actually they have been losing real badly lately, they had one good week when hddvd owners organized a buy a thon.

The 2 mill order will be completed in 2008, Sony have said Br players at $300 by the end of 07.  Aloso there are already 1.4 million PS3s in USA.  Hddvd has been out for a year already and only sold 100k players. 

Also, you know how those online news rumor sites can be:  they don't check their sources before they straight-out copy each other.  Apparently, since I just googled it, there is some confusion since the original report says blu-ray hd-dvd, not just hd-dvd, and some say blue laser hd-dvd.  Walmart has yet to confirm which format they are supporting in this report.  Apparently people didn't translate the Chinese correctly.  Considering Walmart has been putting more blu-ray than hd-dvd on the shelves lately, it would be odd for them to suddenly support hd-dvd players over blu-ray.  But, I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Also, that report varies from $50 to $300, with IGN mentioning $200.  Large variation.

you can get hddvd players for 320 now of amazon.

 No dude face facts Blu-Ray is in a lot of trouble. The report is confirmed by insider to mean HDDVD players NOT Blu-Ray. It also means Wal Mart is now throwing a lot of money behind HDDVD. Wal Mart is huge to the casuals. It's also been confirmed to start in August 2007, and probably be below $299. The thing is that's at retail, which is a lot different than prices online. I do not believe you will find any $299 Blu-Ray players at retail this year. The fact is the Chinese cheap manufacturers have thrown their weight behind HDDVD, and that is big.

 Meanwhile HDDVD is competing better with Blu-Ray even in the face of 1 million+PS3's sold. As time goes on, the edge will swing more and more to HDDVD. Most PS3 owners are not buying movies. You said it right, 100k HDDVD players sold, and the top HDDVD on amazon is ahead of the top Blu-Ray constantly. What happens when a million HDDVD's are sold? Also that 100k figure doesn't count the 360 add on which is probably at least another 100k players.

 The war is not over but HDDVD is coming on mega-strong...Blu-Ray is in trouble. 

Look at what IGN says

April 20, 2007 - In breaking news today, it would appear that mega-retailer WalMart has contracted a Chinese manufacturer to produce millions of low-cost HD-DVD players. Though somewhat obfuscated by translation issues and the breaking nature of the news, the current internet consensus suggests that Taiwan based manufacturer Fuh Yuan, in cooperation with TDK, will produce the blue laser drives for 2-million HD-DVD players. Broadcom will reportedly supply the system-on-a-chip decoder, and China Great Wall will handle final assembly. The deal represents around US $100,000,000, and it is reported that a new manufacturing plant has already been opened to fulfill the order.

Speculation suggests the players will arrive at retail in late 2007 and will be priced between $199-299. At such cost, WalMart's HD-DVD drives will be far below the current low of $399 for Toshiba's HD-A20 player, and will look cheap compared to the lowest priced Blu-ray hardware on the market today ($599).

If the current details of the plan prove to be true, WalMart's support of HD-DVD will have a significant impact on the next-gen DVD format war. The American retailer operates on a high-volume, low-margin business plan of market saturation, which is exactly the approach required to drive one format or the other to preeminence.

Stay tuned for updates and confirmation as the story develops.

Really they are getting China to do the cheap labor behind the HD-DVD manufacture. That's not a surprise as the price of HD-DVD/Blue Ray discs are about the same price as each other. Trying to force a player out at a cheap price with the lesser support behind it in terms of movies and companies is really a short term cash in before the format is lost to blue ray.

That's how I see it. It might sound anti HD-DVD, but it's the truth.

Sony of course never invented Blue Ray, however I feel it was right to back it with the majority of companies taking it up. Comany list

It may be a last stand response for HD-DVD. People are not that stupid, Blue Ray in shops looks a lot more promising to customers than HD-DVD because more companies support it.

How is it a cash in if they're driving costs dirt cheap therefore making less money?

Wal Mart now has a hundred million investment in HDDVD, that means they now are going to fully support the format over Blu-Ray, basically.

The order is for two million players..considering probably less than 100k stand-alone Blu-Ray players have been sold (meaning, not PS3's), that's a huge magnitude.

Plenty of companies, huge companies, support HDDVD, like Intel, Microsoft, and Toshiba which is a PC OEM that ships millions of PC's.

The studios support looks good for Blu-Ray, but a lot of the companies in Blu-Ray camp have offered only half hearted support such as 20th Century Fox. The problem is if the tide swings to HDDVD because of things like this Wal Mart order, they will all jump ship. Sony itself will be the last one to jump ship.

Companies like Samsung and TDK that were founding members of Blu-Ray, have actually already begun playing both sides now. Samsung for instance introduced a combo player and said they would introduce a HDDVD player if necessary. That's not good for Blu-Ray. 

But Sony has a terrible track record with formats, Betamax, Atrac, UMD..is Blu-Ray next?

This is profound what you said. The world's largest retail outlet will probably decide the outcome of this HDDVD/Blu-Ray dealie greater than anyone else. If Wal-Mart gets behind HD-DVD it will end up the dominant format simply because of its availability. People forget most of the USA lives in less citified regions and this is where Wal-Mart is king. Wal-Mart/Sam's Club is often whole tri-county area's shopping center. They make these gigantic "Everything Stores" that take over the town and most people just end up going there out of convenience and because it can be hard to find certain things in other stores.

Chicago? Maybe no Wal-Marts much there. New York City? Not much pull by Sam Walton's monster there. Los Angeles? Not quite. Small to Midsize towns with suburbs that make up the bulk of the USA? Wal-Marts galore.

And think about this. Dollar General is the junior Wal-Mart in the making. It's where a lot of poor and working (and cheap) people go to shop. They are a bit late on tech but they also end up getting things eventually. They sell PS1 & PS2 games in the stores. And this store copies the Wal-Mart playbook using cheap labor made products that sell for low prices even after crossing vast oceans and the bother of docking and trucking cross-country. The cheaper smaller up and coming Wal-Mart that will reinforce the majorly selling products years down the line when the cost of the new tech drops and Wal-Mart has made it the dominant format.

Always think bottom up when dealing with audiences. In this greedy world there will always be more poorer than richer. The pyramid of life is always held up by the base. The more specialist stores and slightly more upscale places will also give a choice with some going one way and others going the other way. But Wal-Mart sort of forces everyone else to pick one direction based on sheer availability and convenience. End game: HD-DVD

However that's just USA. The other world markets might go another way or negate both altogether. As for USA though those superstores that take over rural and lightly citified areas decide what goes where. Not those big singular dept. stores in the big cities. They only influence the cities alone great as that influence may be.

Wal-Mart is the epitome of mass market. That's how they became the biggest selling retailer in the world.

That and cheap Chinese labor.

John Lucas

(do you realize that Wal-Mart is so big that they want to start up their own bank??? After awhile Wal-Mart armies and special forces aren't far behind!)

Despite Wallmart support (considering there isn't wallmart in the U.K) I'm still not quite convinced that HD-DVD is going to be a format winner. I guess we will just have to wait and see...