$198 too expensive? HD-DVD player on sale for $99 at Wal-mart

[Delusional]

Shxt. I got back from Wal-mart 10 mintues ago. I decided to drive there at 7:40am, got there at 7:59am. I walk in, I was like cool, no line. Then I get to the center and there was this HUGE line. I thought people were just paying for little things cuz I didn't see much in their cart. I went to the players section and no HD DVD in site. I then saw the center counter hold up HD DVD player and someone was purchasing it (front of that long line I saw). I tried to look behind the counter and but I couldn't even see any left. I tried to walk to the end of the line but it took forever because there were like 50+ people. So I got in line to see what's going on.

So this is the story. There were around 30 HD DVD players available and they were sold out more than an hour before 8am!!!!!!!!!! They were passing out "tickets" to people in line outside the store before 8am. The first person in line got there at 5am in the morning!!! At 8:30, it was 50F outside. Not THAT cold compared to east coast, but it's not warm for sure, and it was definitely colder at 5am. Most people I see were people going there before work, or they were ladies/men around early 40s+. This lady was like "I came here for the HD DVD player. I heard it's really good price. But if they don't have any more, I can wait." It shows most people are willing to wait till price drops to low and affordable price. So all along, this format war is really race to drop hardware prices to mass adoption levels, and software will follow. That was always Toshiba's strategy and now we are seeing it at work.

It's cool in some way, but dissapointing in another because I was thinking of grabbing 2 of them, one for my sister's bday/xmas, and the other for my parent's xmas gift.

Also, when I was walking out, these 2 ladies had 2 in their cart. So it seems it's limit 1 per person, so some people were bringing additional people to get an additional ticket for the HD DVD player.

This is like HUGE for Toshiba and HD DVD!