It’s said that “April showers bring May flowers” which refers to springtime rain causing beautiful flowers to sprout the following month. Now that it’s rained on HD DVD’s parade, many HD DVD fans would like to see deals on movies sprouting up next.

Pricing on HD DVDs had come down significantly in February, even before Toshiba and partners announced their pullouts from the format. March was characterized by shoppers finding deals at Hollywood Video stores that were clearing their shelves of HD DVD titles, and later by Best Buy and Circuit City stores who, depending on your luck with the cashier and manager, might price-match and net some huge savings on titles.

For example, HD DVD fans at the AVS forum have been reporting varying amounts of success at visiting Circuit City stores and getting them to honor different flavors of an advertised 50% off sale on HD DVD titles. While 50% off the regular in-store price is not a horrible deal, 50% off their online price is much better. Unfortunately, Circuit City stores have varying policies and not everybody is able to come out a winner.

Many point out that even with the best discounting at Circuit City and Best Buy, the pricing is still consistently better online at Amazon, DeepDiscount and others, with the added bonus that you don’t have to drive from store to store looking for whatever is left, and then gambling that employees are going to ring up the deals at the maximum savings. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of fun in visiting stores to see what you can come home with that same day, so one shouldn’t begrudge people of their fun.

As the days and weeks go by, there’s usually a report here and there about Circuit City and Best Buy pulling all HD DVD titles from their shelves to return to their distributors. While it may not have happened at the stores in some people’s neighborhoods, the absence of HD DVD titles on shelves is inevitable and online merchants are likely to be the main way to get discs in the months ahead.

People also wonder what will happen to the discs that do get returned to distributors. Will they end up in the pool that the online stores like Amazon can draw upon? Will they find their way to liquidators who may dump the discs via stores on eBay or other sites? Or will these discs just go into a landfill?

My guess is that it will be the first two, long before the third option of the discs getting tossed away. In my almost weekly visits to GameStop, I’m amazed at the life that old and moldy PS2, Xbox, and GameCube titles have in the used games bins, as well as used DVDs. I am pretty sure that just about every HD DVD title (though not every single one) is likely to get circulated at some store somewhere. But just remember that your chance to get these discs brand-new will be greatly diminished by the end of summer, or maybe earlier.

If there’s a particular title that you’ve really been hankering for, then get it as soon as you can or else you risk never getting it at all, or possibly waiting a long time to enjoy it in high-definition in the future via Blu-ray or something else.

A few sites have been reporting that Amazon has put discs on a big sale of 60% off, but that’s actually old news. This is mostly the same pricing since exactly one month ago. Prices haven’t really changed much since late February at Amazon, DeepDiscount, Fry’s, Tower, and many others. For example, the following Paramount titles were $11.95 at Amazon last month, and they’re still $11.95 today:

And these Weinstein titles are still $9 from last month:

But it’s a different story overseas with stores like DvdCrave.com.au and EZDvd.com.au selling discs at larger discounts. I’m not sure if the additional shipping charges and exchange rates work out to maximum savings, but in a few cases, this may be the best way to get a title that’s hard to find from US vendors.

Here’s a quick set of links to the usual online destinations for HD DVD deals:

• Paramount for $9.99 and others on sale at Fry’s
• Many titles on sale at Tower
• Don’t forget DeepDiscount.com has lots of stuff
• HD DVD store at Amazon.com. By the way, they have a $5 off $50 sale with code DVD5BFHR if you pay with an Amazon credit card.

Here are some deals at Australian sites. At the current exchange rate, a movie for AUD $13 is just under US $11, but don’t forget to factor in shipping:

• EZYDVD.com.au in Australia has lots of titles at $10 and under
• DVDPacific.com has plenty under $12 and $15
• DVDCrave.com.au has many titles under $11

I’m sure most of you already figured out that yesterday’s posting about version 4.1 of the PS3 firmware was actually an April Fool’s joke. The PS3 firmware versions aren’t up that high in the first place, and each subsequent paragraph should have only have added to the story’s improbability.

Here are some of the interesting April Fool’s jokes that were made on the topic of HD DVD yesterday. The techniques seem to fall into two categories: laugh at you, or make you laugh. Here are some of the “laugh at you” jokes, meaning that they’re presented as official sounding news designed to make a true April Fool of you:

• Chinese Company ‘Pri Laneo’ resurrects HD DVD at CDFreaks.com

This one claimed that a Chinese company had purchased all HD DVD intellectual property licenses and technologies, and would soon start worldwide shipments.

• Toshiba, NEC and Memory-Tech announce HD DVD+ over at DVDCritiques.com

The three companies had joined forces to present a new 60GB version of HD DVD that would definitely beat Sony’s Blu-ray this time around. This joke was long and detailed and probably did its job rather well.

This next one takes a middle approach. Though it sounds official, there’s enough room for you to figure out that something is probably afoot: Sega announces a new game console featuring an HD DVD drive.

Finally, there’s the “make you laugh” kind of joke where the idea is more about waiting for you to figure out that joke is happening. This is the style of the posting presented here at the site yesterday, as is this one entitled Toshiba to Sue Everyone Who Didn’t Buy HD DVD over at Celluloid Heroes.

The best one of these had to be ThinkGeek’s Betamax to HD DVD convertor which had an accompanying video:

(click here to view the video at YouTube if it is not visible above)

The main reason that some of these jokes might have worked is wishful thinking on the part of many HD DVD fans who wanted to hear that the format could make a comeback.

Did you fall for any of these jokes? Did you find others? Share them in the comments.

As part of a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft, the latest PS3 firmware update allows the PS3 Blu-ray drive to play HD DVD discs, complete with the HDi interactivity layer. In the other part of the cross-licensing agreement, the Xbox 360 will now come with a Blu-ray drive built-in. Microsoft Xbox spokespeople were quick to mention that they still believe the future of movie viewing lies in downloads and that they have a commercial — actually a documentary — produced, directed, written by, and starring Michael Bay attesting to that high-def strategy.

When asked why they waited this long to announce these breakthroughs, Microsoft pointed the finger of blame in Sony’s direction saying that Sony only downloaded the 360’s HD DVD emulator when it finally became free. Sony spokespeople responded that they’d have downloaded it months earlier had their Xbox Live account not been banned due to Halo 3 cheating, and mentioned problems using Visual Studio 2008 on their “Vista Capable” workstations.

Warner Bros. was in on the plan all along, and that’s why they kept their HD DVD options and release slate open until May. Having confused these negotiations with those of the striking Screen Writers Guild, it appears that Universal and Paramount weren’t kept abreast of the developments, and thus they quit making HD DVDs in March. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos denied knowledge of the deal, as did DeepDiscount.com, but many are highly suspicious because both of these retailers continued advertising Bee Movie on HD DVD at their sites’ home pages well into the month of March.

Representatives from both Sony and Microsoft denied any payoffs to each other, but it’s been rumored that the money was confiscated by EU officials who wanted to promote fair competition by subsidizing NME, makers of the HD-VMD format.

We’ll have more information on this incredible story as it develops.