In the months after Toshiba shut down HD DVD, some prominent retailers came forward to offer trade-ins or store credits as a way to ease the pain. Some of these promotions were aimed at transitioning customers to Blu-ray, and many people, myself included, simply used our store credits to buy newly discounted HD DVD movies or something else that we might really want at those stores.

Trade-in programs for HD DVD discs, where you could trade them in for Blu-ray versions of the same, were also offered, but there were still hundreds of movies that were only out on HD DVD and were not appearing on Blu-ray any time soon, so this was not a useful proposition.

A year later, that disparity has been diminished and most HD DVD titles are now available in the surviving format. The only obstacle is that Blu-ray movies are still on the expensive side (as HD DVD titles would also have been), and the prospect of building a library is daunting, if you already built up a library on HD DVD in the first place. Plus, many HD DVD owners have grown accustomed to paying only about $5 per movie from all these closeout sales.

Warner’s newly launched Red2Blu site, may help make a dent in that transition to Blu-ray. Knowing that HD DVD owners are mighty happy with paying $5 for movies nowadays, Warner is charging $4.95 per Warner HD DVD title that you want to trade-in for the Blu-ray equivalent. You can trade in up to 25 movies, all for a flat shipping fee of $6.95 ($8.95 in Alaska, Hawaii & Puerto Rico). A $15 off $50 coupon on Blu-ray purchases is also part of the deal. This offer is currently only available in the US.

You don’t have to mail in your discs, only the cover art from their HD DVD case — which must be intact and include the UPC code. This means you can keep your HD DVD library (and possibly sell those discs for a few bucks - but lack of cover art definitely reduces some value).

There’s plenty more information at Warner’s site: http://Red2Blu.com.

There was recent activity was over in the comments on a couple of posts, and I had not realized that so much time had gone by since a new posting. There are actually many things to talk about, so let’s see if I can get us caught up.

Traderbora is still delighting lots of Amazon customers with low $5 prices and free shipping on plenty of titles. There’s also the usually reliable InetVideo sale that comes around where you can pick up a few hard to find titles, like Bonnie and Clyde.

Astute shoppers from the AVS forum have found HD DVD discs in unexpected places, like Burlington Coat Factory stores. Some had also seen discs at Kroeger’s grocery stores (Ralph’s in California - although not at any that I went to).

There were reports a few weeks ago about a book by Microsoft insiders which provided a small peek into Microsoft’s HD DVD effort, and explained it as a calculated business decision. Well of course it was! Did you think that Panasonic and Sony partnered over Blu-ray for altruistic purposes? Apparently, Microsoft joined the HD DVD team as a way to encourage more cross-licensing of its technologies. Toshiba and Microsoft already had a close relationship dating back to the PocketPC and Zune, so their readiness to collaborate on HD DVD should be no surprise.

But here’s a big surprise: just a month ago, Warner decided that HD DVD aint so bad afterall, at least for China. Well, it’s not exactly the HD DVD format that we’re all familiar with, but the Chinese version, CBHD. Warner has announced that they will put out their big hits, including the Harry Potter series, while also pushing movies on Blu-ray. Unfortunately CBHD is slightly different enough from HD DVD that this news is not very useful for HD DVD fans.

• Traderbora has $5 and free shipping at Amazon
• InetVideo has a sale as usual
• Microsoft insiders write about HD DVD in a book about intellectual property deals
• Warner endorses Chinese HD DVD format

A year ago today, on February 19, 2008, Toshiba officially withdrew from the high-def DVD format war. Their announcement was inevitable, and came after many weeks of bad news from various companies like Warner, Netflix, Walmart and Best Buy ending their support for the HD DVD format. Toshiba had spent many, many, hundreds of millions of dollars developing and marketing HD DVD technology, and many partners had put in their share of time and money as well. But in the end, there was just too much negative momentum to fight back.

Toshiba moved on to continue advancing technologies they were already involved with such as flash memory, hard drives, HDTVs, laptops, and their work on the Cell processor. Last year, they came out with a super duper image enhancement technology for standard DVDs, and have more recently demonstrated Cell processor applications for more of that image enhancing for HDTVs and computers. But neither Toshiba or Microsoft have announced any plans for doing anything with Blu-ray.

I’m sure many of you who were deeply involved with format war battles can remember all of those days and weeks very well. more »

UPDATE: One week into February, and this deal is still working!

UPDATE: Still going strong on Feburary 16! Traderbora has plenty of movies for $5 and free shipping.

The most recent Amazon-associated merchant deal only lasted a short while before many of the movies stopped being eligible for free shipping. The prices were pretty good, but without free or discounted shipping, the cost-per-disc in the end was not always favorable.

A hot tip at the AVS forum says that at this very minute, and maybe at least for the rest of this day, there’s another Amazon merchant offering plenty of titles for $5.94 and the majority of them are eligible for Amazon’s discounted or free shipping promotions.

Go now and good luck!

• Traderbora Storefront at Amazon.com

UPDATE: It appears that the free shipping only applies to movies that are shipped out from Amazon. Movies sent out from this Amazon-affiliated dealer do not qualify for free shipping. I’m working on a list of the ones that do qualify, hang on…

UPDATE: This deal may be dead or lukewarm. As I went through the selection of movies, I found that many added to my cart last night were no longer being fulfilled through Amazon, and thus ineligible for the discounted shipping. In addition, many movies are now $4.97 and others have gone up by a few bucks. Try your luck with this deal by looking for the movies that indicate “2 new and used for…” and one of those 2 is likely to be done through Amazon, and thus eligible for free shipping. (thanks to ’sdscribe’ at the AVS forum for that hint)

Amazon.com offers numerous channels for retailing. They’ll sell many products themselves, and also partner with stores or resellers in some way, including handling the order fulfillment. It’s that latter case that brings us the most recent closeout sale on 140 HD DVD titles.

“Closeoutmovies Storefront” is a reseller using Amazon’s order fulfilment system, which means that Amazon ships directly from their own warehouses, and that you can still get some Amazon features like Amazon Prime, and Amazon’s free Super Saver shipping on orders that are $25 or more. At the $5.99 price, you’ll have to order four movies and some cheap $1.04 trinket to qualify for free shipping.

All of the movies are Universal Studios titles and selling for $5.99. The Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, Season One box sets are selling for $12.99. I checked over at Buy.com and DeepDiscount.com to see if this might be part of some general sale on Universal discs, but no luck. It appears that this is a closeout only from this particular seller on Amazon.

The other deals that people have been reporting both here and at the AVS forum threads have been great sales at Fry’s, and that Blockbuster is selling their used movies. In some cases, the Blockbuster movies are barely used, and in some other cases, the movies are arriving damaged. Longtime reader, Patrick, has been lucky with his Blockbuster orders as have many others. If you want to try them out, make sure to enter discount code holidaysurprise to save an additional 30%.

Some of you are going to mention that good old inetvideo.com has movies for $3.99 and $5.99, and those are good prices indeed. However, shipping on a $25 order is nearly $14, so it doesn’t work out to be the same great deal right now as this one through Amazon.

• 140 Universal discs for $5.99 via Amazon.com
• Blockbuster’s used movie sale with 30% off using code holidaysurprise

They said it best over at Engadget in describing Toshiba’s 2008 CES press conference as more of a funeral. It had been just a few days after Warner made a public announcement that they’d be going exclusive with Blu-ray, and the mood over at the HD DVD part of the show was definitely morose.

A whole year later in 2009, Toshiba has put on a much happier press conference full of some new HD related innovations, but with the notable absence of any Blu-ray support. Among Toshiba’s announcements were Regza HDTV models that can play movies stored on USB flash drives, or downloaded directly from the internet. The models also offer enhanced up-scaling of non-HD video, and a 240Hz effect for smoother motion.

Toshiba also presented upcoming technology using the Cell processor which could handle multiple HD sources simultaneously, for example a DVR serving different rooms with their own HD movies. The Cell was also driving a prototype 56-inch 4K x 2K resolution HDTV (which is double the current HDTV resoluton). The Cell processor was jointly developed by Toshiba, IBM and Sony, and Toshiba has been working with it since around the pre-HD DVD days on various multimedia applicatons. IBM has used the Cell on some servers, and Sony uses it as the brains for the PS3.

It’s been interesting to see what the other companies, many of which are already Blu-ray supporters, have been up to as well. While they are still pushing forward with Blu-ray technology, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and even Sony seem to be embracing digital downloads too. All have announced HDTVs that connect to the internet for the purpose of viewing various kinds of content. LG has also been working on Blu-ray players that download movies.

Most of us in the USA have some form of high-speed internet at home, and even on our mobile phones when we are out and about. It’s an inevitability that we will receive more and more of our movies from some sort of online/on-demand source. It’s also inevitable that these movies will become more HD and eventually rival what we already had in HD DVD and can get now on Blu-ray. But when exactly will that happen? And will there be a physical format, like a 50-layer Blu-ray disc, that delivers the next level of HD resolution (like the aforementioned 4K x 2K)? Or will the next physical format be some kind of memory card like the recently announced SDXC?

In all this talk about the future, I was somewhat amused to hear that one of Panasonic’s new Blu-ray players is a combo unit that also plays VHS tapes. I’m sure they have a good reason for doing this, and I hope it’s better than, “because we can.” I hope it upscales those VHS tapes really, really, really well.

Borders has a “Cyber Monday” deal on Dec. 1-2 of an additional 40% discount on their DVD box sets. The HD DVD sets are already significantly discounted to begin with at around $10 a piece for titles such as The Sopranos, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica, and it will be interesting to see if you can get another 40% off on these. The sale applies to their DVD and Blu-ray selection as well.

Reader Mark left a tip about HD Scape’s clearance of their nature and landscape HD DVDs for a ridiculous price of $3.95. You may never have considered getting a fireplace or aquarium disc at the original prices, but at $4 each, they might make a great disc to play in the background while you have company over for the holidays.

Finally, on a personal and site note, I’m going on vacation for most of the month and won’t be able to post about Christmas deals so much. But you can come to the rescue of your fellow HD DVD bretheren and report deals in the comments. To prevent comment spam, and the occasional format war contribution, all comments at the site are moderated. This means I read and approve each one. I’m going to be delayed on approving these comments, but please don’t let that stop you from sending them along and sharing info about the sales you’ve found.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

• Borders 40% off on box sets (Dec. 1-2)
• $3.95 Nature and Landscape HD DVDs clearance at HD Scape
• Amazon’s $7.99 sale

Here are quick links to the usual places that have HD DVD deals:

• Amazon.com’s HD DVD store usually can’t be beat when they decide to put on a sale
• DeepDiscount.com usually has free shipping and decent prices
• iNetVideo gets creative with their deals

UPDATE: The sale has been upgraded to $7.99!

Amazon snuck in a sale on 99 Universal Studios titles on us, just in time to order for the big Thanksgiving and Christmas family get-togethers coming up in the weeks ahead.

At $8.99 a piece, most of these HD DVD discs are cheaper than their DVD equivalents, and just a few bucks more than what they might sell for as used discs.

For all the talk about not buying any more discs for a deceased format, it’s really hard to pass up some of these deals. It’s all sweetened by the fact that Amazon typically charges no sales tax for most states, and how easy it is to get free shipping by ordering more than $25 of stuff.

Here are the 99 discs currently listed for $8.99:

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The “HD DVD Index” would have solidly outperformed its Wall Street counterparts these last couple of weeks, with prices hovering solidly around the $11 point, instead of swinging through wild ups and downs.

The last big noteworthy sale was from Amazon who had a 66% off sale on 122 titles featuring many Warner discs at $9.99. If you visit what’s left of that sale today, the selection has dwindled to about 40 discs. Amazon solves that problem with a recent sale on about 100 discs, mostly Universal Studios titles, at $10.99.

Also interesting is a “while supplies last” sale on Transformers over at iNetVideo, for $3.99 and $2.95 shipping.

And if you’ve got a Fry’s Electronics or two in your part of the world, then check out their aisles and displays for some deals starting at $5.99.

Below is the list of 122 discs on sale at Amazon for $10.99:

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