Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. said Wednesday it will give gift cards to customers that bought HD-DVD players or HD-DVD attachments from its U.S. stores as the format goes away in favor of the Blu-ray standard.
The products had to be purchased at one of the company’s stores prior to Feb. 23.
Best Buy said it will give a $50 gift card for each item, which will likely lead to the distribution of more than $10 million in U.S. gift cards.
Hey – it’s better than nothing. How much did you get for your dusty Betamax player?
Could you turn it in for store credit (claim it broke or whatever) AND get the 50 bucks (prob if you do it after you get the card)?
I don’t see what the problem is. Who doesn’t understand that they are rolling dice when they are an early adopter?
‘How much did you get for your dusty Betamax player?’
Looking at eBay shows several players selling for $50 to $200+.
I used my dusty BetaMax player for at least 15 years, it still recorded and played back better than any VHS player I’ve owned, (8 hours too).
I got one of these…unfortunately, it was purchased through BestBuy on the web. I guess no $50 for me. On the other hand, I only paid $100, I got 7 free HD movies to go with it, and it does upsampling conversion as well as any player on the market–so I can’t complain too hard. But another $50 would have made it even sweeter.
I bought my HD player (with 5 free movies, amazingly 3 of which didn’t suck)and a 360 drive AFTER the war had ended. I’ve bought a heap of movies for them too, and am quite happy.
Not only did I get a VERY cheap HD and upconverting player for my existing DVDs, but the HD DVDs are now so damn cheap that I can get 4 or 5 for under $40, MUCH less than the $40 I’d have to pay for EACH bluray movie (this is australia BTW).
For only a few bucks I’m now enjoying HD movies and shows that I’d never have had the chance for if Sony hadn’t bribed all of the big studios to drop HD.
Toshiba should have bitten the bullett and dropped the price of their players to the <$100 level a couple of months ago.
Sure, the titles will soon dry up, but I wasn’t about to pay the many many hundreds for bluray anyway, so all in all I’m very happy.
Nice of BB to do the gift card thing though.
Dropping the price wouldn’t have done squat. The price of HD-DVD players was already half that of Blu-Ray, and they still didn’t sell. How many of you remember the commercials for HD-DVD players?
Probably none, because I don’t think there were any! Sony advertised the crap out of Blu-Ray, so that’s all people wanted.
I’m STILL waiting on my 5 free HD-DVDs from Toshiba. KwadGuy, when did you get yours? Toshiba claims they’re in the mail, but I’m not so sure I buy it. They claim they had an “overwhelming response” to the promotion.
I then asked the girl, “so if you had such an overwhelming response, why did Toshiba back out of HD?”
She had no answer.
Of course her response should have been:
“Because Sony bribed the movie studios with hundreds of millions of dollars each to push their vastly more expensive standard that actually offered fewer features, less compatibility and lower number of available titles than our format. Enjoy being ass-raped by Sony for the forseeable future as they now own the standard from beginning to end, thanks for your support you stupid jerk!”
I think that would have covered it.
Or her response could have been:
If you have to ask you probably would not understand the answer.
RE: #7: I purchased the player in December and sent in my request for the five movies immediately thereafter. They just arrived on Monday of his week…
I wouldn’t sell my HD-DVD player for $50.00 more than I paid for it, never mind giving it away for 50 bucks.
I boought my Toshiba HD-A3 after the end of the war. The upconversion of standard DVD’s totally blew me away. My standard DVD’s look as good on my 50″ plasma as the HD content I get from my Cable Co.
$99.00 for a quality piece of hardware + 7 free movies (2 in the box). What’s not to like?
I’m sure all the players BB will take in on this promotion will be shredded into tiny toxic pieces and dumped in a landfill somewhere. What a waste.
I will not buy a Blu Ray player until I can get one from a trusted brand (i.e. Not Sony) for under $150.00