Target To Go Blu-ray Only

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Sony has announced that Target will only stock Blu-ray players through the holiday season. Coincidentally, this announcement comes the same day that Microsoft announced that it was including 5 HD DVD movies with its HD DVD add on player and dropping the price by $20. Add in the continued speculation that Wal-Mart is planning to start selling mass quantities of super low priced HD DVD players and things look like they might actually start heating up in the HD format wars.

In a statement on Thursday, Sony Corp. said that Target will exclusively carry Blu-ray players "at least through the holiday season" and will also expand its inventory of Blu-ray discs. The move begins in October with Target's sale and promotion of Sony's BDP-S300 unit, which sells for about $500.
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might as well get a PS3 for 500 bucks hell it plays games too :rolleyes:
 
Targets main consumers are not tech savy. Honestly who shops at target? Aint it like a upscale Wal Mart for the people who feel too privileged to shop at wal mart. lol. When I think of target I think of middle aged women shopping there. My mom loves target for some reason.

Basically what I'm saying is when your in the market for a High Def player you usually look at Best Buy, Circuit City, or some online store. Not Target, I doubt this will affect sales too much.
 
Riddlinkidstoner said:
Why can't George Bush just choose a format for us so we can choose the other one?
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Might as well just arbitrarily pick one. They use the same codecs, content protection, and file system. The only difference is the layout of the files on the disc. The only difference is theoretical capacity limit which isn't a real important feature anyway, seeing as how anything over 20GB is grossly overkill for properly encoded H.264 content and a DTS-HD stream.
 
Putting a $500 media player in Target is really striking at the core of that store's "target" consumer market.

Check out that pun. I rule.
 
InorganicMatter said:
Might as well just arbitrarily pick one. They use the same codecs, content protection, and file system. The only difference is the layout of the files on the disc. The only difference is theoretical capacity limit which isn't a real important feature anyway, seeing as how anything over 20GB is grossly overkill for properly encoded H.264 content and a DTS-HD stream.
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Darn lack of an edit button. :rolleyes: Bolded part should read:

The only thing that keeps them from working in each other's players is the layout of the files.
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blazingrig said:
Targets main consumers are not tech savy. Honestly who shops at target? Aint it like a upscale Wal Mart for the people who feel too privileged to shop at wal mart. lol. When I think of target I think of middle aged women shopping there. My mom loves target for some reason.

Basically what I'm saying is when your in the market for a High Def player you usually look at Best Buy, Circuit City, or some online store. Not Target, I doubt this will affect sales too much.
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True that the normal/average consumer at Target isn't tech savvy. On the other hand, there are also the cheap types who refuse to spend $$ for the players. Then again there are who will but they are the small crowd.
 
Engadget says hold your breath on WalMart choosing HD DVD as well:

Get ready to get your cheap HD on kids. Wal-Mart just threw down some serious green for a batch of Chinese-made HD DVD players. Just as they brought DVD players down to near-disposable status, their deal for 2 million HD DVD players produced by China's Great Wall corporation will ultimately do the same for hi-def optical. The guts are developed by Taiwan's Fuh Yuan with a touch of help from Japan's TDK. How much? A magical $299, that's how much -- $100 less than the cheapest available HD DVD rig (Toshiba's A2) and half of Sony's $600 BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc player. It's not clear when we'll see the first units on Wal-Mart shelves, only that the final shipment from the order is expected before 2008 is over.

Update: Pull back the reigns HD DVD fanboys, Akihabara now says that they've made a "huge mistake" with their translation: the original source called it "藍光 HD DVD and 藍光 means Blu-RAY." In other words, Blu-ray HD DVD. Huh? Word to the wise: since both formats use blue lasers, it's best to wait for an English press release before either camp celebrates.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/20/the-wal-mart-299-hd-dvd-player-on-the-way/
 
Well since I have a 360 HD DVD player already I'm in the market for a blu ray player.

I only own like 5 HD-DVD's but I've rented about every HD-DVD movie from Netflix, now I'm out of HD Movies to watch. Until Transformers and 300 come out on HD my player is on a vacation.

The 360 HD online service has alot of movies that aren't available on HD DVD discs, so that keeps my HDTV busy.

But like I said, I would really love to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and 2 on Blu Ray, plus the countless other great Blu Ray movies. Movies with alot of outside scenery really shine on High Defintion.

If the story is true I might pick a Blu Ray player for $299. I mean it's better to have both, there are great movies on both formats.
 
Sure would be nice of corporations and retail outlets to let consumers decide what format they want instead of picking for you. Nothing I hate more is going somewhere to get a HD movie only to find out the store only stocks the one or only limited stock of one. This pissing contest is really pissing me off, pun very intended. And this seems to be the case more with Blue Ray than the HD-DVD camp. My local Wal-mart only carries Blueray, my local Hastings carries way more Blueray for sale and for rent, etc, etc. Both sides have their merits, but damn it, I want to choose. I want a format to win because people choose it, not becasue Sony makes it the only choice available by coercing retailers, or retailers just backing Sony because, hey it's Sony.
 
Hey, I shop at Target...not for tech stuff. My wife doesn't like Wal-Mart because of their business practices and how they treat their employees (i.e. only let them work 39 hours so they don't get full time benefits, etc.) I mean I can go there, but she refuses. Well let's what the outcome is, I know Wal-Mart also wants to lower prices even more so they can sell more things during the "Going Back to School Sale" which Target is leading right now.

LINK 1

LINK 2
 
blazingrig said:
Targets main consumers are not tech savy.

...Basically what I'm saying is when your in the market for a High Def player you usually look at Best Buy, Circuit City, or some online store. Not Target, I doubt this will affect sales too much.
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Nope. Walmart and Target will move more players than all of the stores you mentioned combined. In fact I would be willing to bet that between those two big box stores they will move more players than the every other electronics retailer combined in the U.S. That is market power. At the end of the day the format that wins is the one that the none tech savy buy. Tech savy do not set the trend for the market for consumer electronics. If that were true Betamax would have beat out VHS.:p
 
blazingrig said:
Targets main consumers are not tech savy. Honestly who shops at target? Aint it like a upscale Wal Mart for the people who feel too privileged to shop at wal mart. lol. When I think of target I think of middle aged women shopping there. My mom loves target for some reason.

Basically what I'm saying is when your in the market for a High Def player you usually look at Best Buy, Circuit City, or some online store. Not Target, I doubt this will affect sales too much.
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Target pays their employees something much closer to a living wage, plus doesn't thumb their noses at labor unions, unlike wal-mart. Honestly, who shops at Wal-Mart?
 
The only thing that keeps them from working in each other's players is the layout of the files.
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Lol, there's a few more differences between the layout of the files. Theres the Capacity of the discs for a start, the numerical aperture on the laser, the maximum speeds of the media, the copy protection is different (BD+ as a extra layer which isnt supported on HDDVD.

If i could put in a BD disc of POTC which can sometimes hit 40Mbits a second (Video/Audio) into my HDDVD drive which can only hit a maximum of 30Mbits a second.......what do you think would happen?
 
c4eater said:
Target pays their employees something much closer to a living wage, plus doesn't thumb their noses at labor unions, unlike wal-mart. Honestly, who shops at Wal-Mart?
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Don't they pay industry averages for cashiers and stockers and other unskilled labor?
 
Meh, I just went both routes. Can't win one? Join both of them, lol
 
If they do the same thing to Stargate that they did for Fifth Element (Remastered), I may be able to talk myself in to a PS3. and go Bi-HD.
 
piako said:
Basically the sony "axis of evil" :p has said "the market will decide." The head of Matsushita said that. They are more interested in personal penis-pumping market dominance than caring about you or your little peon existence, you see.
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You mean HD-DVD doesn't care about market dominance? LOL. If they didn't, they wouldn't have made such a quick reply.
 
NeoNemesis said:
Honest to god they just need to pick a damn format so I can go out and buy a player.
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Basically the sony "axis of evil" :p has said "the market will decide." The head of Matsushita said that. They are more interested in personal penis-pumping market dominance than caring about you or your little peon existence, you see.
 
blazingrig said:
Targets main consumers are not tech savy. Honestly who shops at target? Aint it like a upscale Wal Mart for the people who feel too privileged to shop at wal mart. lol. When I think of target I think of middle aged women shopping there. My mom loves target for some reason.

Basically what I'm saying is when your in the market for a High Def player you usually look at Best Buy, Circuit City, or some online store. Not Target, I doubt this will affect sales too much.
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Most Target shoppers can at least read unlike Wal-Mart's illiterate, red-neck, customer base.
 
As much as I hate supporting Sony in any capacity, I may go Blue-Ray soon just because the HD-DVD movie selection in stores sucks compared to the Blue-Ray. I already have an XBox 360 HD-DVD add-on, so I am covered there. I'm probably going to get a PS/3 for Blue-Ray playback. I'll spend $500 on a multi-purpose device, but I won't spend that kind of money on a standalone Blue-Ray player.
 
Dan_D said:
As much as I hate supporting Sony in any capacity, I may go Blue-Ray soon just because the HD-DVD movie selection in stores sucks compared to the Blue-Ray. I already have an XBox 360 HD-DVD add-on, so I am covered there. I'm probably going to get a PS/3 for Blue-Ray playback. I'll spend $500 on a multi-purpose device, but I won't spend that kind of money on a standalone Blue-Ray player.
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I'm in the same camp but be warned, once you buy all the BluRay movies you want, you will be sitting saying the same thing, there are no movies for me to watch on BluRay =D
 
InfernalMachine said:
I'm in the same camp but be warned, once you buy all the BluRay movies you want, you will be sitting saying the same thing, there are no movies for me to watch on BluRay =D
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Well the selection of Blue-Ray movies is better than HD-DVD at least when it comes to retail, but there still aren't that many Blue-Ray movies either compared to what's out on DVD.

There are a few more HD-DVD titles I could buy. In fact alot more. Unfortunately most of them are really old movies and I see little point in buying a movie that was made in the 1980's that probably won't transfer well to HD. I guess it depends on how the movie was originally mastered, but some movies just don't look any better than their DVD counterparts. Blazing Saddles is one. (I have that one and it doesn't look any better than the regular DVD version.)
 
c4eater said:
Target pays their employees something much closer to a living wage, plus doesn't thumb their noses at labor unions, unlike wal-mart. Honestly, who shops at Wal-Mart?
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Man, sometimes I buy groceries there, hardly though. Oh yeah, I buy my boxers from wall mart. Thats about it though.
 
Luthorcrow said:
Nope. Walmart and Target will move more players than all of the stores you mentioned combined. In fact I would be willing to bet that between those two big box stores they will move more players than the every other electronics retailer combined in the U.S. That is market power. At the end of the day the format that wins is the one that the none tech savy buy. Tech savy do not set the trend for the market for consumer electronics. If that were true Betamax would have beat out VHS.:p
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Very interesting, personally I would never buy electronics from either, at least not wal-mart though.
 
blazingrig said:
Very interesting, personally I would never buy electronics from either, at least not wal-mart though.
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As an "enthusiast" on this forum many of us would not, but think about the average consumer (and what percent he is in overall sales) and how the lowest prices means the best to him. Instead of looking at best product for the price he sees 200 less on X item from some other retailer he thinks it is a good buy and will pick it up.

Cheap prices and mass quantity have always won in most markets because it appeals to the average everyday consumer who wants to save every penny they can.
 
theDreamer said:
As an "enthusiast" on this forum many of us would not, but think about the average consumer (and what percent he is in overall sales) and how the lowest prices means the best to him. Instead of looking at best product for the price he sees 200 less on X item from some other retailer he thinks it is a good buy and will pick it up.

Cheap prices and mass quantity have always won in most markets because it appeals to the average everyday consumer who wants to save every penny they can.
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QFT.

Walmart has a massive market reach unlike any other store, same with Target and a couple of other large box stores. As much as we hate them, many others uses them. We are the handfull who knows about froogle and newegg, lol... we are in the minority. :)
 
Well I am late to the party. I just bought the wife a HDTV for her birthday and I am looking at players and I am scratching my head as to why I would even want a Blu-ray player. When I look on NewEgg and BestBuy the HD players area bout $100 cheaper, it can play my old DVDs upscaled and New Egg lists about the same number of titles for both. So on would I want to make Sony happy?:confused: I have no desire to suffer through Pirates of the Caribbean Two? I mean even if HD DVD fails I have a DVD player that upscales. If Blu-ray fails I gout an expensive paperweight not unlike the old laser disc players of the 90s.:D
 
Luthorcrow said:
I mean even if HD DVD fails I have a DVD player that upscales. If Blu-ray fails I gout an expensive paperweight not unlike the old laser disc players of the 90s.:D
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Blu-ray players upscale DVDs.

I'm just going to get a PS3. That way even if HD-DVD, Blu-ray & PS3 gaming fail, I can still run folding@home. :D
 
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