UPDATE: One week into February, and this deal is still working!

UPDATE: Still going strong on Feburary 16! Traderbora has plenty of movies for $5 and free shipping.

The most recent Amazon-associated merchant deal only lasted a short while before many of the movies stopped being eligible for free shipping. The prices were pretty good, but without free or discounted shipping, the cost-per-disc in the end was not always favorable.

A hot tip at the AVS forum says that at this very minute, and maybe at least for the rest of this day, there’s another Amazon merchant offering plenty of titles for $5.94 and the majority of them are eligible for Amazon’s discounted or free shipping promotions.

Go now and good luck!

• Traderbora Storefront at Amazon.com

UPDATE: It appears that the free shipping only applies to movies that are shipped out from Amazon. Movies sent out from this Amazon-affiliated dealer do not qualify for free shipping. I’m working on a list of the ones that do qualify, hang on…

UPDATE: This deal may be dead or lukewarm. As I went through the selection of movies, I found that many added to my cart last night were no longer being fulfilled through Amazon, and thus ineligible for the discounted shipping. In addition, many movies are now $4.97 and others have gone up by a few bucks. Try your luck with this deal by looking for the movies that indicate “2 new and used for…” and one of those 2 is likely to be done through Amazon, and thus eligible for free shipping. (thanks to ’sdscribe’ at the AVS forum for that hint)

Amazon.com offers numerous channels for retailing. They’ll sell many products themselves, and also partner with stores or resellers in some way, including handling the order fulfillment. It’s that latter case that brings us the most recent closeout sale on 140 HD DVD titles.

“Closeoutmovies Storefront” is a reseller using Amazon’s order fulfilment system, which means that Amazon ships directly from their own warehouses, and that you can still get some Amazon features like Amazon Prime, and Amazon’s free Super Saver shipping on orders that are $25 or more. At the $5.99 price, you’ll have to order four movies and some cheap $1.04 trinket to qualify for free shipping.

All of the movies are Universal Studios titles and selling for $5.99. The Battlestar Galactica and Heroes, Season One box sets are selling for $12.99. I checked over at Buy.com and DeepDiscount.com to see if this might be part of some general sale on Universal discs, but no luck. It appears that this is a closeout only from this particular seller on Amazon.

The other deals that people have been reporting both here and at the AVS forum threads have been great sales at Fry’s, and that Blockbuster is selling their used movies. In some cases, the Blockbuster movies are barely used, and in some other cases, the movies are arriving damaged. Longtime reader, Patrick, has been lucky with his Blockbuster orders as have many others. If you want to try them out, make sure to enter discount code holidaysurprise to save an additional 30%.

Some of you are going to mention that good old inetvideo.com has movies for $3.99 and $5.99, and those are good prices indeed. However, shipping on a $25 order is nearly $14, so it doesn’t work out to be the same great deal right now as this one through Amazon.

• 140 Universal discs for $5.99 via Amazon.com
• Blockbuster’s used movie sale with 30% off using code holidaysurprise

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.

Borders has a “Cyber Monday” deal on Dec. 1-2 of an additional 40% discount on their DVD box sets. The HD DVD sets are already significantly discounted to begin with at around $10 a piece for titles such as The Sopranos, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica, and it will be interesting to see if you can get another 40% off on these. The sale applies to their DVD and Blu-ray selection as well.

Reader Mark left a tip about HD Scape’s clearance of their nature and landscape HD DVDs for a ridiculous price of $3.95. You may never have considered getting a fireplace or aquarium disc at the original prices, but at $4 each, they might make a great disc to play in the background while you have company over for the holidays.

Finally, on a personal and site note, I’m going on vacation for most of the month and won’t be able to post about Christmas deals so much. But you can come to the rescue of your fellow HD DVD bretheren and report deals in the comments. To prevent comment spam, and the occasional format war contribution, all comments at the site are moderated. This means I read and approve each one. I’m going to be delayed on approving these comments, but please don’t let that stop you from sending them along and sharing info about the sales you’ve found.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

• Borders 40% off on box sets (Dec. 1-2)
• $3.95 Nature and Landscape HD DVDs clearance at HD Scape
• Amazon’s $7.99 sale

Here are quick links to the usual places that have HD DVD deals:

• Amazon.com’s HD DVD store usually can’t be beat when they decide to put on a sale
• DeepDiscount.com usually has free shipping and decent prices
• iNetVideo gets creative with their deals

UPDATE: The sale has been upgraded to $7.99!

Amazon snuck in a sale on 99 Universal Studios titles on us, just in time to order for the big Thanksgiving and Christmas family get-togethers coming up in the weeks ahead.

At $8.99 a piece, most of these HD DVD discs are cheaper than their DVD equivalents, and just a few bucks more than what they might sell for as used discs.

For all the talk about not buying any more discs for a deceased format, it’s really hard to pass up some of these deals. It’s all sweetened by the fact that Amazon typically charges no sales tax for most states, and how easy it is to get free shipping by ordering more than $25 of stuff.

Here are the 99 discs currently listed for $8.99:

more »

The “HD DVD Index” would have solidly outperformed its Wall Street counterparts these last couple of weeks, with prices hovering solidly around the $11 point, instead of swinging through wild ups and downs.

The last big noteworthy sale was from Amazon who had a 66% off sale on 122 titles featuring many Warner discs at $9.99. If you visit what’s left of that sale today, the selection has dwindled to about 40 discs. Amazon solves that problem with a recent sale on about 100 discs, mostly Universal Studios titles, at $10.99.

Also interesting is a “while supplies last” sale on Transformers over at iNetVideo, for $3.99 and $2.95 shipping.

And if you’ve got a Fry’s Electronics or two in your part of the world, then check out their aisles and displays for some deals starting at $5.99.

Below is the list of 122 discs on sale at Amazon for $10.99:

more »

We were just discussing on Monday how HD DVD sales are still going pretty strong, so many months after Toshiba threw in the towel, and now here comes Amazon with yet another of those fire sales that keeps these sales numbers going.

Amazon has a sale right now on 122 titles, many at up to 66% off. Though several titles are only 25% off, the bulk of this collection is on a fire sale with half of them at $9.99, and some for $11.99 or $12.99. These are all brand-new discs straight from Amazon, and not used titles or products from their affiliated vendors.

Here’s a list of the $9.99 titles, and you can head on over to see the rest of the selection for yourself:

more »

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.