yes I know that combined sales of HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs are a negligible fraction of DVD sales; yes I know that high-profile retailers and studios are choosing (and switching) sides; yes I know that the format war will continue well into 2009, and most consumers don’t even care.
All of that is true, and yet, consider this: Wal-Mart will sell the Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player tomorrow for $98:
Game over. You heard it here first.
(not much point in buying one unless you already have an HD-DVD. Conveniently, Walmart is also advertising a Sanyo 50-inch plasma for under a grand.)
I don’t think that the price of players is going to be determinative, mostly because multi-format players will soon become the norm. (The drive in the laptop I just ordered can read both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, for instance.)
And if multi-format players become the norm, then it may not even matter. There may not even be a “winner”, because there will be no network effect to push standardization.
I’m not convinced that dual-format drives are going to end up as mainstream – the price of the dual-format drives in most cases exceeds the price of buying two standalones. sure there will be a lot of combo drives on the market, but not in the $99 impulse-buy range.
Wal-mart is just blowing out inventory of an old model. Newegg is also discounting the A2, just not to the extreme that WM is doing. BTW, Newegg lists the EEE PC as in stock as of this writing…