* Wednesday - I copied down a list of nearly 25 HD-DVDs I wanted to upgrade to Blu-Ray. Top on my list my Ultimate Matrix, Planet Earth, and Ocean's Trilogy. I was happy about only having to send in the paper slip on the back of Ultimate Matrix leaving my covers intact.
* Friday afternoon - Warner jacks up the prices on Ultimate Matrix and Planet Earth (probably will jack up Ocean's Trilogy before I can get my order in today). That makes me mad.
* Saturday morning - I wake up to read that Warner dropped Planet Earth from the list (rather than jacking it up yet another $5 as I figured they'd do) and changed the Ultimate Matrix to require sending in my Revolutions cover. So figuring they'll screw around with the few remaining titles in the list of what I really want, I start to compare reviews for each remaining title on DVD Basen to find out that many are identical down to the extras and encodes, and that several Blu-Rays (300, Ant Bully, Happy Feet) have inferior audio or are missing extras. The list of ones to upgrade gets smaller and smaller.

If WB has made any more changes by the time I get the order placed in a few hours, then I'm going to forget the whole thing. At first it was thumbs up to Warner for offering this, but for me that has now turned to a big thumbs down by raising prices, changing requirements, and deleting titles which punishes people like me who work during the week and have a family who can't get around to dealing with "deals" like this until the weekend at which point the "deal" is no longer such a great deal due to WB's constant tampering as they realized they were giving too good of a deal on some titles and had to put a stop to that! Those are my opinions. Sorry to rant, but I'm a bit mad at WB now!

Besides the BBC's Planet Earth being removed, it looks like the BBC's Galapagos has also been removed.

That's not true is it? I figured the guy just posted that so he could get away with saying he's not shipping the cases and the buyer can't bitch about it.

Yes but for 99% of these discs there's no difference between these particular releases in any regard. The encode is the same, the audio is the same, the supplements are the same. There are probably less than a handful, literally, that makes any difference -- one way or the other. Unless you're dumping your HD-DVD player this is actually, ultimately, just a way for Warner to recoup a few bucks on catalog BD titles that have been around for months now and probably aren't selling in mass numbers.

I'm upgrading the newest Harry Potter film because its the only one that is a combo-disc. That's worth 5.00 to me to replace.

I checked out before they removed Planet Earth, but the receipt I got doesn't say anything about special instructions. Does anyone know if you have to send the outer box, or just the art?

I was going to get Planet Earth and Smallville S6 exchanged b/c they skip a little. But now, screw it. I didn't know WB was owned by Amazon.

That's fine. And your right that some would argue our entire collections are a waste of cash. I myself disagree as a film fan as I'm sure you do too. Keep in mind, however, that the Harry Potter films are destined to be re-released in a few years with new bonus materials and likely new transfers/audio encodes once the entire series wraps -- and all in one big, nice, fancy set. Ill be picking that set up if the price is right on Blu-ray.

My main point was that most of us wouldn't want to buy two copies of a film on DVD that are identical because there's absolutely no point to that. So there should be very few good reasons in my opinion to "upgrade" (AKA: Convert) a title on HD DVD over to Blu-ray if that title happens to be almost entirely identical in quality. To me that is no different than buying two copies of a film on DVD or two copies on HD DVD or two on Blu-ray. That's all the same in the end. I am not referring to double dipping for a better release. I'm definitely in for the Ultimate Matrix set as it's a definite upgrade. And while I think people with very few HD DVD's would be wise to just ditch their players and upgrade the titles from Warner Bros they have some of us own a good number of HD DVD's and I don't think it would make as much sense to go this route. I have around 100 titles. 100 X $5 is $500. That's not taking into account Box Sets, shipping, the initial cost of the HD DVD's, or the fact that so far only Warner Bros is running this kind of promotion and the fact that studios like Universal are unlikely to join in with the massive amount of titles they have yet to port over to Blu-ray (with certain titles actually seeming unlikely for release on Blu-ray at all in the near future).

I refuse to get rid of all my HD DVD's because of this and while titles like Lady in the Water have Dolby TrueHD audio on HD DVD and only Dolby Digital on Blu-ray, and Forbidden Planet is not even available on Blu-ray to me Warner Bros has answered my own question as to whether or not I should fork over $100 for 18 films I already own.

If your buying the Blu-ray copies to own additional copies that doesn't make too much sense to me unless there are bonus materials that are only made available on each specific format. If that's the case then I guess I see your point. Otherwise, go ahead and indulge in this if you want to but I'd just get rid of the extra HD DVD.

And, of course, for both of us this just comes down to a matter of opinion.

Yes, Ebay does "regulate" shipping charges. I don't know what the limits are off the top of my head but Ebay did limit what I could charge for shipping on the last round of DVD's I dumped on Ebay.

As you should. My point is that all these titles can potentially come out with new tranfers. Heck, one day all or any of these could come out in 3D. It will alwasy be an endless cycle.

I think we can agree to disagree here. This is all personal opinion of course. For me, there is a difference between HD DVD and Blu-ray. There both hi-def video but still two different formats with one already dead and, yes, I know my HD player still works, etc. Hopefully blu will survive, but who knows? Maybe this time next year it will be a goner too.

Absolutely.

It's $3 per DVD. Or in this case he is selling as a lot with only one listing and the amount eBay will allow is still a whole $3.

I sold my complete Seinfeld series in the individual season packages and was allowed to charge a whopping $3 to ship all of them.

When did they start doing this? I know some people let their shipping charges get out of hand but I don't think this is a very good move. Especially for people like me who insist on insurance on higher dollar items (OOP dvds and such) or those who sell stuff in lots.

One more Ebay fuck-up.

ebay has been doing this for a long time now.
there was or is a topic in the store forum.

I heard that you don't get any cover art with your new blu ray disc. Can anybody confirm this? Does the blu ray come in just an empty blu ray case w/o cover art.

No, you will get a brand new shrink-wrapped copy, just like the ones they sell in stores.....

I'm shocked they removed titles already. I was thinking they might ADD more titles, but never imagined they'd jack up prices or remove titles so quickly. I haven't had a chance to go through all of mine. I probably wasn't going to trade in my Planet Earth anyway, but I still don't like that they did that. I guess I'm stuck paying the extra 5 bucks for the Matrix. Still worth the upgrade...

For those surprised at changes, it's still a business.

ECO101: Supply/Demand

ECO101a - Internet changes can happen on a whim.

Yeah I just had to deal with this. With box sets it forces you to send them media mail or eat shipping costs. Then the buyers get pissed because you didn't ship it to them priority for $3. Not to mention you don't even get the full $3 since paypal takes a percentage of it as well.

went for 8 titles,but 4 where in a best of box set all for $44.but sold off a couple of the hddvd titles so that lowers it so far to $4 a bd.

I don't even charge for shipping anymore; I make all my normal auctions ship for free, and just roll normal shipping charges into the starting price.

If you sell in lots Ebay allows you to charge substantially more than $3. You have to make sure you sell them in "Wholesale Lots" as opposed to the usual DVD category -- see here:

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August200...ing/index.html

I have the Ocean's box set, but there doesn't seem to be a upc on the box anywhere. Are you supposed to write it on the flattened box? I'd like to upgrade the set instead of paying for all three. Any help is appreciated.

Damn it, for the only two titles I was going to upgrade. Thanks, WB.

Not to state the obvious, but I imagine they raised the price for Ultimate Matrix to offset the perceived loss from allowing the Complete Matrix to be used for the upgrade.

Casablanca does note on the site that it is the Ultimate Collector's Edition. I would assume from that statement it would be the box set and not just the disc.

Exactly. They expanded the trade-in on the Matrix and most likely didn't plan to originally give away the fancy Casablanca.

I have no problem with them asking for an extra 5 for both of those.