UPDATE June 11: HDDVD.com readers get a 25% discount through June 21 (Father’s Day) by entering promotional code blog at checkout. Josh has updated the selections now that The Big Lebowski has sold out.

Yup, there are still fire sales going on of HD DVD titles. News of the latest one comes by way of reader Josh R. who has around 1,000 discs left of 15 titles, all selling for around $2 a piece, with the Heroes box set going for $5.

The selection is not bad, and by that, I mean it doesn’t contain Norbit. Not that Norbit is particularly bad, but I’m sure most of you will agree with me that it was not one of the titles that compelled you to go HD.

I’m sure many of you are already accustomed by now to shipping that competes with the price of the disc. It reminds me of my cable orders from Monoprice – sometimes I only need a 69 cent adapter, but I’ll pile on more cables in order to justify shipping cost. Shipping here is $2 on the first disc, and $1 on each additional. If you can pick up the order yourself in Houston, Texas, then shipping is free, and your savings will really kick in.

Head over to http://www.hddvd.highwire.com to see for yourself.

The latest news from Gary Ugarek adds a whole lot of Zombie cred to his name. Not only has he made movies about Zombies, he then got involved with trying to put out a new HD DVD disc long after the format was already laid to rest, and then had that disc project itself require resurrection.

The new word on Deadlands 2 is that Anthem Pictures (the distributor) has been hard at work on offering the original product (bonus materials and all) through HD DVD-R discs, all made in-house instead of chasing down replication houses that failed them last time.

As usual, we have the story straight from Gary: more »

Writer/Director Gary Ugarek, the man behind Deadlands: The Rising, and its sequel, Deadlands 2: Trapped, also happens to be an HD DVD fan. He has been trying his darndest to release his latest creation on HD DVD, long after the format’s official demise.

We first covered news about Deadlands 2 last September, when Gary was able to announce pre-orders for this limited edition disc. Many of you jumped at the opportunity to show support for this project and placed orders at Anthem DVD.

Unfortunately, this story has not turned out the way that HD DVD fans would have wanted, including Gary. Rather than piece together an article based on various postings gleaned from around the web, I thought it would be good to give Gary a chance to tell us about it himself.

Here’s Gary Ugarek: more »

Whether you are celebrating holidays, holy days, or just taking some time off, best wishes to all of you for a wonderful new year!

2009 was a year where HD DVD lived on in some way for many of us via sales of old disc inventory, as well as promise of one last new title. Though the format is defunct in the western world, a sibling format, CB-HD has been making strong gains over in China, signing on more and more studios, like Warner and Paramount.

The Blu-ray format made its inevitable progress this year. The recent Black Friday saw sub-$100 players, one made by none other than Toshiba. Coming up at CES, they will show or announce players that support a 3D standard for the format to keep up with the numbers of 3D movies that have been coming out, such as James Cameron’s Avatar.

Though we loved our tangible physical media, most of us probably realized that HD DVD and Blu-ray were probably the last of the optical disc formats. But, did you expect such a huge proliferation in all the ways that we can now have HD content?

Netbooks were incredibly popular in 2009, and most of them included HD-capable video abilities in their $299 price point. In fact, almost all laptops sold today include basic HD features, as do most of the new smartphones and personal media devices. This spread of HD ability has kept pace with corresponding developments in the world of online video streaming, which is poised to make strong gains in 2010.

We no longer have to hook up a specially made PC to our HDTVs to enjoy video streaming, because more HDTVs are coming out with internet features built right in (as are Blu-ray players, finally!). This ranges from watching YouTube and Hulu, all the way to streaming DVDs from Netflix and Blockbuster.

What are your HD gadget plans for 2010? Did Santa leave any HD goodies for you under the tree? Have you eyed these thinner LCDs with LED backlighting? Or are you taking a break from the video side and focusing on building up the audio part of your home theater experience?

Though Toshiba has joined other PC vendors and included Blu-ray drives on their laptops, Microsoft joins Apple on this Windows 7 release week in continuing to leave Blu-ray off their own machines.

In a Windows 7 launch day interview with gadget site Gizmodo, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer made some statements that included the words “360″ and “Blu-ray” in the same sentence. Ballmer’s exact words were, “Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there — you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.” Ballmer stated that the future of movies was to view them on-demand, and not on physical media. There was enough ambiguity in his words to lead some to conclude that an external Blu-ray drive was in the 360’s future, even though Microsoft spokespeople denied a new Blu drive.

Much later in the day, there was an emphatic clarification from Major Nelson, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, who was able to burst the 360/Blu-ray rumor immediately. Major Nelson explained that Steve Ballmer was referring to the fact that Blu-ray drives are available as add-ons and options for PCs in home theater setups, and that Microsoft’s focus is on instant streaming of HD movies on the Xbox 360, as they’re doing now with Netflix.

Is this enough to completely squash the short-lived story about a Blu-ray 360? Only time will tell. Is there going to be a Blu-ray add-on drive? Only time will tell.

• Original Gizmodo interview (includes video)
• Engadget reports on Major Nelson
• Major Nelson at his own site denies 360/Blu-ray drive

Toshiba’s Blu-ray player did not bring HD DVD back from the dead, however Indie film makers WETNWILD FILMS and Anthem Pictures are resurrecting the HD DVD format with at least one brand new title: Deadlands 2: Trapped due out on October 27, 2009, in a limited run of only 500 copies.

What started out as a small discussion at the AVS forum has turned in to bigger news in the HD DVD world. Director/writer Gary Ugarek, an HD DVD fan himself, passed along a press release on Friday afternoon about his zombie horror film, Deadlands 2: Trapped. Here are some of Gary’s quotes:

• “Some people thought I was flat out nuts and were asking, why HD DVD? Are you not a Blu-Ray supporter? I answered I am, but when you have a dedicated fan base for a format, like HD-DVD does, and you see the passion of its supporters I immediately knew I wanted to do this for the fans. I want to give them something special.”
• “Right now we have 30gb of space to fill up, so Anthem and I are working together to see what can be included, and if we have the space I will keep adding more to the list to make it a packed to the brim HD DVD release of the film.”
• “I know it’s a gamble with HD DVD having lost out on the format war, but based on feedback from HD DVD fans we expect this to be a huge moment for them, the film and HD DVD. Kind of ironic that a zombie film would be helping HD DVD try to come back from the dead, even if for a short period of time, but who knows, if the program is a success maybe other indie filmmakers and distributors can do something similar for the HD DVD fans and keep it alive for the hard core.”

And more info directly from the press release:

more »

As I predicted in the previous posting, Toshiba made an announcement about their Blu-ray player right on time for the IFA show.

There will be pictures and interviews at the gadget sites, but here’s the scoop on what Toshiba included in their press release:

• Model: BDX2000
• Available in November for $249
• BD-Live Profile 2.0 and Bonus View
• SD card slot so that you can store any downloaded content
• does not play HD DVD discs

I did not expect availability in November, however none of us should be surprised that the BDX2000 supports the complete interactivity of the platform, since this kind of feature was already available on HD DVD players. The $249 price is pretty amazing, and is likely to catapult Toshiba towards the top of the list of popular Blu-ray players.

What do you think? Are you miffed about no HD DVD compatibility? I think it would have been nice to include, but would have confused some customers about HD DVD discs, and would also have made the player a little more expensive.

UPDATE: CNet points out that competing players in this price range offer Netflix and YouTube. I suspect these can be added via firmware updates. We’ll find out soon enough as more technology sites start picking up this story and begin to interview Toshiba reps.

For the last couple of months, Toshiba has mainly been making headlines on their memory and netbook models, and their blatant hesitation to make Blu-ray products.

The latest buzz about Toshiba and Blu-ray went into high gear a couple of weeks ago, when a local Japanese paper mentioned that Toshiba would start making Blu-ray machines.

No specific details were mentioned, like time frame or models, so it was easy to dismiss this news and file it away along with the endless Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors.

The news became slightly more interesting today, August 10, as Toshiba put out the following press release at their corporate website:

Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) announced today that the company has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

As a market leader in digital technologies, Toshiba provides a wide range of advanced digital products, such as DVD recorders and players, HDTVs and notebook PCs that support a wide range of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDD), DVD, and SD Cards. In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA.

Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.

I’m sure we’ll see some demos at CES, unless they’re already preparing to show something at the September IFA show in Europe.

If you’ve been holding out on getting a Blu-ray player, how do you take this news? Would you wait for a Toshiba player? Or did you already get some Blu-ray capability months ago?

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.