Potentially big news is rolling in from China that could make an impact on the ongoing high definition disc format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.


Update 04/27/07:
Wal-mart spokes person officially denies this rumor. See PC Mag for more details. Fuh Yuan also officially denies the deal now.

Wal-mart has supposedly ordered 2 million HD DVD player from Taiwanese OEM Fuh Yuan. These players are supposed to be priced under $300.

AVSForum has a heated discussion on this news since a couple of days. The information is still sketchy on the whole story. TDK is supposed to be involved as well. TDK has been active though in the Blu-ray camp. One comment in the discussion says even maybe we the news is just about upconverting DVD players with HDMI. This story could just vaporize as I write it.
I stumbled over the story on AkihabaraNews, who revised their story that the players would be Blu-ray, which is I think wrong. Here is another Chinese source for the same story that says HD DVD clearly.

2 million units is a boat load and if Wal-mart would succeed in selling them it would mean for the Blu-ray camp to counter with a similar deal.

At some point it will have to happen that the low-cost DVD player makers get into the HD business. The question is when.