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