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

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.

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.

Acknowledging that their new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) tech does not actually replace a true HD source like HD DVD or Blu-ray, Toshiba is hoping to attract all those consumers who are mostly satisfied with their HDTVs and DVDs by offering the XD-E500 up-converting DVD player today.

The new XD-E500 retails for $149 (although it debuts for $179 today at Amazon) and offers DVD up-scaling that’s superior to what’s been offered in their own lower-end models, and probably from other up-scaling DVD players.

The XDE player offers a choice of three video enhancements: (1) sharp for edge detail (2) rich color (3) more contrast, of which you can select two to be active at any time. I’m sure forthcoming articles and interviews will reveal why you can only select two at a time, and we’ll be on the lookout for the inevitable comparisons against the highly vaunted Oppo up-converting DVD players, as well as true HD media.

Toshiba’s website for the new player, http://www.toshibaxde.com hasn’t gone live yet so we don’t really have a lot of pictures to show from the sales pitch, but you can see some before/after enhancement shots over at Amazon.

Toshiba’s product description page states the following:

This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.

In other words, it’s not “The Look and Sound of Perfect” but just “Good Enough.” I’m curious to see whether “good enough” and “near HD” take a hold in the marketplace. I know that you and I are probably not amongst that crowd of buyers, but I’m sure you’ve got at least a few acquaintances who think a big screen is all it takes to have a great home theater.

Now that the format war is over, some HD DVD owners are seeking out combo players as a way to keep their HD DVD collections viable while they transition to Blu-ray. If you’re in this group, then you may need to pay closer attention to pricing and availability of these models in the near future as Samsung and LG have both announced that the end is near for these machines.

In statements to The Korea Times, a Samsung spokesperson revealed that they already stopped making these units in February, and an LG representative said they’ll stop their dual-format efforts in the second half of the year.

Many months ago, people advised that purchasing a combo HD DVD and Blu-ray player would be a safe way to avoid getting stung too badly in the format war. The thinking was that you’d have a single player that could handle whichever of the disc formats eventually won, and always have the option to pick and choose the best discs in the formats that they happened to come out in.

One of the biggest problems with this approach was that buying a combo player would cost more than buying two players, one for each format. And in the beginning, the LG players only partially met the full HD DVD spec because they left out any web-enabled features.

In the last couple of months, prices on these players have come down quite a bit, and the more recent LG player model is now fully compliant with the HD DVD specifications. Except for the fact that they’re not going to be upgradeable to the latest Blu-ray spec, buying one of these machines is finally a more palatable decision.

If all you’re really looking for is a back-up machine to ensure that your HD DVD collection doesn’t go to waste, then you might want to consider the current sale at TigerDirect (who also now run CompUSA), where you can get an HD-A3 plus four movies for only $80. Two of the four movies are The Bourne Identity and 300, which already come with the player, and TigerDirect is throwing in Apollo 13 and Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.

Besides that deal, you can also find many used players on eBay and Craigslist, or perhaps an “open-box” unit at an electronics store.

• HD-A3 Player Bundle at TigerDirect.com
• Samsung BD-UP5000 Dual-format player at Amazon.com
• LG BH200 Super Blu Combo Player at Amazon.com
• Samsung, LG End Combo HD DVD Player Line at The Korea Times

According to a story at Engadget, lucky shoppers in Ireland can pick up Xbox 360 HD DVD players for the equivalent of just under $16 at stores like GameStop. Kotaku had reported earlier that the drives were going for twice that price in the US, but those were refurbished units.

Irish shoppers can also take advantage of the big sales at British DVD sites such as dvd.co.uk who are selling HD DVD titles, including American Gangster, for as little as £6.95, which is about USD $14 (shipping to the USA isn’t too expensive either). If you’ve been following this site recently, then you’ll know that prices from Australian stores have also been really great.

The format war may have ended, but these kinds of prices are compelling and an inexpensive way to get some good mileage from your HDTV and HD DVD. Blu-ray players start around $399 and since the movies aren’t on fire sales, the pricing on most of them ends up being a lot higher. It makes even more sense for existing HD DVD owners to get in on these sales than for someone new starting out with HD DVD. Regardless, these sales are appealing to people faced with tightening entertainment budgets in the months ahead.

• Engadget story
• dvd.co.uk sale (British site)
• EzDvd clearance sale on HD DVD (Australian site)
• Dvdcrave has lots of HD DVD titles under USD $9 (Australian site)

UPDATE: Roger mentioned in the comments that www.HMV.co.uk and zavvi.co.uk also have super deals like American Gangster for £4.99 (about US $10, but factor in shipping to the US to see if the deal is worth it).

There’s a saying that the leader in any race has a big target on his back. Any new leader to emerge inherits that target and, in some kinds of races, even the observers can take their shots.

This is certainly the case with Blu-ray right now where the last couple of weeks have seen two separate reports about temporary and/or prolonged gloom.

The first shot at the new leader was from research firm, ABI, who said that demand for Blu-ray players will be low until those players hit the $200 mark. This is common knowledge if you’ve been following the format war, and as an HD DVD owner, you may already fall into this customer profile. The prospect of starting over or transitioning to the other format is made less palatable when you consider how much more expensive it’s going to be to get the player in the first place. If Blu-ray players were far less expensive, then more of us in the HD DVD crowd would gone purple and sooner.

Getting back to the ABI report, they think it’s not going to be until sometime in 2009 that Blu-ray really picks up steam and wider adoption.

The more recent shot at Blu-ray comes from NPD research numbers and a story that’s picked up a lot of momentum all over the web, suggesting that Sony’s victory lap for winning the format war is a short one. Recent sales tracking data from the NPD group showed a significant drop in standalone Blu-ray player sales in the last few months, with a big 40% dip in February.

If the format war was still going strong, we’d expect Team Blu to come back and point to strong PS3 sales and say that overall adoption of machines with Blu-ray drives in them is still very healthy — and they’d be right. This would be followed by the HD DVD camp sticking to their guns about standalone player sales being a better indicator of high-def movie adoption, and they’d also be right. Team Blu would also come back (and they have) to point out that sales of all kinds of things are usually low following all the big shopping that happens at Christmas time.

Another explanation given for the weakness in Blu-ray player sales is that there’s a supply problem, and that the small numbers are actually a reflection of stores not having enough in stock, and not so much that people aren’t interested. This could be true. It’s the same explanation given for why Xbox 360 sales were a little soft in those last few months too.

And if I recall, there were also a lot of headlines in March about a general increase in the pricing on Blu-ray players. While the MSRP did not change, discounts and deals were rare. Either way, it wasn’t the sort of news that drives customers to stores.

Many HD DVD owners find a good reason to smirk at these recent developments because it’s a relief to finally hear some bad news that’s not about their own format. Instead of taking pot-shots at HD DVD, reporters and analysts now focus all of their scrutiny and nastiness on the new target bearer.

• Blu-ray: The Future Has Been Delayed at the New York Times