Best Buy $50 gift cards for HD DVD suckers
Feel like a sucker for buying an HD DVD player? Well, if you happen to have bought it at Best Buy, you're in line to get a $50 gift card from the retail giant as part of its pity program for HD DVD owners. OK, I'm kidding about the pity program, but the $50 gift certificate is real, and you don't have to give up your HD DVD player to get one.
According the official release, Best Buy is giving $50 gift cards to "Customers who purchased an HD DVD player or HD DVD attachment from its U.S. stores before February 23, 2008." And owners of multiple HD DVD players can receive a gift card for each player or HD DVD attachment they purchased. Best Buy says it plans to distribute more than $10 million in gift cards.
The release goes on to say that, "Best Buy will proactively mail cards to all customers that the company can identify as having purchased an HD DVD player. Members of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, customers who purchased Performance Service Plans (PSPs), or who made their purchase on BestBuy.com should look for their gift cards in the mail by May 1. Other customers who may not be easily identified can call (888) BEST-BUY to receive their gift cards with proof of purchase through a credit card or their Best Buy receipt."
There's another little tidbit in the release that's also worth mentioning. If you just want to get rid of your HD DVD player, Best Buy is opening its Online Trade-In Center on March 21 to HD DVD owners (this deal is open to any HD DVD owner regardless of where you bought your player). "Visitors to the site will receive instant estimates of the value of their HD DVD players and movies," the release says. "Those who agree with the estimates can then ship their goods to the Trade-In Center free of charge by downloading a prepaid shipping label and will receive an additional gift card as payment for their trade-in."
Best Buy isn't the first store to offer relief to HD DVD buyers. Circuit City has apparently been allowing customers who bought players within 90 days of HD DVD officially going belly up to return them for store credit.
As for for those $50 gift cards, you can buy whatever you want with them, but if you're cynical, you're probably thinking what I'm thinking: Perhaps Best Buy is hoping to entice current HD DVD owners to buy up its remaining stock of HD DVD movies, which are already being significantly discounted.
Any HD DVD owners care to comment on what they plan on doing with their $50 gift card?
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter.
Or maybe I will just abandon it and get a new xbox360 game.
So I'll use the $150 that I should get back from BB on something else.... maybe something for my wife, or as a discount on the new Canon Rebel XSi when it comes out in April!
So HD DVD owners are getting $50 gift cards because they got "suckered" into a failing format and now people are actually admitting they are going to spend that $50 on some HD DVD's to add to their collection?
what!? "with all due respect" You got screwed once and your bending over again giving HD DVD a chance to screw you for the 2nd time. I dont know, just doesnt make sense to me... maybe you guys like it that way... but it's just dumb.
let the format go and use that money to start your blu-ray collection.
Anybody who was foolish enough to buy *either* deserves no pity whatsoever if they happen to be on the losing side in the end.
Was it SO important to have the only-slightly-better picture quality as soon as humanly possible, that it was worth wasting money and being saddled with instantly-obsolete tech?
I?m not trading in my player not just because of my existing HD DVD library, but because it still makes a very decent upconverting conventional DVD player. And with the declining prices of all the discontinued HD DVD?s, I should be able to rack up a few more titles. I hope Blu-Ray stays around long enough to savor its victory since I recently purchase a BD player also. I also hope this format war doesn?t end up like the one between DVD-Audio vs. Super CD, which after all the hype ended up nowhere. Remember that format war?
last time i checked, in the consent decree of 1970 that ibm signed when they bundlded a fortran compiler with the ibm 370, it has been illegal ever since to bundle. i would no more buy a blu-ray player than i would buy a stolen laptop from a fence.
Did Blu-ray win because the PS3 had a Blu-ray player? The quick answer is no. What putting a Blu-ray player in the PS3 did was guarantee the survival of Blu-ray.
Since they were going to have to make the games for PS3, it only makes sense to make Blu-ray movies as well.
BTW, I do have a PS3, but I didn't buy it until the WB decision back in January.
HD DVD people: save your disks, at least you have that fav movie in hi def.
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by DCBRONCO
March 30, 2008 6:52 PM PDT
- Carnoy hypes Blu-Ray just to keep from being fired or to keep being payed by Sony. Anyone who trust CNET after seeing how they do business at Gamespot is the true sucker . Look at Carnoy's history of articles and CNETs blind support of Sony in general.
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