Following a sudden price war between retailers to offer the lowest price HD DVD player (which Best Buy is currently winning at $180) Wal-Mart has gone one better than the competition to offer the Toshiba HD-A2 at just $98.87 this Friday as part of its 'Secret In-Store Specials'. However, you might want to get to Wal-Mart early (the offer starts at 8:00 a.m.) if you're interested, because the company does comment that this deal is only available while stocks last and it will not be offering the discount in all stores. Wal-Mart's regular price for the HD DVD player is currently $198, so this is a saving of almost $100.Update: here is a link to the Wal-Mart page pictured above, you should be able to check if your local store will be offering this promotion by clicking on the HD DVD player's picture.

Wal-Mart To Sell 300$ PC With OpenOffice

Wal-Mart Inc. opened its campaign for the back-to-school PC sales season on Wednesday by introducing a 298$ desktop from Everex which combines three top characteristics, an open-source software, a power-efficient processor, and a lack of bloatware. The Monitor-Less Everex Impact GC3502 runs on a energy saving 1.5GHz C7-D processor from Via Technologies and Includes Microsoft Windows Vista along with OpenOffice.org 2.2 version of word processing and spreadsheet tools.

Some of you may have heard about Wal-Mart's plans to buy 2 million HD DVD players. Wal-Mart has recently stepped up to the plate and denied all rumors. The manufacturing company had posted what looked like an order for $300 million worth of HD DVD players, but in reality, that form is nothing more than a price-check, a figure to see how much it would cost to get that many HD DVD players. So, in short, Wal-Mart is considering getting a gazillion HD DVD players, just not from the supplier that posted an "order".

At this point, it seems like the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray high-definition media war looks a lot like a game of chess. And right now, that game of chess is locked in a stalemate. In an effort to break the stalemate in favor of HD DVD, Wal-Mart has made a cunning move. They are attempting to make HD DVD the first affordable HD medium. They have placed an order for 2 million $299 USD HD DVD players. While a noble effort on Wal-Mart's part, we won't be seeing any of these players until at least late 2008. By then, Blu-ray may have come down in price enough to win the HD media war.

Wal-Mart is jumping on the downloadable movies bandwagon, along with companies such as Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, by launching its new video downloads service. Wal-Mart will provide film downloads for as little as $19.88, having reached agreements with Walt Disney, Paramount Studios, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. This puts it in a stronger position than Apple, which only has Disney and Paramount. Wal-Mart has will also be providing Fox TV programmes, along with content from MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, available to download for $1.96 - but it's still in talks with ABS, CBS and NBC at the moment. There is no information about when the final service will be launched, but the beta started today.

For anyone who is unaware, The Pirate Bay is the world's largest BitTorrent tracker - meaning it is a nice illegal haven for many people who pirate films and other media. So although you wouldn't expect a big supermarket firm like Wal-Mart to support such a site, they seem to be quite happy to provide them with an estimated $75,000 each month for advertising space. Apparently users have been seeing adverts by Wal-Mart for a number of DVDs, including "The Sopranos", "Smallville", "Desperate Housewives" and the movie "Office Space." If Wal-Mart honestly thinks many of the people on a site like that are planning on buying their DVDs, it could be a little disappointed. Wal-Mart goes on the list of The Pirate Bay sponsors including Verizon and Australia Bank (although the latter claimed it advertised by "mistake"). Admittedly, not all Torrenting is illegal, but the vast majority is.