Retailers rush to dump HD DVD

Following the news a few days ago, that HD DVD is to meet an early demise, retailers are scrambling to sell off movies and players as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Massive online retailer Amazon announced last Wednesday, that it was dropping HD DVD in favour of the rival Blu-ray system, has slashed prices on all HD DVD movies, including new releases Beowulf, the Bourne trilogy, American Gangster and Zodiac, by as much as 50% of their official retail price.

Toshiba the who announced last week that it was to stop production of all HD DVD disk drives for PCs, recorders and players has slashed its HD-A3 player by a third down to $100.

The website DVD talk has even launched a forum with the name “The Official HD DVD Fire Sale Clearance Thread.” Warner Brothers recent announcement that it will stop producing movies in HD DVD format prompted Microsoft to immediately drop the price of its Xbox 360 video game console HD DVD video player by 50%.

Many big-name retailers have removed their support for the format, including household names Best Buy and Wal-Mart in an effort to eliminate what Best Buy, referred to as ‘customer confusion’ over the two differing systems.

For those old enough to remember this clearly brings back memories of the early 80s, VHS/Betamax war, which Sony eventually won with its VHS system.

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