Amazon really seems to be pushing Blu-ray, which is great news if you like your high-quality home video. They’re running two more sales.

First up is a Buy Two, Get One Free deal running through December 31st. It appears to be on Warner titles, with 112 of them to choose from.

And then there is a deep discount sale on Sony titles. While it is labeled as ‘up to 45% off’, 13 of the 17 titles in the sale are actually 54% off, three 45%, and one 44%.

Picked up from Format War Central and Blu-ray Stats News Log, respectively.

Amazon is running another Blu-ray sale, this time you buy any four of 22 Warner Blu-ray discs along with an eligible player, and you save $100 by entering code AMAZONBD when you check out. The Blu-ray titles range in price from $16.95 to $25.95. There are three eligible players: the 80GB Sony PlayStation 3 for $399.99, the Sylvania NB500SL9 for $199.98, and the Samsung BD-P1500 for $211.73.

Personally I don’t think the Sylvania is worth consideration. It is a Profile 1.1 deck, one of the many rebadged versions of the Funai NB500. With the Profile 2.0 Samsung less than $12 more, there is no point in considering the Sylvania. So it really comes down to the PS3 vs. the BD-P1500. They’re both Profile 2.0 / BD-Live with the latest firmware. The PS3 is generally reviewed as one of the best, if not the best, BD deck available, but the Samsung is no slouch either. So if you’ll use the PS3s other features - gaming, broadband content downloads, etc, enough to justify the extra ~$200, go with that. Otherwise the Samsung is a solid choice and a good value.

According to the offer details, it is running through December 31, 2008. Though I expect they may shuffle the products available in the bundle over the next few months.

From Blu-ray.com

Amazon is running a few Blu-ray sales currently.

The Get Three for the Price of Two sale has been extended, with 36 titles to choose from.

Then you can save up to 55% off a selection of 95 titles.

If you have a PS3 but you don’t yet have the DVD/Blu-ray remote to go with it (using the SixAxis to control movies is fairly crappy), buy three Warner Blu-ray movies and get the PS3 remote free.

And last but not least, buy a Blu-ray player and three Warner Blu-ray movies and save $50. It looks like the players on offer include the Sony BDP-S300 Profile 1.0 for $199.98, the Sony BDP-S350 Profile 1.1 for $295.00, the Samsung BD-P1500 Profile 2.0 for $279.99, and the Panasonic DMP-BD30K Profile 1.1 for $274.81. (Personally I’d pick the Samsung.) On the movie side there are 122 titles to select from.

The Warner Bros. Television Group has signed distribution deals with TiVo, Sling, Veoh, Joost, and Dailymotion to bring their programming to these platforms in a free, ad-supported format. The new distribution availability will launch in mid-September, bringing the studio’s content to these platforms. The agreement includes content from The WB Network, KidsWB, and the Warner Bros. collection. As well as original content being created for TheWB.com. In addition to themed channels for TheWB.com and KidsWB.com the partners will be launching two new themed channels, Classics WBTV and a Sci Fi channel. The former will feature full-length episodes of landmark series from Warner Bros. and the latter will feature full-length episodes of the studios science fiction series.

I’m really excited and happy to see this. It is good to see a traditional media company really diving into new distribution systems, and, even better, not re-inventing the wheel with yet another website or box - but embracing existing distribution channels. Personally the two that excite me the most, unsurprisingly, are TiVo and Sling. I’d love to be able to download WB TV content right to my TiVo, or watching it via SlingPlayer - or on a SlingCatcher. I’m a fan of animation, and The WB has produced some of the best modern TV animation (Batman, Superman, Justice League, Animaniacs, etc) and I hope all of that great content is available through this system. I’m really looking forward to this being available.

Press release below:
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It could be the weak Blu-ray releases last week, or it could be the result of Toshiba’s deep price cuts on their players, or, most likely, a combination of both, but HD DVD managed to claw back a bit of market share from Blu-ray last week in movie sales. Instead of last week’s 82:18 split in favor of Blu-ray, this week we have 74:26. That puts Blu-ray at 76% Year-to-Date, and 65% since inception of the two formats. HD DVD also managed to get a couple of titles in the Top 10 High-Def Sellers list. They’ve both been out for a while, Transformers and The Bourne Supremacy, so that’s most likely due to new owners catching up, or perhaps promotions.

We’ll see how they fare once Warner stops releasing HD DVDs at the end of May, not to mention their big 85th Anniversary push on DVD and Blu-ray.

According to High-Def Digest, National Geographic is abandoning their neutral stance, dropping HD DVD, and going Blu-ray exclusive for future releases in the ‘National Geographic Presents’ line. This isn’t too surprising, as National Geographic Presents is distributed by Warner, which is going Blu-ray exclusive. The move leaves BBC Home Video as the only Warner-distributed imprint to remain format neutral. Nat Geo’s first BD exclusive title will be Sharkwater, due to drop in April.

Despite Toshiba’s massive player price cuts, which took effect on January 13th, HD DVD was unable to undo the sales advantage of Blu-ray in standalone player sales for the week ending January 19th. Not surprisingly, Blu-ray did lose market share to HD DVD - no one really expected them to hold onto the 93:7 split for the week ending January 12th. That massive advantage was due to a combination of several factors. It was the first week after Warner’s Blu-ray announcement, and it unleashed a lot of pent-up demand which saw a surge in BD player sales. There were also several bundle promotions running which gave away players with the purchase of an HDTV. At the same time HD DVD player sales completely tanked that week as the market reacted to Warner’s news. While the specific break down has yet to be released, HD DVD sales very likely rebounded strongly in light of Toshiba’s price cuts. However, DVDTOWN.com, reporting on NPD’s new figures, shows the split for the week ending January 19th is 66:34 in favor of Blu-ray. And that’s with Toshiba’s price cuts in effect the entire week - the 13th to the 19th. (Picked up via EngadgetHD.)

While that is indeed a significant rebound for HD DVD, remember that for the week ending January 5th, which is mostly before Warner’s announcement late on the 4th, the split was 51:49 in favor of Blu-ray. This shows a shift in standalone player sales from roughly 1:1 to nearly 2:1, despite massive price cuts on HD DVD players. Toshiba has cut the MSRP of their entry level players in half - $299.99 to $149.99 for the HD-A3 and $399.99 to $199.99 for the HD-A30, as well as cutting the HD-A35 from $499.99 to $299.99, and they’re still significantly down in market share. This is bad news for HD DVD. They’ve been claiming that price will be the deciding factor, that consumers will flock to HD DVD players due to the lower pricing. However, during the holiday season, before the price cuts, Blu-ray managed to take more than half the market for standalone player sales - despite being more expensive. And now, despite Toshiba’s deep price cuts, Blu-ray has actually increased their market share without any real marketing efforts.

I realize that a few weeks of data doesn’t determine a long term trend, but there really isn’t a positive spin for HD DVD here. Sure, they regained some market share from the previous week, but that was expected. Note that these figures do not include the PlayStation3 or the Xbox 360 add-on drive, which would skew things even more for BD. (The PS3 is problematic since there is no way to know how many are used as Blu-ray players - more than none, less than all.) Even with a near equal split in standalone player sales HD DVD was losing the war, with media sales skewed strongly toward BD - 2:1 in the US and even more elsewhere. If BD sustains a strong lead in player sales that split will only increase.

Toshiba is trying to buy marker share with subsidized players. They were subsidizing HD DVD player sales before the price cuts, now those subsidizes must have increased dramatically to cover the dramatic drop in MSRP. And this is taking its toll on Toshiba’s bottom line. They’ve just posted a 25% drop in quarterly operating profit. The majority of this drop was due to a drop in market prices for flash memory chips, but some of it is also due to losses in their HD DVD business. As CNET News reports:

Toshiba, whose products range from washing machines to nuclear power plants, is also fighting losses in its HD DVD player business, he said, without detailing the size of the loss.

Toshiba slashed prices on its players by 40 to 50 percent after Time Warner’s Warner Bros. studio announced this month that it would release high-definition DVDs only in rival Sony’s Blu-ray format.

Toshiba’s tactic of buying market share with subsidies isn’t working, and hasn’t been working for several months. Despite a price advantage, HD DVD was unable to sustain the standalone player sales lead it formerly held over BD. And that gap continues to increase, quite dramatically these past couple of weeks. Toshiba’s subsidies have likely had the side effect of keeping other vendors out of the HD DVD market - it is tough to compete profitably when the main vendor in the market is selling products at a loss. Why would someone by a Venturer HD DVD player when the Toshiba is less?

What moves do HD DVD and Toshiba have left - aside from a Super Bowl ad? Their price advantage hasn’t worked. Increasing the gap with price cuts couldn’t turn the tide, it just reduced the losses. They’ve lost studio support and over the coming months the imbalance in releases will grow. Right now HD DVD’s pending releases are few and far between when compared to Blu-ray, and it gets worse once Warner turns off the HD DVD tap. So content isn’t going to drive sales. I suppose Toshiba could start giving away the HD DVD players for free. Even I’d take one for free, they do upscale DVDs decently.

On a somewhat related note, Sony is getting aggressive in Germany. They’re offering a trade-in deal on their BDP-S300 Blu-ray player for owners of HD DVD players. Trade-in your HD DVD player at German retailer Saturn and get €150 off the €499 BDP-S300. This deal is only available at Saturn stores in Germany. Picked up from HiFi Forum via Blu-ray.com. As Blu-ray.com points out, overall high-def player adoption in Germany is much lower than in the US. So offering this kind of deal there will cost Sony much less than it would here, so we’re probably not going to see a similar deal. Though it would be nice.

Amazon seems to love high-def sales, it seems they have at least one a week. Now they’re having a sale on Warner Bros. high-def titles, with up to 53% off 27 Blu-ray titles and 26 HD DVD titles. Picked up from High-Def Digest.

Dealerscope is reporting that Best Buy plans to promote Blu-ray in stores. Customers who purchase two Blu-ray discs will receive a $10 gift card, those who purchase three will receive a $25 gift card. This will reportedly apply to all Blu-ray titles.

Impress AV Watch reports that Hitachi will be bringing a second-generation hybrid hard drive/Blu-ray camcorder to market. The DZ-BD9H will sport a 60GB drive and support 8cm mini-BD discs, as well as 8cm mini-DVDs (SD recording only). Each mini-BD cal hold about 1 hour at the max 1920×1080 resolution, or roughly 2 hours at 1440×1080 with a reduced bit rate. Via Engadget.

But the biggest news comes from the new figures from NPD Group by way of The Digital Bits. They showed a dramatic shift to Blu-ray in hardware sales. In December Blu-ray took 60.19% of the standalone high-def player sales to HD DVD’s 39.81%, that’s not counting Sony PS3 or Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on sales. And that’s with HD DVD’s general price advantage and player sales. Even worse for HD DVD, for the first two weeks of January that balance has shifted to 69.41% BD, 30.59% HD DVD.

But that’s not the whole story. NPD broke down the ratios for the first two weeks of January. For the week ending January 5th, which mostly pre-dates Warner’s Blu-ray announcement on the 4th, the ratio was a more favorable 51.17% BD, 48.83% HD DVD. But for the week ending January 12th, after Warner’s announcement, the figures are a stunning 92.53% BD, 7.47% HD DVD. Clearly the Warner announcement had a strong impact on the market. It looks like a lot of people who were holding off on making a high-def purchase decided it was time.

I don’t expect that ratio to hold, especially with Toshiba’s price cuts which took effect on the 13th, but I don’t think HD DVD will be able to take the majority. Even with a price advantage favoring HD DVD, BD has been able to steadily gain ground and take more of the market. That growth is one of the factors Warner cited in their decision. Via Blu-ray.com.

Gizmodo has an interesting post on the Blu-ray / HD DVD format war, and, in their words, the ‘demise of HD DVD’.

They repeat a rumor I’ve seen reported elsewhere, that Fox has been considering switching to HD DVD, and if they did Warner was going to go HD DVD exclusive as well. The studios want the format war to end, and Warner knew that without one of the BD studios defecting to HD DVD that the format wouldn’t have the critical mass to win. The rumor is that Fox was ready to make the jump with Warner, to end the war, but at the last minute the BD camp, likely Sony, paid Fox $120 million to stay with BD. When Fox backed out, Warner recognized that the only option to end the war would be for them to go Blu as well. There are rumors that Warner was paid $400-$500 million to go Blu, but Warner has denied a payoff, saying there was no ‘bidding war’. They point out that the market at stake is worth billions, so any payoff would be a drop in the bucket.

Gizmodo says that, from their contacts, the feeling within the HD DVD camp is that HD DVD is done for. They report that the rumors of Universal’s HD DVD exclusivity contract being expired are false and that it runs into 2009. And that Universal would only be able to release Blu-ray if HD DVD is declared no longer viable, so Universal is hanging on Toshiba’s word. Microsoft has also deferred to Toshiba on the fate of HD DVD. And everyone seems to be watching Paramount & DreamWorks Animation. If they begin releasing Blu-ray again, that could be the final tipping point for Toshiba to throw in the towel.

Gizmodo goes into some of the behind the scenes drama involved with Warner’s pre-CES announcement. One source told Gizmodo that the surprise announcement caused Bill Gates to drop a segment of his CES keynote which was to focus on HD DVD, pledging continued support. And we already know the HD DVD Promotional Group canceled their press release at CES. In fact, HD DVD had almost no presence at CES after Warner’s announcement. Toshiba and the studios pulled all of their planned HD DVD announcements.

Taking a cynical view, the current Toshiba price cuts on players could be a way to clear out existing stock before making any kind of announcement. If the HD DVD camp throws in the towel Toshiba and the studios would be left with a lot of stock. And waiting until the return windows close on holiday sales could avoid a rash of product returns from those with buyers remorse. There have already been reports from users returning their HD DVD gear due to the Warner announcement.