HomeThe death of HD DVD was a huge shock to all HD DVD supporters. But find any HD DVD supporter in Australia today, and most of them will have a big grin on their face? Why? Because the fire sale has started.
Late last week and continuing on today, several of Australia’s largest online and offline stores have started offering HD DVD titles at a huge discounted rate. Titles are flying off the (virtual, and real) shelves at $AUD 9.95 ($USD 9.40) per title. The sale started with two dozen Universal titles, including The Kingdom, Shaun of the Dead, Serenity, Rambo Trilogy. Universal soon launched a second round of discounts, this time at one of my favourite online retailers, EzyDVD. This time, new titles including the newly released The Bourne Ultimatum, and most interestingly of all, the Battlestar Galactica and Heroes Season 1 box sets at $USD 28 each. And just today, JB Hi-Fi launched their own HD DVD sales at their B&M stores – this time including Paramoutn titles such as Transformers, Shrek the Third, all at under $10. The news is that online retailers will soon follow suit with the Paramount/Dreamworks discounts.
Suffice to say, stock ran out rather quickly. The online stores could barely keep up with the demand, several of them crashing due to the traffic and the sheer number of orders. JB Hi-Fi’s sale started today at opening, and most of the good titles were gone within the first hour (although this is more to do with JB’s rather poor selection and stock of good HD titles). Universal has promised more stock coming on the 3rd of March, and also another run on the 28th of March. There is no news of when Warner will start discounting their titles yet.
As someone who cannot resist a bargain, I just had to get involved. It’s not everyday you can buy $AUD 49.95 (that’s the normal retail pricing for HD movies here in Australia, although most stores sell them at $40 or 45) for only $9.95, sometimes even less. (And just as I type, the first of my orders arrive via the postman … good timing or what).
I don’t mean to show off or anything, but I will list the orders I’ve made just to show you what kind of bargins are available (and also as a way for me to keep a record of what I’ve bought … not buying duplicates, I find, is the hardest when you’re buying so many titles from so many different places). Note that for some orders, I used discount vouchers which brought the value of the order down to below a single dollar – this was actually due to a store error in allowing these vouchers to be used on orders less than $40, but who am I to complain. All prices in Australian dollars unless otherwise indicated.
dstore.com.au Order #1:
- Carlito’s Way – $9.95
- Casino – $9.95
- Deer Hunter – $9.95
- Evan Almighty – $9.95
- I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – $9.95
- Jarhead – $9.95
- Knocked Up – $9.95
- Rambo: First Blood – $9.95
- Rambo: First Blood Part 2 – $9.95
- Rambo III – $9.95
- Shipping: $1
- Voucher Discount: -$20
- Order Total: $80.50 ($USD 75.95)
dstore.com.au Order #2:
- Apollo 13 – $9.95
- Shipping: $1
- Voucher Discount: -$10
- Order Total: $0.95 ($USD 0.89)
dstore.com.au Order #3:
- Chronicles of Riddick – $9.95
- Shipping: $1
- Voucher Discount: -$10
- Order Total: $0.95 ($USD 0.89)
dstore.com.au Order #4:
- Spartacus – $9.95
- Shipping: $1
- Voucher Discount: -$10
- Order Total: $0.95 ($USD 0.89)
Playbox Zone Order:
- The Kingdom – $9.00
- Shaun of the Dead – $9.00
- Smokin’ Aces – $9.00
- The Thing – $9.00
- Shipping: $5.25
- Order Total: $41.25 ($USD 38.92)
EzyDVD Order #1:
- Battlestar Galactica: Season 1 – $29.83
- The Big Lebowski – $9.92
- Heroes: Season 1 – $29.83
- Land of the Dead – $9.92
- Waterworld – $9.92
- Shipping: Free
- Order Total: $89.42 ($USD 84.34)
EzyDVD Order #2:
- Born on the Fourth of July – $9.92
- The Bourne Ultimatum – $17.83
- Leaving Las Vegas – $4.92
- Shipping: Free
- Order Total: $32.67 ($USD 30.80)
Total spending was $246.69 ($USD 232.62). That’s an average of $8.13 ($USD 7.67) per non box set title, or even including the box sets, that’s still only $9.87 per title ($USD 9.30). The EzyDVD orders won’t ship until March 28th, so if there’s the possibility that I can pick up the ordered titles sooner at cheaper prices, then the average will be even lower. The Paramount sale is most likely going to start in a day or two, so my credit card is ready and waiting (although a bit overworked).
So for those in the UK or the US, don’t fret, I’m sure your fire sale will be even bigger with more titles. The best thing is that since HD DVD is region free, you can take advantage of any sale anywhere as long as the price works out to be pretty good. I don’t think the overseas sales will beat the local Australians one, simply because of additional shipping costs, but there will be a greater range of titles.
I will keep everyone updated in the next part of this series, with links to sales as they become available. Keep your eye peeled to this page as well for the latest US/UK online sale links!
Update: I’ve just read a forum post from someone who talked to a manager at EzyDVD, that their Universal sale was a “testing the waters” type sale, that the real sale is yet to begin (105,000 units available). The “test” managed to attract 16,000 orders all the same. This might not sound impressive, but the total number of HD DVD discs sold in Australia by all stores combined since inception was only 35,000! The EzyDVD sale was actually the last of the online sales, so the actual number of HD DVDs sold in the last week could easily be over 50,000. I don’t have the latest figures for total Blu-ray movie sales in Australia, but a December figure showed 102,000 movies sold – so let’s say that this number has now been doubled thanks to Blu-ray winning the HD war, it looks like HD DVD could in fact still overtake this figure on the basis of the fire sales. Again, it just shows that good prices sell discs, even ones for a dead format.
Happy Shopping!
