Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: hd, dvd, bluray, red2blu, warner | Themes: Home Theater, Digital Entertainment, Business, Audio/Video Players
Change your reds to blues, while getting to keep your reds
Now that HD DVD is just a distant memory, what are those of us supposed to do with all our movies on the format?
Personally, I’m still going to watch the ones that I own. My players still work and the discs haven’t disintegrated yet, but there’s no denying that Blu-ray Disc is the here and the now.
If you’ve got any HD DVDs from Warner Bros., such as 300, Batman Begins, V for Vendetta, Unforgiven, or any of the Harry Potter movies, you can now ‘upgrade’ them to the Blu-ray Disc versions through Warner’s Red2Blu program.
All you need to do is hit the Red2Blu website, select which HD DVD titles you want on Blu-ray, then mail the cover art for that HD DVD to Warner. You should then receive the Blu-ray version of your movies four to five weeks later.
If you’ve been reading carefully and you’re figuring that you get to keep your existing HD DVD versions of the movies, then you’re right. Warner’s only asking for the cover art, plus $4.95 per title along with $6.95 for shipping and handling per order ($8.95 if outside of the continental 48 states).
Obviously, the offer only works out favorably after the shipping and handling fees if multiple titles are sent in for the switch.
Currently the Red2Blu program is open only to residents of the U.S., though we hope that Warner will make it available to the rest of the world soon.
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Sounds great! Now we can only hope they do this for Europe too. I'm reasonably happy with my HD DVDs but my PS3 is a far nicer player as a whole than my EP35.
I can't wait to upgrade my HD-DVD version of The Matrix Ultimate Collection so I can get Animatrix in 1080p, the HD-DVD version came with Animatrix in SD. This could be costly for me too, I have many Warner movies in th HD-DVD format like the Harry Potter films, Batman Begins, The Aviator, etc. Perhaps Warner will see enough revenue from this to persuade Paramount and Universal to do the same. The best part is you can still keep your HD-DVD discs.
This is good news for those people that dont have hd-dvd because they can get blu ray movies cheap. But for those people that have those movies on hd dvd they probably know that it looks better and isn t worth the change.
This is good news for those people that dont have hd-dvd because they can get blu ray movies cheap. But for those people that have those movies on hd dvd they probably know that it looks better and isn t worth the change.
So are you claiming that HD DVD is a better quality then BD?
So frys sells HD dvd for like $5. If you take say the harry potter collection (5 movies $5 a piece = $25 + $6.95 shipping = $31.95) and you could get them all on blu ray for the price of 1 1/2 blu ray titles at retail prices.
*ponders*
$12.00 is a little more than I'd like to pay to upgrade, but I guess it isn't a bad deal.
Unfortunately, I think this will wind up hurting my scavenger hunt at second hand stores for other people's abandoned HD-DVDs.
Still have all my HD DVDs, they still play, I don't know if I'll spend the money. I have them all backed up to my HDD, and that's a mirrorred setup, so don't know if its necessary to do this yet.
Sounds perfectly good to me. I like my HD-DVD's plenty, BUT... given the chance to pay a couple bucks a disc and get Blu-ray copies, I'll probably do it. Scan and copy the covers, slip them into the original sleeves, give them to a friend who has an HD-DVD player but no Blu-ray. This will make finding a playback method for my movies MUCH easier since HD-DVD drives are basically non-existent at this point, save for a couple LG's.
This would actually make sense fiscally since many of my HD-DVD's were very inexpensive. I really hope Universal does this, too!
wow a movie company doing something nice!?!?! shockingly refreshing
Still a shame that HD-DVD lost out. I still think it was the better format as far as being complete and especially economically at the time. Yeah just try and play some of the new movies on a first gen blu ray player. Then again it's Toshiba's own fault that they didn't recognize that the PS3 would push blu ray and that the best way to combat it was with more aggressive player pricing until it was too late. Of course, wining the HD war sure hasn't done a whole lot of good for Sony's balance sheet now has it
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whats the point blu-ray will be gone in 3 to 5 years as its already vastly outdated to read only memory.