Thanksgiving hasn’t even come and gone yet and already the holiday retail season is heating up—several weeks in advance of the traditional “Black Friday” day-after-Thanksgiving sales. U.S.-based retailer Wal-Mart kicked off a “Secret In-Store Specials” sale Friday, opening its doors on the holiday season at 8:00 a.m. with slashed prices on a variety of potentially “hot” gifts.

 

The sale items included Toshiba’s (News - Alert) HD-A2 DVD player for $98.87. Not to be outdone, rival Best Buy (a consumer electronics retailer) lowered its permanent price for the HD-A2 player to match Wal-Mart’s sale offering, tgdaily.com said in a Friday report. After shoppers started noticing this bargain Thursday afternoon, Best Buy apparently took down its low-price page for the HD DVD player; tgdaily.com said it appeared Best Buy had discontinued this particular model.

 

PC World said in a Thursday blog posting that Best Buy discontinued the HD-A2 because it sold its entire stock of the item and is now offering a slightly higher-end model, the third-generation HD-A3 (priced at $300).

 

Shoppers looking for the HD-A2 might try out K-Mart, which said it will be offering that model during the 2007 holiday season, tdgaily reported.

 

Such low prices may mean a lot of shoppers this holiday season decide it’s time to make the move to a high-def DVD player, even if all the DVDs they buy aren’t in that format. (Some titles are only available in rival Blu-ray format.) PC World noted that HD DVD player buyers can get five free movies with the device, a further incentive for consumers.

 

The PC World blog post quoted Envisioneering Group spokesperson Richard Doherty as predicting that Blu-ray Disc players will drop in price for the holiday season; shoppers likely will be able to buy one of these devices for less than $400.