Blu-ray and HD DVD: The Big Dog Gets Off The Porch

Cow Blu-RayCreative Cow by Tim Wilson When I say “the big dog,† I'm actually not talking about Blu-ray. I'm talking about Wal-Mart. Back on April 26, 2007, I wrote a Creative Cow blog post with the same title as this article, and said that Wal-Mart would be the one to decide which hi-def DVD format would win. Player sales wouldn't decide it. Not disk sales of one format or the other. Not porn. Wal-Mart. You already know about The Big Announcement that came on the heels of The Other Big Announcement, so Toshiba apparently thinks I was right on the money. Ironically, when I wrote my blog post about the power of Wal-Mart last April, the word was that Wal-Mart had invested heavily in HD DVD: $100 million, for 2 million players from the Chinese manufacturer Fuh Yuan at $50 a pop. Sell 'em for $99 each, the rumor went, and game over. Needless to say, Wal-Mart and Fuh Yuan vigorously denied the rumor. But you can be sure the folks from Toshiba and the Blu-ray camp have been all over Wal-Mart for a long time. Everyone involved has to have seen this coming for a while. In fact, it appears that Toshiba had been planning their announcement for a while. The only question was when. read more...

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