Online giant Wal-Mart is taking the steps of many other big players, by confirming that in the beginning of June the world's largest retailer will only stock Blu-ray players and movies. Over the next few months, Wal-Mart will phase out all HD-DVD products and reorganize their stores to focus exclusively on Blu-ray. Gary Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Wal-Mart, U.S. commented, "We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases. With the customers best interest in all we do, we wanted to share our decision and timeline with them as soon as possible, knowing it will help simplify their purchase decision, increase selection, and increase adoption long term. We anticipate enhancing our selection with continued great values in hi-definition Blu-ray products, so our customers can further enhance their entertainment experience at home." The win of Blu-ray over HD-DVD becomes a step closer to undeniable, with Netflix and retailer Best Buy already commited to Blu-Ray. Now Wal-Mart and soon Toshiba if all reports become true.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has begun selling systems based on the AMD quad-core Phenom processor at Wal-Mart, according to the retailer's website. HP becomes the first top-tier U.S. computer vendor to offer systems using the Phenom processor. Smaller vendors, such as Falcon Northwest and iBuypower, have been offering systems for a number of weeks. The HP M8330F Pavilion Desktop comes with the Phenom 9500 Quad-Core Processor (2.2GHz), a 640GB (2x 320GB) 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard drive, 3072MB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM memory, and Windows Vista Home Premium. The system is priced at $959.99. Other large retailers, such as Sears, are also offering the system. The Phenom 9500 and 9600 processors, generally available now, contain a bug that can cause system instability in certain rare overload situations. The bug can be fixed with a workaround. AMD is also in preparation of a new "B3" revision processors that should fix the TLB bug.

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.

While Blu-Ray may be getting more sales as of late, HD-DVD proprietors have a figurative ace-in-the-hole. They know that regardless of how good a product is, nobody's going to get it if it is not reasonably priced. And so, they are trying to get an HD-DVD player into customers' homes by offering players at $200 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is currently stocking said HD-DVD players, and will formally begin selling them on November 3rd.