It’s the first week of Daylight Savings Time, and it’s also turning out to be a time for many HD DVD owners to crank up the savings at various retailers.

There’s talk that Blockbuster video stores will be following in the footsteps of Hollywood Video and start selling off previously rented HD DVD titles at $10 a piece. That might sound like a good deal on some of the more expensive titles, but check with the online retailers to see whether they might already be selling them brand-new at the same prices or just a couple dollars more.

The fire-sale pricing hasn’t kicked in across the board at Amazon yet, and most Warner titles are still at their February price levels, but we have seen significant moves recently on Universal titles and numerous Paramount discs at $12. DeepDiscount and Fry’s have a lot of discs selling at around $10, and Tower isn’t too far behind.

If you’re looking for the absolute best pricing, then you need to click around at multiple websites and scroll through at last a few pages there because these merchants are all a little different in which discs get put on sale. For example, Tower has a lousy price on American Gangster at $26, but they’re among the cheapest for the BBC version of Planet Earth at $54.85, and a buck cheaper than Amazon on Batman Begins. Similarly, DeepDiscount has Planet Earth at a ridiculously high $70, but they’re beating Amazon’s $12 price on several Paramount titles by offering them at $10.

Retail stores are eager to make room on their shelves and in their warehouses for new products, which means they’re likely to offer unannounced discounts and deals on HD DVD movies. So if you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to drop in and see what your local Best Buy or Circuit City are up to. One way to get deals at BB and CC is to try to get them to price-match. However, luck seems to be a major component at dealing with these stores because they may not have titles in stock, and it may be up to the cashier or manager’s whimsy whether they’ll honor a price that you think you should be getting. But if you’re persistent (and try another set of employees at the same store), you might walk away with some good deals.

A shopping tip I can give you from my past attempts at tracking down discountinued toys and videogames is don’t hold out just to save an additional 80 cents on something. If you really need or want an item, and the price is generally within your expectations, then order it before it goes out of stock everywhere and you can only pick it up used, or maybe never.

So here are links of interest for your HD DVD bargain hunting for the week. It seems inevitable that Amazon will have to offer all their sale-priced discs on a special promotion and present them on a set of pages for easy browsing, and we’ll update the links here accordingly.

Here’s what Amazon’s got right now for 9.95:

And for $8.95:

Links to these and other online retailers and deals:

• Fry’s has Paramount for $9.99 and others on sale too
• Tower has great prices on lots of discs, but not on all of them
• DeepDiscount.com has great prices on lots of discs
• Selected Paramount titles for $12 at Amazon (goes to previous posting at this site)
• Universal titles on sale at Amazon (goes to a search on ‘Universal’ at Amazon)
• 56 Warner discs on sale at up to 57% off at Amazon