Wal-Mart hopes for a Blu-ray boom

(Credit: CNET)

Wal-Mart is trying to fill the space in consumers' shopping bags left empty by the disappearance of Circuit City. As part of that effort, the retail giant is stepping up its Blu-ray offering.

In the next few weeks, Wal-Mart will sell two Blu-ray players priced below $200, according to a post on the company's official CheckOutBlog.com. We know one will be a $198 Philips player, though the other sub-$200 player's brand name wasn't revealed.

Wal-Mart does offer one Magnavox Blu-ray player in its stores right now for $168. It should be noted that Funai manufactures electronics under the brand names of Philips, Magnavox, and Sylvania for the North American market, so the quality between those brand names won't really vary. And even though getting below $200 is important, the features won't be the same as a player you could get for just $50 more. They'll likely be Blu-ray Profile 1.1, not the latest 2.0, and can't do multimedia streaming from services like Netflix and Pandora. See our CNET review of the range of current Blu-ray models across a variety of price points for more.

Besides more players, Wal-Mart is also selling more discs. The retailer's renewed Blu-ray push comes on the heels of its move past Amazon.com as the nation's No. 2 seller of Blu-ray discs. Best Buy leads with 40-50 percent market share of Blu-ray discs sold at retail, followed by Wal-Mart with 20-30 percent share, according to industry sources cited by Blu-ray.com. The data showed Wal-Mart leapfrogged Amazon.com, which now has 15-20 percent of Blu-ray sales.

Wal-Mart is currently in the process of instituting an electronics department makeover to be unveiled in each of its 3,500 stores over the next month. The retailer hopes more store displays will help it compete better with Best Buy in the fight over the space left by Circuit City's demise.

[robertorosco]

My first blu-ray player was the Magnavox model sold at Wal-Mart. It stopped working in less than 6 months. My new Sony BDP-S350 seems to be more promising :D I'll never buy another Funai product :P

[markedman0965]

Any product that starts with "FU" can't be good :)

[amber0728]

It's too bad the Dutchies allowed Funai to manufacture items using the Philips and Magnavox name - Funai products are garbage. Check the manufacturing information, if it's not made in Europe of the actual Philips plants in Mexico ... run away ... my PHILIPS BR is fantastic, load time, image and sound quality are superb - the 42" Philips Ambilight it's connected to makes my Master Bedroom a sweet AV paradise. BUT - My "philips-funai" 19" guest room HDTV has never worked reliably and the customer service center in the Philipines has been 2 degrees better than yelling into the wind.

[rleemann]

I am one of what they called one of those new adaptors. I have plenty of door stops laying around including from 2005 a HD DVD player and let me just say if you buy a 1.0 or 1.1 BluRay player you might as well prop it up against the door of the WalMart before you leave because you wouldn't make it out the door before it becomes a door stop.

[rleemann]

As I mentioned I own a lot of door stops but the Sony BDP-S550 I bought seems to have all the bells and whistles, BD-Live, 1GB Flash, 7.1 except now I see they have players with wireless to your modem. Gee, sure could have saved me that crawl through the attic to get the RJ45 cable hooked up to the net. Don't worry it will not be long I will be showing my BDP-S550 to the door soon, I got that gotta have it syndrome that's why they call me new adopter