Amazon Made Me Do It: HD DVD Wins Over Blu-ray, Player & 10 HD DVDs for $174
by Bob Caswell
A little over a week ago I asked for help in choosing between the two next generation movie formats: HD DVD and Blu-ray. I have had all the necessary equipment for a few months now (meaning, a nice HD home theater system minus a next-gen player) but have stuck with my regular old DVD player. I had hoped that my patience could last me through the ensuing format war. But then Amazon came along with this deal. (Actually, now there’s an even better deal.)
To briefly recap on the format war: Sony’s Blu-ray seems to be selling more discs and has sold more players (if the Playstation 3, which comes with a Blu-ray player, is included in the numbers). But then, the Toshiba/Microsoft HD DVD format is region free. Unlike Blu-ray, HD DVD does not have any region codes/restrictions. This is pro-consumer in two ways: 1) your HD DVD movies can be purchased and will work anywhere around the world and 2) you can get a lot of movies that are “Blu-ray Only” in the U.S. from European online retailers in the HD DVD format.
So back to the Amazon deal: It is for the Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player, though the 10 free HD DVD movies deal still holds if you purchase two other nicer models as well. You get the movies 300 and The Bourne Identity plus any three movies from this listing on Amazon’s site. The other five movies you get later through sending in this form after your purchase (the link here is to the PDF of the form which also shows the movie selection for this part of the deal).
The deal is advertised for $199. But after I added it to my cart and proceeded to check out, the price was lowered to $174. Amazon also has another deal where you get one free HD DVD for every two purchased. There are 104 HD DVDs eligible for that deal, and if you’re interested in the overall selection of HD DVD movies on Amazon, looks like there are 474 available currently.
How does Blu-ray compare? Well, here’s Amazon’s page with Blu-ray players on sale. I couldn’t find any offers that include more than a couple Blu-ray movies. And even then, every price is well above $300. At less than half the price (especially if you include the price of all the free HD DVDs) and with more of a pro-consumer stance, HD DVD wins by a landslide.
Now if only I could convince the rest of the world so this format war can be over. If only…
*Update* The original title of this post was Amazon Made Me Do It: HD DVD Wins Over Blu-ray, Player & 10 HD DVDs for $187. But then I double checked the price and found that today it is $174.
One of the nice things about Amazon is the company’s 30-day price guarantee. It took me seven minutes from dialing Amazon customer service (1-800-201-7575 ext. 7 to get a human right away) to get the price on my order changed to $174. Moral of the story: check for price changes on big ticket items, especially around holiday shopping time!
*Update 2* The deal is now over, but now Amazon has that particular HD DVD player for only $132 with 7 movies free, a great deal.
Note: This article is cross-posted at BobCaswell.com.
13 Comments 
Recent Price Drops
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
[...] Amazon Made Me Do It: HD-DVD Wins Over Blu-ray, Player & 10 HD-DVDs for $174 Sphere It Enjoyed this Story? Subscribe to TechConsumer or Submit Your Own Story! [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
[...] the end of last week, I pointed out a deal on Amazon for an HD-DVD player with 10 movies for $174. Interestingly enough, I purchased the player online [...]
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
[...] significantly because of last week’s Black Friday sales (of which I participated because of Amazon’s amazing deal, which made HD DVD at least half the price of Blu-ray). Sales over that particular weekend were [...]
December 26th, 2007 at 11:00 am
[...] Toshiba HD DVD player with 7 HD Movies deal that I have been following for some time as part of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. The price had been closer to $250 for the two weeks before Christmas but has now dropped back down [...]
January 4th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
[...] As a quick recap, the lowest price I’ve found for a Blu-ray player is $279 compared to HD DVD’s $174 (that deal came with 10 free movies and was good enough to make me choose a team; and let’s [...]
January 4th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
[...] our previous coverage of HD DVD vs. Blu-ray here, here, and [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
[...] Back in November, I asked for help in deciding between HD DVD and Blu-ray. I ended up choosing HD DVD via an amazing Amazon deal: HD DVD player and 10 HD DVDs for $174. [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
[...] this Toshiba HD DVD player with seven movies for only $147 (the same one I thought I got a deal on a month ago for $174). Blu-ray players, of course, are still well above $300. Amazon also has a bunch of HD DVD movies [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[...] A recent price drop on a Toshiba HD DvD player on Amazon has got a decent amount of attention on the net. After “Bob Caswell” from “Tech Consumer” dug just a bit deeper he noticed quite a substantial difference. Heres what he had to say Amazon has this Toshiba HD DVD player with seven movies for only $139 (the same one I thought I got a deal on a month ago for $174). [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
[...] An interesting twist in the format war, HD DVD is kicking with what little life it has left. Techconsumer.com has recently pointed of a few interesting tidbits: Not sure if this is related to the news of Warner Bros. going Blu-ray exclusive, but Amazon has this Toshiba HD DVD player with seven movies for only $139 (the same one I thought I got a deal on a month ago for $174). [...]
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 am
[...] at $450. But it’s funny that Amazon thinks I’m interested in a deal like this after I spent about one third this price for a player and 10 movies. I mean, I’ll go Blu-ray eventually. But we HD DVD price sensitive [...]
March 30th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Wow, all your comments are trackbacks..
Anyway, the set of companies comprising the DVD Forum have all stopped producing HDDVD, and there are several BD-only but no HDDVD-only producers anymore. Microsoft has been talking about creating a BD-addon for the XBOX360, and all-in-all I’d say your deal will look pretty sad in a year when no more movies are made for HDDVD
April 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
[...] purchased my HD DVD player with 10 movies for $174 way back in November. Today, to my surprise, I received the email below. This is much better than [...]