I know it is a little late but better late then never eh? Anyways last week, on Friday Nov. 2nd wal-mart was having a “pre-black Friday” sale and one of the times they had on sale was a $98 HD DVD player. I’ve been on the fence for months now on whether I should pick up the player or not.

Before the sale I already had the HD DVD add on drive, however I wasn’t fully satisfied with the picture quality I was getting from the xbox 360/HD DVD setup. So once this sale came up I figured what the hell for $98 if it didn’t work out I could either sell it for a small profit or keep it as an upscaling dvd player for the bedroom tv.

The day before I made arrangements for my grandma to come early to watch Abbee so I could leave early and get to Wal-mart before the rush, well I ended up over sleeping a little and was running behind, I didn’t get out of the house until 7:15am and with traffic didn’t get to Wal-mart until 7:25 – 7:30. So I rushed to get inside and made may way to the back of the store and found my self looking around for a line, and to my amazement there were only two people waiting in the electronics department, and we got to talking and they were waiting for the $349 Acer laptops, which there was a stock clerk loading up and end cap with them when I turned around. I asked him where the HD-A2′s were and pointed down a few rows and I turn around and see a glorious end cap full of HD-A2 players. I made my way to the end cap and tried to grab a player and hold onto it until 8am when the sale officially started, however I was rudely greeted by another employee that grabbed the player out from under my arm and said I couldn’t touch the players until 8am.

Thinking fine, I’ll wait here till 8am. 7:45 rolls around and I am still the only one in line for the HD-A2 where as the line for the laptop was getting longer and longer. Finally 7:50 rolls around and two people join me in the line for the hd dvd player. 7:55 and a few more show up. Finally 8am rolls around, I grab a player off the end cap, then grab one of each of the $14 hd dvd movie sale and head to the check out counter.

I leave that morning with a $98 hd dvd player, 7 movies, and a MIR for 5 more free movies. It couldn’t have worked out any better than it did.

Since Jody and Abbee where gone the entire weekend, I got home, grabbed a few beers and headed to the basement theater room and watched the Last Samurai as well as Four Brothers Friday night. Saturday night I re-watched King Kong and The Italian Job, all four in glorious HD DVD.

All in all, I am happy with my purchase/addition to my Home Theater Setup and if you have a hdtv and have a chance to pick up an HD DVD player for under $100 I would highly recommend it.

- Josh