An ugly ogre and People Magazine’s most recent “Sexiest Man Alive” both share the top billing in HD DVD exclusive movies that are sure to be popular for the holidays, with some “wild” girls also waiting in the wings.

Shrek the Third came out this week and has been getting excellent remarks on its picture quality, with the review at High-Def Digest saying that it’s “about as close to 3-D as you’re going to get without a pair of red and blue glasses,” and “just about any scene in the film is easily demo material.” This is the kind of thing that helps get consumers sold and hooked on HD, and it’s particularly good news that Shrek is only on HD DVD.

Recently named by People Magazine as the “Sexiest Man Alive” for 2007, Matt Damon stars as Jason Bourne in the Bourne trilogy of movies, which are also exclusive to HD DVD. The third movie of the series came out earlier this year, and Universal had shown some pictures of a box set with really cool packaging. They’ve since changed their plans about the HD DVD box set, but Amazon.com comes to the rescue in a way by offering a special Amazon-only promotion on The Bourne Trilogy for $50. The first of the movies in the trilogy already comes free in the box when you buy one of the third-gen Toshiba HD DVD players (HD-A3, HD-A30, HD-A35), and the second movie has already been out on HD DVD for many months. The Bourne Ultimatum completes the HD DVD set, and comes out on December 11.

Girls Gone Wild, Sexiest Moments Ever 2 rounds out the “sexy” as yet another December 11 release. Made popular by plenty of late-night commercials, this series has its share of controversy. It may not be the most appropriate of holiday viewing fare, but I’m sure many will be curious to see exactly what all of this looks like on HD. And like the picture quality in Shrek, sometimes this is also the kind of disc that gets people sold and hooked on the technology.

Trilogies take center stage in this week’s DVD movie releases.

Shrek the Third, one of the year’s more successful box office hits, comes exclusively to DVD and HD DVD this week. This disc is likely to do really well during the holidays, because it’s a mostly kid-friendly movie that happens to work for adults as well. The disc has some pretty interesting bonus features on HD DVD, like a coloring book, picture-in-picture commentary, and the now familiar web-enabled extras.

Shrek characters have also been featured in recent commercials for HD DVD, so it’ll be especially interesting to see how well that additional advertising help worked out — both for the movies and HD DVD player sales.

Also out this week is Oceans Thirteen, another third movie of a trilogy, by itself and as part of a box set.

(all links go to Amazon.com order pages)

Shrek the Third (2007) Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake Directed by Chris Miller Rated PG

Oceans Trilogy Brad Pitt, George Clooney Directors include Steven Soderbergh Not Rated

Oceans Thirteen (2007) Brad Pitt, George Clooney Directed by Steven Soderbergh Rated PG-13

Pride & Prejudice (2004) Keira Knightley, Moya Brady Directed by Joe Wright Rated PG

Ultimate Force (2006) Bozidar Smiljanic, Mirko Filipovic Directed by Mark Burson Unrated

Here are those Shrek commercials for HD DVD in case you missed them:

(Click here if the video does not appear above)

(Click here if the video does not appear above)

UPDATE: There’s an update to this information based on a response from a Blu-ray exec, and it puts a whole other face on this story…

A couple of interesting happenings over in Europe foreshadow some events for the US.

First off, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is coming out on HD DVD this week in Europe. It’s not even available for pre-ordering yet at Amazon.com, but that should change pretty soon as the box set and all of the volumes become available on HD DVD this December.

The other cool news from Europe is that a study of the “attach rate” (how many movies sold per player) for HD (including standalone players and game consoles) indicates that European HD DVD users buy more movies per player than their Blu-ray counterparts. Spain leads the way with an average of 5.7 movies per player, versus 0.4 per Blu-ray player. In the UK, the attach rate is 3.7 HD DVD vs. 0.8 for Blu-ray. You can get more numbers by reading the Pocket-Link.co.uk article, and we have a local copy in a recent comment to an earlier article.

One of the reasons that the attach rate story differs in the US is probably because the Playstation 3 has been available longer here than in Europe, and those millions of customers have been buying at least a movie or two now and then. Given enough time, those European PS3 owners are likely to make a more significant impact for Blu-ray over there.

One explanation for Europe’s HD DVD relative success could be that there are a lot of interesting things that only come out on HD DVD in Europe, and some of those are Blu-ray exclusive in North America. In other words, some things come out on HD DVD over there that aren’t going to come out for us over here. Perhaps there are enough such Europe-only discs that it makes HD DVD much more interesting over there.

As for our US market, we are going to see tremendous HD DVD movie sales shortly as all of those recent HD DVD owners start looking for movies for their players. My prediction comes from unscientific research based solely on noticing the recent spikes in visitor activity at this site, but it’s also common sense. Afterall, adding a hundred thousand HD DVD users to the installed base could never result in less movie sales, right?

UPDATE: The Blu-ray response to this news about attach rates is quite interesting and puts a whole other face on this story. (more…)

Everyone covering the HD DVD and Blu-ray format war is abuzz today over an Associated Press article where Sony’s head honcho admitted that the war is not as one-sided as they had been proclaiming. Howard Stringer called it a stalemate and wished that he had been CEO back when the HD DVD and Blu-ray backers had been negotiating to come up with a single format. Stringer also downplayed the importance of winning the format war in the first place.

It’s nice to see these guys finally be honest and humble in their statements. Sony came out proclaiming that the war was already won back in January, and their various spokespeople kept repeating that mantra as the year went along. They’d spin just about anything in the world as an indication of the marketplace having choosen their format.

Fast-forwarding to this holiday season, the recent sales promotions have some sources estimating that 500,000 standalone HD DVD players will have been sold by the end of November, and that more HD DVD players were sold in the recent weekend than Sony’s least expensive player has sold in all of its five months on the market.

While it’s encouraging to hear the big guy at Sony be a little more humble than some of his colleagues on Team Blu-ray, HD DVD supporters should not misrepresent Stringer or Sony as having admitted to defeat. For one thing, the AP article only has a few short quotes and it’s really easy to read more into these little tid-bits than the speaker intended. This over-analysis happens all the time, and the most recent case was with a Warner exec’s comments about them being more watchful about the holiday sales.

The only thing we know for a fact is that HD DVD sales are great and that there’s a lot of momentum for the format as we head into Christmas and 2008. The format war is very much like the age old fable of the tortoise and the hare. HD DVD’s tortoise still has some distance to make up, and we don’t know for sure yet whether Blu-ray’s hare is going to give us the same ending.

• Howard Stringer calls it a “difficult fight”

Though not as dramatic as what went on last week, there are still some signs of HD DVD deals in the air.

The first one is a $200 instant rebate when you purchase certain Toshiba REGZA LCD HDTV models, and either the HD-A3, HD-A30, or HD-A35 HD DVD players. This deal is going on at Amazon.com, and Best Buy, and I’d expect it to appear at other places like Circuit City and Buy.com, though they didn’t have this offer up online as I wrote this.

Best Buy sweetens the deal by offering three free movies at the time of purchase, and that’s on top of the two that already come in the box with the player, plus the five free that you can mail away for (that’s a total of 10 movies).

The 1080p REGZA models feature CE-Link, which allows the remote on your HD DVD player to control some functions on the TV as well, like having it automatically turn on when you want to watch a movie. CE-Link is based on the HDMI-CEC standard, which means it can work with other HDMI-CEC devices. Of the three Toshiba HD DVD players, only the HD-A30 and HD-A35 support CE-Link.

Those HDTVs and HD DVD players need movies, and Amazon has a deal on a few Universal titles.

Up until Walmart decided to carry a bunch of discs at $15, I could always count on Amazon.com to have some of the best pricing on HD DVD movies, which are usually 30% off. Right now, they’ve got a limited time offer (with no information on when it runs out) for 45% off on six movies from Universal:

• The Big Lebowski
• 12 Monkeys
• Casino
• Backdraft
• Doom
• Seabiscuit

Unless one of the retailers decides to stir things up again, the next major HD DVD sale event is coming up on Black Friday when we know that Sears is offering the HD-A30 for $170. It’s not as sexy of a price as $99 for the HD-A2, but I’m sure there will be some other excitement and fireworks to look forward to as we head into the heart of the holiday season.

• Learn more about Toshiba REGZA HDTVs
• Amazon.com’s Toshiba HDTV & HD DVD $200 rebate
• $200 deal at Best Buy

An article in Video Business estimates that around 90,000 HD DVD players were sold in the last few days surrounding the Walmart $99 promotion. This number includes the Walmart price-matchers such as Circuit City and Best Buy, but since it doesn’t cover every single retailer, they think that the final number could even be a little higher.

Let’s say that they overcounted by several thousands. For example, many of these units are now being resold on eBay and craigslist, and many more are not going to be opened up until Christmas morning. (If you buy one from eBay, etc. make sure the seller hasn’t removed the UPC code, thus disqualifying you from the “5 free movies” offer)

Even if only half of those HD-A2s and A3s were immediately put to use, we should start seeing a healthy bump in HD DVD software sales in the next couple of weeks. This is important because it sends a message to retailers and content providers about the vitality of the HD DVD format. Concrete numbers proving HD DVD is here to stay means that retailers who already carried HD DVD will make more room for it on their shelves, and those who didn’t offer HD DVD will have to think about starting. It translates into better selection when HD DVD owners go looking for movies to buy or rent.

Some of you might have heard that Toshiba lost a ton of money on each of these players, and that this was some sort of desperation sale. A few critics try to point out that this was a discontinued model. A lot of this is just noise from those opposed to HD DVD. (more…)

The studios release new discs every Tuesday, and Warner is releasing a couple of box sets this week that are like starter kits for your HD DVD collection. Sure, the “5 free” promotion helps in that department, however, it does seem to take ages and ages for those discs to come. By the time my discs came, I had pretty much forgotten most of what I had ordered.

The individual movies in Warner’s sets were already released weeks or months ago, but they’re cheaper when you pick them up as a set for around $60.

The bigger holiday hits are on their way in the weeks ahead. Shrek the Third is due next week on November 13, with the remastered fan-favorite Star Trek box set due on November 20. If you lived in the UK, then you could pick up the Harry Potter movies on HD DVD this next week, but wait just a few more weeks and they’ll be here in their North American form. All of these movies are available for pre-order right now, in case you want to make sure you get yours in time for Christmas.

(all links go to Amazon ordering pages)

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel Directed by Denis Dugan Rated PG-13

The Aviator (2004) Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Beckinsale, Frances Conroy, Willem Dafoe Directed by Martin Scorsese Rated PG-13

Best of HD DVD — Action Troy, Alexander, Blood Diamond, Wyatt Earp Rated R

Best of HD DVD — Family Happy Feet, Corpse Bride, Scooby-Doo, The Ant Bully Rated PG

Walmart started November with a bang for HD DVD by instigating the first shots in a pricing war with fellow HD DVD retailers (and the competing format). More promotions are likely in the weeks ahead, but what about months and months ahead?

It seems logical that $99 sales on HD DVD players would be followed up by stocking more HD DVD movies on their shelves. There are over 300 movies available on HD DVD, and it would be nice to see more of them in stores — but at the right price! According to a recent article in Video Business, it appears that Walmart is going to do just that. They are expanding their high-definition software support to just about all of their stores by May, 2008. Movie studios expect the retailer to dedicate large amounts of retail shelf space to high-def discs.

Walmart is credited with putting DVD on the map, and they seem ready to lead the way for mass-market high-def adoption as well. The last few days have demonstrated that where Walmart goes, other retailers are happy to follow. By offering a bunch of HD DVD discs for $15, they have hinted at prices to come. This eventually spreads to other retailers, and that’s good news for all of us.

We’ve seen some amazing deals on the entry-level HD DVD players these last few days, with each new offer outdoing the last or matching it with an intriguing twist such as throwing in more free movies. As the dust temporarily settles, it appears that the HD-A2 is going to be about $99 until everybody starts to run out of them. Its successor, the HD-A3 is going to be about the same price at those few stores where the computers or clerks are confused, or closer to $199, with room for discounts or promotions to take it lower.

There are two legal ways of getting a player for $0. One is to receive it as a present (many people bought HD-A2s at Walmart for this very purpose), and the other way comes from contests and giveaways. (more…)