UPDATE: All things come to an end, and the Amazon BOGO and 10 movie promotions are now over, but they’ve made drastic price cuts on the HD-A30 and HD-A35. Best Buy’s BOGO runs through this week however, and Tuesday, December 18 has an Amazon 9 movie deal on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive.

There’s just over a week to go before Christmas day, and if you’re primarily an online shopper, you have even less time than that to get your order into the pipline to ensure safe delivery. Most of the online retailers are saying that orders placed by Monday or Tuesday will probably get delivered by December 24 via standard shipping. You may need to use expedited and overnight shipping if you order later in the week. If time runs out and you’re not having any luck finding interesting gifts, skip to the end of this posting to find out about emailable gift certificates.

Movie Deals
Amazon.com still has their Buy 1 Get 1 offer, which was unveiled earlier in the week. The list of titles to select from is now down to about 47 38 from the original 78. This might be a good way to stock up on some family-oriented titles such as Scooby Doo, Happy Feet, and TMNT. Take a look and get your order in, or say goodbye to your chances at getting one or more of these as gifts — even if they’re for yourself.

Best Buy’s Buy 1 Get 1 offer starts on Sunday, Dec. 16 and runs until Dec. 22. The list of movies to select from isn’t the largest, but that’s only an issue if you have some of those titles. Many people new to HD DVD have small enough libraries that most of these lists end up containing at least a few interesting movies. The list includes popular titles such as The Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Knocked Up, Transformers, 300, and, Shrek the Third. Tyler at FormatWarCentral has a picture of the Sunday advertisement.

Player and Movie Deals (HD-A30 $233 in 10-movie deal @ Amazon, Dec. 16)
Amazon, Best Buy, and Circuit City are all featuring a 10-movies deal when you purchase a player. The player pricing varies a little bit, but if you’re ordering any of this stuff as gifts, then don’t squander your last few shopping days just to save a buck or two. Of the 10 movies, you get to choose 3 at the time of purchase, 2 already come in the player box (300 and The Bourne Identity), and the remaining 5 are from the practically never-ending “5 Free Movies” rebate. By the way, this rebate comes from the HD DVD group and is not tied to buying your player from any specific retailer.

Amazon’s 10-movie offer has been running for a while, and they even bumped it to 12 movies last weekend to match Walmart. Amazon likes to play with their pricing on a daily or hourly basis, so it’s worth clicking on their pricing links to see the latest price. As I write this, the A3 is actually more expensive than the A30, but I’d expect this to get fixed over the weekend. Amazon has a price-protection policy, which might come in handy if you find that a player became cheaper. I’m not making any guarantees about getting the policy to work on these hourly fluctuations, though.

Best Buy’s 10-movie deal describes it as a deal for 8 because they’re not counting the two movies that come in the box with the player.

Best Buy’s “Deal of the Day” for Dec. 15 is 25% off any Toshiba HD DVD player. The link goes to the A30 which is $299, and I expect it’d be less on the 15th, and have a decent discount on the A3 and A35 as well. I’ll update this posting if they happen to have another such promotion for the 16th or 17th.

Ending on Dec. 15 is Best Buy’s Free The Bourne Ultimatum with Xbox 360 HD DVD player. Remember that the 360’s HD DVD player also comes with King Kong in the box and is eligible for the same “5 Free Movies” deal as the standalone HD DVD players, making this a 7 movie deal in the end.

Circuit City’s equivalent 10-Movie deal ends on Dec. 15. but I could not find an intelligible link to it at their site, other than just a mention about the current weekly flyer. Try your luck in-store instead.

Other Ideas
Items going out of stock are a big problem, as is not really knowing if someone’s going to enjoy the movie you pick for them, or not having enough time to shop around. My usual solution has been to get gift certificates and let the gift recipient choose their own gift and on their own time. Here are some additional gift suggestions:

• Since many people view HD DVDs on their Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive, you might consider a gift of games instead of movies.
• Amazon gift certificates can be sent on physical cards, and emailed at any time in case you run out of shopping days and delivery options.
• Looking beyond Amazon, there’s also the Discover gift card
• GiftCertificates.com has emailable gift certificates to lots of popular stores
• Netflix gift certificates can be for a month to a year, and let your recipient enjoy a ton of HD DVD and DVD movies.

As usual, you’re welcome to share in the comments about any deals you find out about.