Netflix no longer carrying HD DVDs as of December 15th
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 13th 2008 4:58PM
posted Nov 13th 2008 4:58PM
[Thanks, Shawn]
posted Nov 13th 2008 4:58PM
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I feel bad for those 3 people who still had HD DVD's on their queue.
Count me as one of them. Too bad that I bricked my HD-A3 a few months ago. Oh well!
me too! I have about 5 HD DVD movies in my queue. I never got to check out the Matrix and that disappeared from the HD DVD lineup a while ago.
Regardless, I will be ok with DVDs for quite a while before I waste money on the other soon-to-be-obsolete HD format.
I still have HD DVDs in my queue but they haven't moved for a while because new Blu-ray movies keep coming out that I want to see more.
Not sure if it's still available but deepdiscount had the Matrix Trilogy for $29 delivered, beats renting it at that price!
Whats HD DVD?
Still waiting on the Bourne movies...
Although I've got more Blu-rays now, it was indeed the best format. It's death was rigged...
signatures are okay. a sphincter says what if they say something about it.
---------------
http://www.ROCKandREVIEW.com/
Wow Alex, bitter much?
Plus 1.
I one of them...too preoccupied with other things. Hell, I've got 3 HD DVD rentals on my shelf that have been around for about 3-4 months.
I will never forget [lights a candle]
No, I'm sure you will.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
On HD DVD ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^
If every HD DVD title is now available in blu-ray, I'm all for this decision.
Not yet, but almost.
Well who knows about obscure titles, only the titles that people actually want count.
Like someone else said, they haven't come out with the Bourne series on Blu-ray yet. Still waiting on Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek TOS as well!
What a thing to say - "Well who knows about obscure titles, only the titles that people actually want count". A movie doesn't have to be popular to be good. Many obscure movies still have fans.
It doesn't make sense to me to put the kibosh on HD DVD discs that you still have in your warehouse anyway. What's the harm in keeping them and renting them out until they (through normal rental use) break or become unreadable?
I agree, it seems downright stupid to me. Unless they were given some specific incentive by Blu Ray to dump them and that incentive was more valuable to them than the users who will inevitably switch to Blockbuster in order to continue renting HD DVD. Maybe they want to sell off their stock of HD DVD's before they are completely worthless.
On a side note, I have always thought that niche markets made since from a business standpoint in order to expand your marketshare, but corporate America has never agreed with that assessment. Oh well...
Inventory management isn't free. Additionally, if they can recoup some of their costs by liquidating HD DVDs, they can increase their stock of higher-demand titles.
NOTHING about the aftermath of the HD DVD vs Blu-ray fight makes any sense.
There are almost as many HD DVD players out there (possibly as many, it was around a million in February, and more boxes, including LG's BH200, were sold afterwards) as there are standalone Blu-ray players (1.3 million) at the last count. It's only ever been the PS3 that gave Blu-ray any marketshare. It's safe to say that if, right now, you were to release the same title for both HD DVD and Blu-ray, sales of the HD DVD version would comparable with the Blu-ray version.
But the studios have completely dropped the format. Completely. Universal and Paramount could have continued making HD DVD releases (on top of Blu-ray, for the most part it would have been a simple remultiplexing of the same streams and adding an HDi front-end), but they didn't.
The obsession has been with this idea that somehow Blu-ray will "succeed" if HD DVD fails, and the studios have put enormous effort into making sure HD DVD isn't just six feet under, but beneath the Earth's crust. But what they've achieved is the following:
1. They've backed the wrong format to begin with and made it impossible for any serious chance of a comeback for the working, trouble free, lower cost, more open, sits at the heart of a downloads infrastructure format.
2. They're getting around half the sales they would otherwise do by supporting both formats.
3. They've seriously pissed off anyone who bought an HD DVD player.
Netflix's decision is small potatoes compared to what's happened over all.
I called and asked about this very thing. The rep told me they had a buyer for their entire collection.
@Squiggleslash
I thought we had data on how many HD-DVD discs sold each week VS Blu-ray and even when HD-DVD had twice as many stand-alones out there Blu-ray outsold in Discs?
If that's the Case, how can you even begin to say HD-DVDs would be selling as much as Blu-rays now that Blu-ray has even more Stand-alone players?
As I recall one of the biggest sellers for HD-DVD was some movie (Transformers) that would be considered by many to be a PS3 crowd title....
Maybe the obsession was really that HD-DVD was actually succeeding, and not just bleeding a company out(Toshiba).
Might want to upgrade your perception to filter out more non-factual data there Squigs.
> If that's the Case, how can you even begin to say HD-DVDs would be selling as much as Blu-rays now that Blu-ray has even more Stand-alone players?
Well I said the figures would be comparable, and that they're currently getting around half the sales they would otherwise do if they were to sell versions now. I stand by both comments, in part because I suspect most HD DVDs would sell better than they would have done pre-discontinuation. There's some evidence to back this up in that surveys since the dropping of the format showed a sharp uptick in HD DVD sales, with many retailers reporting higher sales of HD DVDs than BDs.
The fact remains that HD DVD releases would sell in comparable numbers to Blu-ray right now if the studios bothered. They're more concerned with appearances, that some how the existence of a few HD DVDs of new releases would convince everyone to hold off buying Blu-ray discs.
Even if you decide this isn't the case though, and assume HD DVD would sell in similar proportions to the situation prior to the great HD DVD switch-off, you're still talking about studios getting an extra 50% in sales for not a lot of work on their side. Re-multiplex the streams, bolt on the crudest simplest HDi front-end, and print off the disks using a cheap DVD press. The price per disc will even be lower than the Blu-ray equivalent. Most businesses would think making 50% in extra revenues for not a lot of extra work is a good thing. Not Hollywood.
Just because I haven't had the time to figure this out recently, but I'll be starting the HD DVD resurrection as soon as I can figure out how to convert BR to HD DVD and sell it online. HD DVD-Rs should be cheaply available, and the hardware is obviously all still around, the only thing is figuring out navigation and breaking BluRays DRM. I would be buying HD DVDs to this day if someone got around to making them out of his backyard, even if it cost more than Blu Rays.
I still laugh at Blu Ray ads in my local paper.
So... why would they do this? Obviously they should stop stocking their inventory with HD-DVDs since demand will slip, but why stop allowing people to rent them? They're just arbitrary discs in the inventory.
Toshiba et al were producing players like crazy, and then everyone dumped their inventory when it lost. So, there's tons of players and cheap movies floating around. Most of these people will probably hold off buying BR as long as possible. These are many of the same people BR needed to accelerate toward being THE standard over DVD and competing HD formats, so they can kill off the unprofitable licensing free-for-all that DVD is.
So, the strategy is to kill the usefulness of all the players folks bought. I wouldn't be surprised if those HD-DVDs go straight to the shredder, rather than being sold.
wow thought they had stopped months ago.........
HD-DVD! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It never made sense to me for Netflix to drop HD DVD like it did. Being a service that had no real physical presence, not like a b&m store that has limited shelf space, carrying an HD DVD is no different than carrying an unpopular or rare DVD.
Netflix might not have a physical presence but disks take up physical space somewhere and the software you order disks through has to be written, maintained and QA'd by somebody. On top of that, if Netflix has stopped purchasing HD DVD titles, it means their remaining inventory is going to become unusable over time, starting with the most popular titles. If their inventory is diminishing but there is still an underlying cost associated with supporting a format, there will be a point where the costs cancel out the returns. At that point they may as well kill the format entirely. Which they have.
Except that out of print DVD's get yanked from circulation as well so yanking a discontinued format is nothing extraordinary. If the disc can't be replaced they just remove it from circulation because it causes them too many problems in the long run.
I didn't think Netflex was still carrying them. I thought HD DVD was dropped months ago for Blu-Ray ONLY. I'll miss HD DVD, to bad it had a short life. It was the better, cheaper format, what was needed for a HD media to survives, especially during these times. With all the competition these days, HD DVD had a slim chance to really catch on, Blu-Ray is a niche market format. For me, HD VOD from Comcast works good enough, HD Streaming from Netflex should be good enough also. Who knows, I could have a Black Friday Blu-Ray player for all I know if the price is right, but a Disc collection will be FEW, having 500+ DVD's is already to much. I'd still buy more DVD's over Blu-Ray even if I had Blu-Ray. I've cut way back on just buying Movies anyway.
Personally this isn't that big of a deal. I just simply moved all the HD DVDs in my queue to the top and switched any that already had a Blu-ray replacement to Blu-ray (I don't know why it didn't do it automatically for me...) I'll get through those HD DVDs before the month deadline, and be done with the need to rent HD DVDs.
I'm glad.
Uhm how can i add these HD-DVD's to my queue. i tried looking when i started netflix a few months ago and none showed up? were they only available to those that added them tot their queue a LONG time ago?
Although I've got more Blu-rays now, it was indeed the best format. It's death was rigged...
signatures are okay. a sphincter says what if they say something about it.
---------------
http://www.ROCKandREVIEW.com/
Why is this new news. They flushed my HD DVD queue and turned of the HD DVD flag months ago. Think it was in the March-April time period.
If I were you HD DVD guys, I would put some of the better movies at the top of my queue and then keep them. If Netflix was really nice about it, they would just give these away to those who were renters. They couldn't possibly make much money off of selling these used HD DVDs when I've seen new ones for as low as $5.
Fry's had a number of HD titles on sale this week for less than $10.
I would like to see some stats on how many HD DVD player owners have now moved to BD, also does anyone have stats on BD hardware sales for the last 6months?
I wouldn't bother with BD myself, but each to their own.