We were just discussing on Monday how HD DVD sales are still going pretty strong, so many months after Toshiba threw in the towel, and now here comes Amazon with yet another of those fire sales that keeps these sales numbers going.

Amazon has a sale right now on 122 titles, many at up to 66% off. Though several titles are only 25% off, the bulk of this collection is on a fire sale with half of them at $9.99, and some for $11.99 or $12.99. These are all brand-new discs straight from Amazon, and not used titles or products from their affiliated vendors.

Here’s a list of the $9.99 titles, and you can head on over to see the rest of the selection for yourself:

(more…)

An article at Financial Times points out something that many active HD DVD enthusiasts have known for quite a while now: despite its official death in February, there are still a lot of people buying a lot of HD DVDs. The statement is validated by Jeff Wisot, vice-president of marketing at Buy.com, and Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio, an excess inventory liquidator.

Here’s the scoop on the article highlights:

• Demand for the format is fueled by discs going for less than $10 a piece, and players available for under $60.
• “HD DVD sales are still very strong,” says Jeff Wisot, VP of marketing at Buy.com

He is no doubt recalling their recent sale on $60 Venturer HD DVD players.

• “Cheap entertainment always does well in a recession or depression,” says Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio.

Kugler’s company has bought millions of unsold HD DVDs, who, having already sold 1 million discs, expects to sell another 2 or 3 million by Christmas.

In the spirit of good journalism and equal coverage, the article also includes a disclaimer by Andy Parsons of the Blu-ray Disc Association pointing out that their format is not dead and they’ve had some good sales figures too.

• HD DVD slashed prices drive sales up article at FT.com

A lot of people were understandably upset when Toshiba pulled the plug on the format, and many skeptics felt that Toshiba would never live up to their word regarding continuing player support. But here’s some encouragement for the less pessimistic HD DVD fans.

I missed this when it officially came out earlier in the week, but every single Toshiba HD DVD player model now has a firmware update to version 4.0 available at the Toshiba site. Any model with a 1, 2, or 3 in its name (that’s all three generations, folks) can now be updated to version 4.

If your player is already hooked up to the internet, then you can perform the update right from your player itself. You can also download the update to CD and make an ISO file for your HD DVD player instead. This method is slightly faster, but some people end up having trouble making the discs (usually because they’re only unzipping the file and not using the ISO feature on the CD software). You can download the file by navigating to find your player model number at Toshiba’s support site: http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/customersupport/.

Over at the AVS forum’s version 4.0 thread, “papacoach” reports that 1080/24 jaggies are fixed in this update on his Transformers, and this has been seconded by other posters at that forum.

I wrote about picking up an Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-on drive at Fry’s for $39.99 the other day as my back-up HD DVD player. The limitation with that method is you need to have a 360 or a sufficiently capable PC (and software) to play back the movies. Many people meet these requirements, but there are plenty of others who’d prefer a more straightforward approach and just get a cheap HD DVD player instead.

Buy.com to the rescue! I’m not sure how long this lasts, but they’ve got two versions of the Venturer SHD7000 (essentially a Toshiba HD-A3) for $59.99. One comes with The Bourne Identity and 300, while the other comes with two of the following: Rumor Has It, Perfect Storm, or Firewall.

Lots of people got the last generation of Toshiba HD DVD players and there’s a resulting glut of Bourne and 300 discs in the wild, so I’m betting that most of you might opt for the second configuration where you get to find out which movies you get only when the box arrives.

• Venturer SHD7000 with The Bourne Identity and 300
• Venturer SHD7000 with two of: Rumor Has It, Perfect Storm, Firewall