamorphic laserdiscs looked very odd when played back on a 4:3 TV that did not have a 16:9 button as there was no way to correct the aspect ratio. As almost everyone had a 4:3 TV in the mid 90s anamorphic laserdiscs (or squeezed LD as it was called) never took off.
Laserdisc was however, the first consumer video format to hold Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, however newer LD players with an RF output and a suitable amplifier were required, and they were not cheap at that time. (I paid over 5000 pounds for my dual side, dolby digital compatible LD player, compatible amplifier and speakers as well as another 4000 for my 47inch widescreen rear projection TV). These days even the cheapest DVD player can handle dolby digital, 16:9 widescreen correctly, full movie on one side of a disc etc. And good quality widescreen LCD TVs can be had for prices starting around 500 pounds.
Laserdisc was great, as it was the only high quality movie format around but it was expensive and DVD does beat it these days.
So within the last few month Wal*Mart have been pushing cheap HD DVD players on their customers and now they have the money they leave them high and dry. Only in America! LOL.
By the way, i’m sticking with downloads and DVD, HD equipment is a complete waste of money at this point in time imho.
Why don’t we non americans develop our own tech?.
Umm, CD a Japanese/European joint development. DVD a japanese development, HD-DVD and BluRay both Japanese developments. I think the non Americans are doing very well developing their tech actually.
By the way, according to Reuters, Tosh is dumping HD DVD.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSL1627196120080216
Not forgetting the original audio cassette being European (Philips), VHS and Betamax both being Japanese (JVC for VHS and Sony for Betamax), MP3 audio compression being European (german originally), portable audio was also kicked off by Sony with their Walkman players the grand daddy of the likes of your current range of MP3 players such as the Ipod.
True the original internet was a US development (US military and academic, called arpanet at the time) but it was an Englishman who developed the HTML language and the world wide web format that led to the current explosion in the use of the internet.
See, we non Americans actually do pretty well. I could of course go on and on, the telephone, radio, metalled roads, pneumatic tyres, the internal combustion engine, the jet engine etc. etc. all non american inventions.
What are these other countries you speak of?
You mean there are places not in the united states?
While I do think some kind of physical medium will be around for a long time I agree that it is likely to be something like USB sticks or memory cards, especially when 30, 50 and even 100Gb versions come out.
Personally I think it is likely to be USB stick as there are more than 40 types of memory card available. The current format war is bad enough with just two, imagine if every different company released movies or music on different memory cards. Nightmare.
@29
Everything you mentioned was stolen from America via industrial espionage. You scum invent nothing. Now get off my internet, since you didn’t invent that either.
Well here in Australia the only drives you can buy for your PC
Are BLU RAY.
There is not a single retailer of HDDVD drives for PC’s.
ive said it before and ill say it again, let hd-dvd die in the corner…alone.
Not only Wal-Mart but it was announced this week that Netflix is also going Blu-Ray exclusive.Also , Best Buy joined the party and said that while they won’t drop HD-DVD for now , they will strongly promote BR over it.
Toshiba and HD-DVD fanboys need to give up because it’s over.Blu-Ray is on top and HD-DVD will soon become be in the history books.
Long live King Blu-Ray !!!!!
@9. HHD space is dirt cheap. Storage for downloaded content is easy to come up with. I am running 2 TB of storage for just under $500. I run a media center and extender(360) to both TVs in my house. I have all my media readily accessible. I assume in the next 10 years we will see a drastic drop in the production of optical storage mediums… just my opinion though.
Thx RLSLOG for the news!
optical disks are last century’s technology. When B-Ray finally gets spread to everyone it will be utterly obsolete. Even as we speak the first high capacity flash storage devices are begining to see daylight. Who will want to wait forever to recor a B-Ray when there is a re-usable flash device with high capacity around?
Just goes to show that not always does the best thing win, depends on who put up most money :/
Just remember, the Americans invented both the internet and Wal-Mart. The closest thing we have in merry ole England is Harrods and BT.
Common sense, if only people used it… here we go…
For all you lot talking about how flash media is the way forward and how physical media is crap, can I ask what file structure do all of these flash/USB devices use which has an upper file limit of 4GB? There are 103 HD rips listed on this site, how many of them are under 4GB?
*BEEP BEEP* That’s the school bus, many of you need to hop on now.
Yes downloading is great but physical media will be mainstream for at least 10 years or kore. If you think otherwise then you’re mistaken and you need to do some research on ISP’s, bandwidth limitations, the cost of upgrading Internet infrastructures within large cities (let alone the rural area’s which are still on 51kbps or slower) and projected timescales. The majority of the world’s home users (with some exceptions – France and Sweden to name a few) have a net connection much slower than 10Mbps. The UK’s average is 3Mbps and North America is between 4.6 and 8Mbps. here’s the source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7098992.stm
How long will it take to download a file larger than 4GB with those average speeds? Now consider real situations where net speed fluctuates drastically throughout the day and assuming that you don’t currently have bandwidth limits and that they’re not introduced in the future as standard by every ISP?
So a CD/DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray is useless if it’s scratched. How about a 250GB/500GB/1TB hard drive with a few weeks/months of solid downloading (over 250 SD films, around 20 HD films and 10Gb of music) fails? How easy and cheap is it to retrieve data from a failed disk? Obviously it depends on what type of failure the disk has suffered but in the majority of cases (I would say 90%), you will have lost that data. That is a far greater loss than a scratched disk. There are companies who can retrieve lost data but they can cost upwards of £50 per GB. Another question is would you be willing to send your hard drive to these companies who will have your name/address and will see what porn and/or illegally downloaded material is stored on that drive? You may want to read about how Gary Glitter was caught out in the UK.
The other alternative could be to obtain a new hard drive which is exactly the same model/firmware as your failed drive and create a clean room in your house so that you can replace the circuit board. How many of you would bother to do that to retrieve your data?
*BEEEEEEEEP* The bus is still waiting, there’s room for a lot of you to get on.
Actually, both France and Sweden are below 10Mbps (I was looking at their advertised speed.
Japan is the only country whose average speed is above 10Mbps.
http://www.broadbandwatchdog.co.uk/news/051207-224
*BEEP* Room for one more I see.
@Peter Parker
So you are saying that Blu-Ray will stick around longer because people do not have clean rooms in their homes to disect their hard drives in?
Only thing actually invented by yankees is campus killing…(besides the practice of making babies out of their own mother’s and daughter’s womb). And oh, almost forgot, they are also good at making newer and deadlier WMD which they distribute at a cheap price if not freely to ppl like Saddam Usama etc. trying to reap benefits out of other country’s doom by creating / funding their political conflicts.
Back on topic, this is a bad news for early adopter’s of Xbox360, one of the worst console ever made.
@Vivian
I’m saying that it’s not going to be one or the other as both will coexist. The majority of people who have a computer have slow net connections, mainly because they feel that they don’t need the extra seed and they don’t know how easy it is to obtain films and music over the net.
Some people won’t bother with downloads because they are stuck with ISP’s who impose bandwidth limits (5Gb and less per month) with very little or no choice to use another provider. That’s maybe one HD film or a few DVDrips/TV shows before you are charged for going over the limit.
There is a trend among ISP’s now to impose bandwidth restrictions/limits unless you’re willing to pay a very high monthly price. I have unlimited 20Mbps although there are bandwidth restrictions in place during peak times everyday. If I breach the limit during the 5hr peak time then my speed reduced to 1/5th for 5hrs.
As time goes by and more pressure is imposed on ISP’s by the MPAA/RIAA etc to stop people from downloading copyrighted material, this will (unfortunately) become common practice.
Blu-ray will stick around longer because there are people who want the physical media. They want the nice packaging, film inserts and something to go on the shelf.
PC games will come out on BD because DVD DL is now not big enough to hold some games (BlackSite Area 51, John Woo Presents Stranglehold). Even 360 games are out on multiple discs (Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey). I have heard that GTA4 for the will be on 4 discs although I’m not sure how true that is. The PS3 version will be on 1 disc however the 360 gets extra exclusive content from XBL.
whats with all this America bashing? We create the market (besides Japan) the rest of the world goes on what we dictate. Be it Blu Ray or HD doesn’t matter
America dictates anything? I know. They dictate cheesburgers!
Ooops, I forgot, you also invented the internet. Without this great invention of yours, I would not even be able to complain about your cheeseburger appetite.
God bless the USA.
Comcast cable is developing 50mps consumer highspeed internet, I think I will be with them in the future.
oh and Africa is the birthplace of modern civilization… hahaha, Africa for the win!
@Voice of the Black Man
If civilization started in Africa, then how come we have white people??
@Yuri
It’s called thousands of years of adaptation to new enviornments.
think they will have wind up blu-ray players for africa?
Forget what I wrote. Without USA there would be no wars. Johnni’s right, we only invented cheesburgers. And the internet was invented in Europe.
@Cannonballkid
No, I agree with you now. I am sorry I bashed the US. I do now realize that Americans invented not only the car and the TV, but also the computer and the internet.
Thank you to all of you, and may God continue to bless America.
@correct without the fundamentals of language mathematics philosophy, architecture, and economics; European invaders wouldn’t have nuthing but the stones they were living in during the “dark ages”. Timbuktu, kush… the worlds oldest and most ancient libraries… all existed in Africa before Europeans… just look on your dollar bill, thats a pyramid. biotch
corrections: …. stones they were living -under-
@42 Peter Parker,
I agree that a hard drive shouldn’t be used as a person’s only storage device. I see messages in the newsgroups all the time, “Help! My HD crashed and I lost all my xxxx! Can someone please upload EVERYTHING?” Myself, I backup what I download to DVD-R.
However, there is a realtively simple way to negate the risk; Buy a second HD of the same size, hook it up and ghost your current HD to it. Once done, disconnect it so that it isn’t running on a daily basis. Do this once a week. When the primary HD fails, swap it out for the backup, buy another HD, and start the process over again.
Americans…
@Rekrul
i have a USB hard drive connected, but what do i click on to ghost my C drive onto the spare? i tried to right click on my C drive and do copy, but that didn’t work.
India was also another hotbed for development of modern civilization.
@Poppa!
the Indians are kinda dark too.
@ 42 Peter Parker
One thing you should not do when discussing something is to sound insulting when you actually know nothing of what you’re talking about. It is right that most pen flash devices today use FAT32 as format and that limits their capacity. But the reasons why it is so is not an inability of the flash devices but rather to cheapen production. Samsung for example has already made a 64 gigs Flash device with a 40 nanometer chip in 2006. The only reason why it has not seen major distribution is because so far it would not be price competitive with magnetic media as this chips were designed to serve in hybrid hard drives for laptops.
So next time you hear about that school bus you might just want to be in it…
@Rekrul
The only problem with that is my PC (as an example) would have much lower storage space (I currently have 2.4TB across 8 HDD’s) and it’s time consuming backing up all data to additional drives especially if you can’t hot swap them. Personally I back everything up on CD/DVD/DVD DL, and use Blu-ray when the prices of internal drives decrease in price and increase in speed.
@costa2000
I am already on the bus (see #43) and I’m saving a seat for you next to me.
If this is true
Hahahahahahhahaahahahahahaha…
Tee hehehe hehehe hehehehehe…
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1627196120080216
LMFAO, I hope this is true
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1627196120080216
nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey goooodbye
haha i work at a walmart…. dont own a hd tv dvd player or dvds so it doesnt matter to me…. but w.e.
@levy
Stay in any tropical Asian country for 6 months, you’ll also become darker! More melanin under your skin is good for preventing skin cancer – it’s a proven truth!
Game over i think. I waited for this to unfold. Apparently now i can invest in a High definition player!
Love the HD*DVD photo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yes, I do work at Wal-Mart.
@ Johnni- you must have all the free time in the world to impersonate my screen name – have fun with that loser