If you bought into the HD-DVD technology as I did when it first launched, you may be stuck with a bunch of titles for hardware that’s no longer supported. The movies and the hardware still work for now, but you won’t see any new movies released on HD-DVD because the format is dead. In attempt to make good on all the purchases made during the early days of the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format war, Warner Brothers is offering the chance to swap 120 titles for their Blu-ray copies. How exactly does it work?
You don’t get a free upgrade, but the $4.95 per disk price is far cheaper than swapping your entire collection at retail. A few titles, like Blade Runner and the Harry Potter 1-5 Limited Edition are priced at $14.95. At over $600 if you swap out the whole 128 HD-DVD batch, this isn’t a cheap proposition, but then again I can’t imagine too many people are going to trade titles like The Best of HD-DVD 5-disk series. As a bonus, you get to keep the HD-DVDs. All you have to do is mail the complete cover art for any of the titles you hope to swap. Red2Blu.com has the full list of 128 HD-DVDs and shipping limitations.
No word yet if other studios will follow suit, but if Warner Brothers reports success, it seems likely other studios may attempt a similar procedure.
