Wal-Mart to advertise HDTVs on Monday Night Football

[HDBeat]

Filed under: Advertising, Industry, News, Programming
When the HDTV buying bug comes around and bits ya, do you think "Man, I need to head down to Wal-Mart to check out the latest HDTVs -- plus, they have my favorite fruit snacks on sale." Wal-Mart is hoping that with a little bit of advertising targeting the Monday Night Football crowd that eventually someone will. The big giant massive box retailer is going to try to throw their giant weight around and force their way into the HDTV arena currently owned by Best Buy and Circuit City. Will it work? Yup. They did the same thing a few years ago when they over took Toys-R-Us as the number one retailer of children's toys. We don't think many of our readers descend down to the sub-culture of Wal-Mart to buy an HDTV but many of their current shoppers will.

Would you buy an HDTV at Wal-Mart?

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[MatrixDweller]

Walmart currently stocks the "cheapest" mass produced TV sets around. They are basically 5 years away from a landfill. Walmart demands low costs from their suppliers and wih their gigantic buying power they get it. They will probably stock sets mass produced in China by companies like RCA or VIZIO or some other company you've never heard of.

I would never buy a TV from Walmart because I am one who enjoys quality. If Walmart is selling it, that means that it was mass produced cheaply or was a sell off of surplus manufacturer's stock. There would probably be reliability issues either way. Sure Walmart will take it back at their store, but do you want to have to lug back a 100lb TV.

Plus if you had questions about different models, Walmart's minimum wage employee (if you can find one to help) hardly cares if you buy crap or quality.

[khellandros66]

Wow

So you think that Vizio is a junk brand along with Sony... hmm news to me.

Also your lacking knowledge in their business model does not validate what you've said any better. I know cause I worked for them for almost a year and they are very keen on teaching their employees about why and how they do business, not just with consumers, but with suppliers as well. Thats okay though, I envision most peoples knowledge of companies to the limit of what they hear on the news or see on CNN, etc.

~Bobby

[Otto]

khellandros66 wrote:

So you think that Vizio is a junk brand along with Sony... hmm news to me.

There was some discussion here about TV brands and their customer support. Unfortunately, the link is dead, but yeah -- Vizio was not considered very good in reliability, and repairs were difficult or non-existent.

[MatrixDweller]

I'm going off of direct experience when shopping in their stores. The kids they hire for employees are too busy talking with each other or doing the 1000 mile stare. The brands they carry are low end "Cheap" models. Sure they carry Sony, but it's always Sony's low end models that are mass produced in China. They'll have Samsung too, but again their low end Chinese made sets.

Sony does make crappy products too. Sony's bottom end receivers are garbage and falsely misrepresent themselves to unknowledgeable consumers. The HTDDW990 HTIB states that it produces 140W per channel plus 200W for the sub. Wow...looking deeper you see that at 140W it has a THD of 10% (ten percent). A friend of mine bought one thinking Sony = good and 900W = awesome. That's the kind of product Walmart primarily sells throughout their stores...landfill.

If you want quality, your not going to get it at Walmart. If you don't want to pay much and quality is not an issue, Walmart is your store.