So I tried to PM the $99 A2 at close to a dozen stores today...not a single one had them in stock. I would have loved to pick an extra 1 or 2 up for the parents...but I have a feeling these prices will come up again several times throughout the year.

Edit: The website now shows each store as having a minimum of 10 units. I imagine these will all be gone with-in the hour. I'll give it a shot at 11:00 or so and take an early lunch break. Maybe I'll get lucky?

Anybody think that Walmart will also pricematch the 2 free hd-dvds that Best Buy is offering. I will weep tears of joy if my local Walmart will do it!

I dare say the Walmart crowd is going to need a little more education when buying a standalone vs. a gaming machine.

I do think it's asinine to put the composite in there. Hell, my BDP-S1 was the same way.

I doubt it...but worth a shot.

IIRC, the A1 is the only HD/BR player to ever include an HDMI cable in the box (besides what Costco does). I think every other play has always included composite cables.

In the fine print on the "secret sale" website, it says "Prices may vary in WI, OK, UT, HI, and Puerto Rico." WTF? If I waste a couple hours in the morning trying to get one of these, and they are like $150, I'm going to be pissed.

There's some law (fair price act?) that you can't undercut competition or some crap like that. Check out the HD DVD news thread for a rant by Bill Hunt who kinda describes it.

Bill Hunt has no idea what he is talking about. The HI and Puerto Rico price difference is obvious - those places always cost more. Those other states - I don't know why its like that...perhaps the idea of limited time sales are not allowed.

Quick question: should I arrive shortly before 8am or should I start waiting around 6:30-7am? Yes, I know it's 2:30am, but I plan on getting up around 5:45am or so....

If only BD would do prices like this, I'd fianlly have both.

I'm not leaving till 7:30 but it's only a few minutes from my house.

I wanted to buy at Best Buy because I had $150 of Reward credit. The $99 A2 were long gone, but for $250 I picked up the A3, got the 2 free in box, 2 free in store, plus the 5 free. So for $100 out of pocket I got the 1080p model plus 2 more discs. More than worth it to me.

The A3 is not 1080p.

Got it!!! They had around 25-30 of them at my store. They gave out paper slips then I stood in line for around 10 minutes. Mostly older people there looking to pick it up, but a few college kids.

wow, no one waiting at mine, in fact they were still in the back i had to ask for one she went to get it and a laptop for one other person. pretty good deal

They had about 20 at mine. Five people and I bought one. When I left another guy was arguing with the manager because he wouldn't let him buy the remaining 14. The guy was yelling "But I have 14 TVs in my house!"

No, but if his set is 1080p it will deintelace anyway, resulting in the same 1080p display he'd of had if the player did it.

I went to check it out and maybe pick up some of the $15 discs. There was a pretty good line ~25 people. They seemed to be selling them pretty fast. I think it was the same line for the TV & A2, and maybe the laptop also. Their HD-DVD selection was poor, and I didn't see any signs for $15, and didn't feel like bothering the people who were selling the other stuff, so I don't know if the cheap discs were at the register...

Went to my Wal-Mart in Greenville, SC and was surprised to see at least 50 people in line and about 20 or so HD-DVD players piled at the register (this was around 8:15 so I'm not sure how many there were to start with). So I didn't bother to wait.

Oh well, already have a HD-DVD add-on for the 360 but thought I'd grab a stand-alone at this price.

I was actually shocked at how many people stood in line to buy the thing. There had to have been at least 50 people standing around for either the Toshiba player and/or the laptop.

Mine sold out in about 15 minutes. I got there around 8 to see if I could snag one and *poof* there gone. This is a good sign for HD DVD.

I went to the "ghetto" walmart this morning just to see what was happening. Nice line at the electronics section. Some had 4 in their carts, while others had none as I suppose they were being brought from the back. Also saw a few people getting the laptops. I assume they did the paper slip thing. I looked for the Hd DVDS and finally found them. The only one I found that was on the "sale" list was Blood Diamond and I purchased that.

That's what happened to me here in Raleigh too. I tried 4 stores and called another and they were all gone. The closest I got was on Glenwood, I saw about five people walking out with them and sure enough they got the last ones. Guess I'm not jumping on a format yet. Until the next big sale at least.

No luck at my local Walmart. Got there around 7:50, was a line of about 25 people in front of me, but all lumped together for various things, the laptop, the tv, and the hd-dvd player. They weren't going to start selling them until 8am on the dot. No tickets handed out, we had to wait while each person was actually wrung up from their order. Fabulous. Just before 8am, we were told that they had 17 HD-A2's in stock. They took a quick servey through the line, and I supposedly fell within the "you should be fine" zone. However, with no buying limits, people were buying 2-3 at a time, and voila, with only 2 people in front of me, got the "we are sold out of dvd players".

Oh, and as for the listed $15 buck HD-DVD titles? they had no clue what I was talking about (shocker!). I was able to find one cope of "Smokin' Aces" which rang up for $29.99, and they weren't going to price adjust.

Thanks Walmart, fuckers.

Done deal. $104 and some change. I walked inside the local WalMart near the house around 8:20am EDT and passed two guys on the way out with A2s in hand. Waited in line at the electronics section for about 10min behind eight other people.

Crappy HD-DVD selection, but I ended up getting Transformers as my first ever HD-DVD purchase. First of many more I hope.