If you have an HD DVD player and fear it will be collecting dust in your entertainment center, you have an option to turn the hardware into $50. Best Buy is accepting returns for any HD DVD product in return for store credit. You would receive up to $50 in store credit for the player and a few dollars for each HD DVD title you return through the Best Buy Trade-In Center.
You can even return HD DVD hardware and titles not purchased at Best Buy, but you’ll still receive a Best Buy gift card in return.
Additionally, Best Buy is automatically sending a $50 gift card to those who purchased HD DVD players at their stores. As long as your purchase is on the store’s records, you will receive this gift card in addition to any credits you would receive if you decide to trade in the player.
That’s actually not a bad deal. It’s rare that “early adopters” are afforded this courtesy.
Will you be trading in your HD DVD player? Or will you be keeping the device for the existing HD DVD titles and the player’s upconverting features for standard DVDs? Or will you be laughing at all of us poor souls who thought the lower price and better features would win consumers over in comparison with Blu-Ray’s larger storage capacity?
(Thankfully I hedged my bets and managed to find myself with a Blu-Ray player as well.)
Best Buy HD DVD Action Center
When VHS finally emerged as the market leader over Sony’s Beta format, we gave our immediately-obsolete player to my grandmother.
I’ve been following the high definition format wars with moderate interest, since I was a “late early adopter.” Last fall, I picked up an HD DVD player and during the holidays I received a Blu-ray player. In my opinion, HD DVD was the better deal — more interesting technology, players that were ready to enter the market, and better price points on the hardware. Blu-ray had the benefit of larger capacity and the bandwidth to allow higher quality encoding. Blu-ray also uses region encoding, like standard DVDs. Blu-ray discs purchased in one country will therefore not work in all countries. HD DVDs were “region-free.”
I thought that HD DVD would be the format that caught on, but I underestimated Sony’s ability to get the studios on their side. In the last few months, movie studios and distributors, one after another, announced they would be publishing future releases exclusively on Blu-ray, most likely due to the region restriction (and probably some financial incentive).
Toshiba, the major company behind HD DVD, has finally surrendered. The company announced they are discontinuing their entire HD DVD business. Thankfully, I haven’t invested too much in this technology, but with few movies being released on HD DVD in the future, I won’t need a device used for less than 10 movies (5 of which were free) taking up space in my entertainment center.
Toshiba announces discontinuation of HD DVD business [hddvd.org]
Netflix has been offering movies to rent on both high definition media formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, will now be exclusively supporting just one technology: Blu-ray.
Citing the decision by four of the six major movie studios to publish high-def DVD titles only in the Sony-developed Blu-ray format, Netflix said that as of now it will purchase only Blu-ray discs and will phase out by roughly year’s end the alternative high-def format, HD DVD, developed by Toshiba.
Paramount and Universal are left as the only major film studios supporting HD DVD.
While I think Blu-ray is the superior medium in terms of capacity and encoding, its hardware isn’t priced competitively with HD DVD and the player technology is about a year behind HD DVD’s advancements. The film industry, rather than the consumers, has made the decision to support Blu-ray.
Netflix, Citing a Clear Signal From the Industry, Will Carry High-Def DVDs Only in Blu-ray Format [Netflix Press Release]
Last year, I decided to become a “late early adopter” by taking the jump to high-definition entertainment. I upgraded my equipment, including a Toshiba HD DVD player. While cognizant of the HD format wars, I went ahead with HD DVD because the equipment was better priced for the mass market. I thought thought that due to pure economics, this format would win despite its technical inferiority to Blu-Ray. I decided to hedge my bet and asked my girlfriend for a Blu-Ray player for the holidays.
Recently, more movie studios have agreed to support Blu-Ray exclusively, so despite HD DVD’s connectivity and interactivity features — none of which were ready on Blu-Ray — people seem to be declaring that Blu-Ray has won the format war. Shortly after this announcement, the Blu-Ray camp announced that players on the market now (except for the one built into the Playstation 3 game console) will not be able to play most future Blu-Ray discs thanks to technological advances that won’t be backwards compatible. Even though I thought I was covering all my bases, I lost the format war. The consumers always lose.
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