There’s a big rumour going around in DVD technology circles that Wal-Mart may be gearing up to release a dirt cheap HD-DVD player by next year. They’ve apparently placed an order with a Chinese electronics manufacturer for two million units at a cost of $50 each, which would allow them to sell these players for a retail price of $299 USD or less. So is there any truth to this?

Well, the reported deal seems to be legit, but it is currently unclear whether the players are HD-DVD or Blu-ray (the original news source was in Chinese and the translations have been vague). This could be a crucial turning point in the HD-DVD format war; not only would the price point of $299 be $100 less than even the cheapest current HD-DVD player (and $300 less than the cheapest Blu-ray device) but Wal-Mart is supposedly responsible for 40% of all regular DVD sales. With that kind of influence, if they started to lean toward one particular format, it would be all but game over for the other. This would definitely help break the technology into the mainstream either way, so I’m curious to see what happens. At this point, Wal-Mart has made no official announcement, so it’s still nothing more than hearsay.