Posted on 11/01/2007 11:31:00 AM PDT by TrueKnightGalahad
[Wal-Mart] Wednesday said it would start its Black Friday and holiday pricing early on some items, in a move to drive sales during the increasingly competitive holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said it will offer Black-Friday prices three weeks early by unveiling "secret" in-store specials. The company said it will offer discounts on five popular gift items. Wal-Mart plans to reveal discounts on its Web site on Thursday. The items will be available in stores beginning Friday morning, Nov. 2 as it officially opens its special Christmas shops. The day after Thanksgiving is one of the biggest shopping days of the year and is known as "Black Friday" in the retail industry because retailers earn so much on this single day they are able to swing to profitability.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
My understanding is that the HD-DVD player will do a better job than an upconverting standard DVD player.
People keep pushing the season earlier and earlier. There is a radio station in Kansas City that started it’s “All Christmas Music All The Time” yesterday and it’ll run through December 25th. Any predicitons on how many times they’ll be playing “Santa Baby” over that 57 day span?
I noticed a few weeks ago the commercial for Branson with Andy Williams singing Christmas carols.
Thanks - that site previewing Black Friday sales is great!
That’s unusual for Wal Mart. Usually their Black Friday products are poor quality. Certainly nothing worth pushing & shoving like idiots over.
That sort of bad publicity might put a dent in the annual consumer spending frenzy we use to celebrate Our Savior’s birth.
I’ve been surprised by that myself. Haven’t bought one yet so I’m liking it.
Hey, don't peg me with an anti-WM bias. Of course it could happen anywhere. And employees can also be racist. I went to a Home Depot in the Bronx and asked where something was to a (black) guy working the aisle. He said he didn't know and to ask the service desk. Then a black couple asked him about a location and he said "come on, I'll show you, and proceeded to take them across the store to the item's location". I mistakenly thought complaining to the manager would make a difference. He couldn't have cared less.
I'll bite. As payback for the root-kit mod they made to my computer without my approval. And as payback for DRM and the additional OS bloat.
On a personal note, I live in SoCal. During the last big earthquake, the only electronics of mine that did not survive the fall were Sony. Even the Panasonics survived, how weak is that?
My understanding is that the HD-DVD player will do a better job than an upconverting standard DVD player.
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If I may, I'd like to add to kevkrom's answer. Even the less expensive HD DVD players will be on a par with, or slightly better than, the best of the 'regular' up-scaling DVD players (and much better than the $59.99 el cheapo up-scalers). The best HD DVD player, the XA-2, is in a league of its own for up-scaling; many regular DVDs, up-scaled on my XA-2, look better than most High Definition broadcasts over my satellite receiver.
Blu-Ray to date has more titles, and the "quality" of these titles is a matter of opinion. This is arguable however because a dozen or so of the Blu-Ray titles have been discontinued, and some of them were REALLY bad MPEG transfers. Case in point The Fifth Element; it was so bad that Sony had a free mail in program where you could mail it back for a replacement transfer that was created because of the controversy over its quality. My friends Remastered Platinum edition DVD actually looked better than the 1st generation Blu-Ray.
Secondly, region encoding isn't something that I would call anti-consumer. Its a basic measure to cut down on foreign bootlegs, and was something that most DVDs have had throughout the years. I've never ran into an issue with it, although I'm not into buying Japanese manga bootlegs or stuff like that. Most consumers will never have a problem with it.
I would also add that the rental store market (at least in my neighborhood) is almost exclusively Blu-Ray. For example, the HD-DVD version of Hot Fuzz (it was a Universal title, so it didn't come out on Blu-Ray) was heavily backordered on Netflix. But I was anxious to see it, so I decided to try and go rent it. I went to 6, count 'em 6, movie rental places in my neighborhood, and not one of them had a copy, or even one on order. I didn't even see any HD-DVDs to rent. Everything was Blu-Ray. This of course could change with the strategic partnerships between the studios and rental corporations constantly changing, but that is the current situation.
Both formats are going to be around for a long time until one format gains a monopoly on the studios, or the studios decide to offer both formats on everything.
I just bought a Panasonic DVD-S53.Must have a HDTV w/ HDMI input
This is outstanding in picture and sound !
$88.00
It’s like primary season. I just can’t get into it.
I have yet to see an HD-DVD player anywhere locally up here in Alaska, Sears had just a first generation Toshiba HD that was overpriced, Walmart has had only the BR and to be frank I will wait it out, most likely any HD DVD player being sold is 1080I at best if that.
its not worth it to buy something this early in the market in this field regardless of the price, too many software issues.
Seen ‘em as low as $25.
And it wasn’t a fluke.
They started in October??? Couldn't even wait until after Thansgiving to start the Christmas push? What's next - Black Friday Christmas sales in July? Although I think it's great that Wal-Mart is cutting prices and making things like the HD DVD player more affordable to many more people, I see this pre-Black Friday sales positioning as a harbinger of things to come. Other retailers will watch Wal-Mart's results closely, and follow suit with early sales of their own if Wal-Mart is successful in grabbing market share and dollars in the all-important 4th quarter.
Yeah, nobody shops at Wal-Mart anymore, it’s too crowded.
BR has more space and bandwidth. Your claim that HD-DVD is complete is false. I still see no verification that TL 51 will play on current HD-DVD players.
How many manufactures make HD-DVD players? You see, this was why Beta Max failed. BR has the support of major electronic manufacturers (Sans Toshiba of course).
One major advantage of BR disk is that they are hard coated. Hard as heck to scratch, something HD-DVD disk have a problem with since info is placed close to the top layer.
Not a Sony fanboy but smart enough to know that Blue Ray does not = Sony. Heck, Blue Ray is comprised of many companies besides Sony.
I too use a PS3 as my HDDVD playler and I was most impressed with how much better regular DVDs look on it. In fact that jump is farther than the difference between HDDVD and regular DVDs. I still watch mostly regular DVD because my son works at Blockbuster part-time and that's what he brings home. Employees get first crack at the new releases a week before they hit the shelves.
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