Best Buy is offering $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD DVD player or an HD DVD unit for a Microsoft Xbox 360 videogame console before February 23. Those who receive gift cards can keep their HD DVD players.

Best Buy will mail the gift cards by May 1 to customers who bought warranties or who are in its "Reward Zone" program. The gift cards will not expire. If you did not purchase a warranty or are not in the rewards program you can call 1-888-BestBuy to participate. You will need your receipt or credit card information as proof of purchase.

Customers wanting to get rid of a player can visit Best Buy’s online trade-in center. It does not matter where it was purchased. Customers can ship the player free of charge by printing out a prepaid shipping label. A gift card will be sent in 10-14 days. The amount will vary depending on the model.
 

Reuters is reporting on comments by Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the XBox 360, that Microsoft is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-Ray Association to integrate Blu-Ray into the XBox 360.

This is disappointing.

With Netflix and other major retailers offering Blu-Ray discs it’s unfortunate that in order to watch them you won’t be able to do it on an XBox 360 Media Center Extender anytime soon.

The beautiful thing about the XBox 360 is the consolidation that it represents into a single box. DVD player, extender unit for your TV and DVR, game machine, photos, music, etc. All in a single box connected to your television. A single box solution. No other set top box can do all of that. Certainly consumers want high def DVDs. The fact that Microsoft previously developed an add on for HD DVD speaks to that. The fact that there now seems to be no plans to integrate Blu-Ray, after that format has proved to be the survivor, seems short-sighted.

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Retailers let out a sigh of relief as the two-plus years of Toshiba and Sony going head to head over the next generation of DVD formats came to an end. Finally, a holiday shopping season will arrive with a clear winner in high-definition video.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said in a statement.

HD DVD presented a way for current DVD manufacturers to use their existing processes to manufacture the new disks. Blu-Ray will require some expensive overhauling to take place.

Blu-Ray offers more storage per DVD than HD DVD did, 75GB to 50GB. Though Hollywood studios were split for a while over the formats, they slowly shifted over to Sony’s version.

Wal-Mart may have been the biggest influence, as it arbitrarily decided to no longer stock HD DVD equipment or movies. The massive retailer opted to go Blu-Ray only, winnowing the field of competitors to one and removing a barrier that kept consumers from buying either Blu-Ray or HD DVD players.

The retailer is following in the footsteps of Best Buy, Netflix, Warner Bros. Studio, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co and Lions Gate Entertainment.

On the Wal-Mart Checkout blog Susan Chronister writes," By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard def movies, DVD players, and up convert players.   Not sure of the short term pricing plans, but history tells us that as more people move to a new technology prices typically go down."

The move by Wal-Mart will likely put an end to the conundrum for both retailers and consumers about which format to back HD-DVD or Blu-ray. It also will cause Toshiba to rethink its position on the HD-DVD format and eventually phase it out as well.

Wal-Mart said it will continue to sell the remaining HD-DVD inventory that it has, but in less than 30 days it will begin to add Blu-ray in it stores. The move will affect all 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores.

"We’ve listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Wal-Mart, U.S.
 

Toshiba spokeswoman Jody Sally said that Kmart has decided to carry HD DVD instead of Blu-ray because of its lower price according to Home Media Magazine. The Toshiba HD DVD player sells for $299 but is available for $198 at a number of retailers including Wal-Mart and Circuit City.

Kmart will continue to sell the Playstation 3, which has a Blu-ray player inside, but its marketing will be concentrated on HD DVD. The least expensive Blu-ray player retails for $499 and Sony says it will launch a $399 Playstation 3 next month.

Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which supports HD DVD said the $200 price will help to reach a mass audience. Sally agreed that the lower price would help sales.

"There was no official move on our MSRP, but I’m happy to see the strong sales momentum on our players," Sally said. "We experienced a great lift in player sales when Transformers (Paramount) was released, and the strong momentum continues."

“Programs like this one from Amazon lower barriers to entry for independent artists and provide audiences with increased access to high-quality, high-definition content,” said Christian Vesper, senior vice president of programming, acquisitions and scheduling for Sundance Channel.

While it’s a great deal for indie filmmakers, the offering is not totally altruistic. Amazon will sell copies of the movies on its site, while Microsoft further promotes the HD DVD format, a Toshiba-produced format the company has used for its Xbox 360 consoles.

Sony’s Blu-Ray technology has been gaining ground, and the two formats are set for a war reminiscent of Betamax vs. VHS.

The Sundance Channel is getting a cut of the action too, and will be reviewing the HD features for potential broadcast on the network.

Digg Embroiled In HD DVD Controversy

Everything started when a Digg user posted a string of hexadecimal code. Those unassuming 32 characters can be used with certain software to allow the playback of HD DVD content on Linux systems, which are otherwise unsupported by the movie industry.

The original story received thousands of Diggs from site users; then, the story vanished. People screamed ‘censorship’ and began posting new stories containing the code. Those too were short-lived on Digg, but very heavily noticed.

As the stories were removed, some users were banned from Digg for posting the code. Manuel Amador, who runs the Rudd-O blog that started the whole kerfuffle by being linked in the original Digg post, found himself banned when Digg admins received a cease and desist notice to take down the code.

Digg co-founder Jay Adelson blogged about the HD DVD takedown request:

We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention. Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law.

Adelson didn’t mention something about HD DVD. As noted by Texyt, some episodes of the DiggNation video podcasts have been sponsored by HD DVD. Digg isn’t hiding these sponsorships, but they weren’t actively mentioned in context with the other HD DVD activity yesterday either.

However, the issue with the code being online in the first place goes all the way back to February of this year. The source code first appeared on the Doom9 forums, and then made it to a story on a Wired blog.

The final word on the HD DVD encryption key on Digg comes from its most well-known Digger, co-founder Kevin Rose:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

As of press time, Digg was up and running normally.

Friday, Jason Lee Miller wrote about Pirate Bay and its campaign to purchase Sealand in order to safely warehouse its torrent based content free of copyright laws and restrictions.

Pirate Bay, as well as other download repositories, may be looking at a new collection of HD-DVD content to dish out to the pirating community.

Reports surfaced yesterday of a complete rip from the HD-DVD of Serenity, a movie based off Joss Whedon’s short-lived Firefly television series. Much buzz has surrounding the leaked content, which appeared on BitTorrent, and has ignited speculation into more HD-DVD titles that could be served up very soon.

TorrentFreak lets us in on what other movies might be on the horizon:

Do you hear that “thud” sound? I think it’s the result of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) experiencing an all-out aneurysm, and subsequently hitting the deck.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.

The RIAA, crooked as they are, had the good sense to embrace the fact that people weren’t going to stop downloading music illegally. So, instead of flushing money down the toilet in legal battles and anti-piracy campaigns, the RIAA decided to quit fighting the online music juggernaut and instead worked with the record companies and found a way (albeit a flawed one) to monetize the downloading process.

The MPAA needs to follow suit in this instance. They need to wake up and realize that the downloading of video content isn’t the end of the world.

In fact, it’s the beginning of a whole new market. Instead of immediately taking a posture of opposition, the MPAA should work with studios and distributors to find a way to make it easy for the average person to download a movie in whichever format (DVD, HD-DVD, BluRay) they wish.
If you can make it legal, you can make it profitable as well.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.