Wal-Mart confirms rumours about HD DVD player for under $200

Bentonville (AR) - After a long period of speculation, Wal-Mart has answered rumors of an HD DVD player for under $200, making it the cheapest next-gen DVD player to date.

Wal-Mart has officially stocked and begun selling Toshiba’s low-cost HD-A2 HD DVD player for $198. The player was already the least expensive standalone HD disc player, but the Wal-Mart price point takes that record even lower.

The player, which only allows playback of up to 1080i content, originally reailed for around $500, but retailers very early marked it down on their own, most notably of which was Amazon. The online giant came close to the $200 point.

Right now the cheapest Blu-ray player on tap for the holiday season is the new $400, 40 GB version of the Playstation 3. The PS3 has quite consistently been the cheapest Blu-ray playback device since its launch last year.

Competitive discount store Target has announced it will only sell Blu-ray players for the holiday season. The battle for the average consumer in the high def DVD war will most likely begin over the next couple months, just as DVD player sales spiked in the holiday seasons of the late-90’s and early 2000s.