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$100 gift card promotion coming for Blu-ray

by on05 June 2008

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Wal-Mart to offer it as part of Father’s Day sale


Several sources are telling us that Wal-Mart will be offering a $100 gift card to customers that purchase any in-stock Blu-ray standalone player during its upcoming Father’s Day promotion.

The promotion is said to be starting June 8th and running through June 14th. According to reports, the $100 gift card will be good only on your next purchase at Wal-Mart and cannot be applied toward the purchase price of the player at check out. In addition we are hearing that the offer will extend only to all in-stock standalone units and not to PlayStation 3 purchases.

We are still not sure who will be eating the cost of this promotion, but it has been suggested that Wal-Mart is hoping shoppers that take advantage of this promotion will come back and spend the $100 on Blu-ray titles.

It is has been rumored that it is necessary to start clearing out older generations of Blu-ray players that are still sitting on store shelves in order to make way for the new updated Blu-ray profile 1.3 and profile 2.0 players that will occupy the same shelf spaces this holiday season. It is widely held that since the Blu-ray adoption rate is still lagging behind previous projections, promotions such as this one are going to be necessary to start to move out older Blu-ray players.

As for the consumer, it is still perhaps not the best time to buy a standalone Blu-ray player. While clearly the profile 1.3 and 2.0 players will be able to take advantage of the upcoming advanced Blu-ray features, many of the current models cannot be upgraded to offer these features due to limitations of the hardware.

Right now if you are going to make the jump to Blu-ray, the PlayStation 3 continues to be the safest best for long-term Blu-ray compatibility. If consumers do not choose a PlayStation 3, we continue to recommend that any standalone player that you purchase should offer at least Blu-ray profile 1.3 support. Of course, just because the player offers profile 1.3 support does not assure that you will be able to upgrade it to profile 2.0 support down the road. We continue to believe, based on our discussions with manufacturers, that ultimately profile 2.0 support will be necessary to take advantage of all of the advanced special features and content that will be a part of many of the next generation Blu-ray titles.

Last modified on 05 June 2008
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