Here in Chicago I was at the Best Buy at Golf Mill yesterday and they had an endcap with some movies priced for 20.99 (American Gangster, Beowulf, Stardust) & some for 14.99 (Fear & Loathing, Hulk). These prices were not listed in the regular HD DVD section, just on that endcap, but they did ring at the register.

I saw those yesterday as well. I heard Top Gun was $7.99 and several other titles as well....Just waiting to see if anyone confirms it on other forums.

And don't forget...

I'd love to get Top Gun for $7.99. I'll check them out tomorrow when I stop buy to get 101 Dalmations.

According to bestbuy.com, Top Gun is $17.49

Correct. Apparently this was an unadvertised sale. Markdowns not shown online nor in the ads. I'm still waiting to see if anyone confirms, though it just might be YMMV on "Managers Specials". Stores can return all these titles for a full refund as well.

Arrgghh. I wish I had known about the possible $7.99 Top Gun yesterday when I was at Best Buy. I was just browsing to see if the prices had dropped (they hadn't -- at least sticker price) and they had one copy of Top Gun. Just checked the inventory online and it's gone from my local store. I wonder if it was $7.99.

Ahh.. that makes sense. Hopefully someone will confirm soon. I'd get in on Top Gun at $7.99.
I know that the earlier posted The Contract shows up as $9.99 on their website, but I believe it rings up at the normal price $29.99 or so in the store. I haven't checked personally or read any details if the $9.99 price is in store too, just not published on a shelf tag or in the ad.

Just order it for in-store pickup and grab The Contract for $9.09

BB's inventory will show that the item is out of stock online if there are only a couple units left in stock at the store. It may be worth a trip if it isn't out of your way.

Most stores have less then 3 copies of catalog titles anyway. My local Best Buy condensed 2.5 rows of HD DVD down to 1 over the weekend.

I was just at my local Future Shop (Best buy - like store in Canada - owned by Best Buy)

An employee was boxing up Paramount HD-DVDs. I had a look a the sheet they were using, and it showed in-store quantity, return quantity and quantity boxed. All numbers were the same (meaning they are returning every copy in store)

On the top it says "RETURN TO DISTRIBUTOR BY MARCH 7"

Titles I saw on the list:

Arctic Tale
Freedom Writers
Norbit
Hot Rod
A Mighty Heart

There were a bunch of others, but that's all I can remember.

Gotta wonder what will happen to these movies...will they be destroyed? Sold to Amazon?

I don't think many will quibble over them destroying Norbit...

Ran out quickly to check Top Gun at my local BB (the one copy left yesterday was, in fact, still there). It's still $17.49 at my store so I guess it is YMMV. Hopefully, it will become universal.

We may not ever see a fire sale on HDDVD. I'm assuming Paramount will want to sell title once they hit Blu. They know that their BluRay titles will suffer if 30% of the HD market just picked up the same title on HDDVD for $5.00. They may just take them back and crush them instead of flooding the market with underpriced goods. The consumer loses out once again.

Just food for thought.

They might, but how long before they can get up and running and release all those on Blu-ray while still making Day and Dates? Same goes to Universal who has 150+ exclusive titles.

I imagine we will see these for as low as $10 before they get sent back to me destroyed or sold to a big buyer like Amazon who has endless stock space to continue selling them.

$5 is my price-point; especially to Wally-World & others who torpedoed HD-DVD

Nearly all B&M have the option of sending back stock to the studios, and most will before they start eating money to get rid of these. $5 simply will not happen to 95% of the titles at stores.

Agreed. Under $10 is my price point. You can't see a movie, in a noisy theater, once, in my city for that amount. $9.98 or something like that and I am pretty much willing to take a chance on almost anything.

This is definitely true, but even if stores send them back there is always a chance they could end up somewhere like a Big Lots or especially Amazon reduced in price. We could see them B1G1 at Amazon again with their new lower price points.

Honestly, the HV thing was a great start. I definitely considered 2 for $15 a fire sale and enjoyed the hell out of all the discs I picked up. I spent hours this weekend watching Zodiac and all of the extras on the second disc.

Another option is Half.com. Many discs are under $10 there with people dumping their collections so there are definitely opportunities available to build a nice, cheap HD DVD collection.

$5 may be too much to hope for, but I don't think $10 or less is and I will continue to grab the deals when I find them.

I was able to pick up The Host and Zodiac: DC at my local Hollywood Video on the 2 for 20 sale.

= J

If they actually do this, I'd like all of us to call Paramount and tell them to re-think their Consumer's Choice tactics. Hopefully, it won't get to that point.

If HD DVD lagged behind so much like many pro Blu-ray folk have said, then we will clearly see this was a lie if Paramount and other companies want their stock back and won't sell it. I mean seriously, if you're afraid of an obsolete format, there's something rotten smellin' in Denmark.

I mentioned something about studios possibly trying to FORCE HD consumers to go Blu-ray when it was mentioned about a week ago about some movies being sent back to a studio. Just didn't make sense to me. But I hope this is a rare situation, and I'm wrong about what could happen, like you also mentioned.

In the meantime, I talked to a knowledgable person at Best Buy today who said as far as he knew, HD DVDs were not going back. They were going to be clearanced. He just didn't know when.

No, they should bury it in the landfill with all those copies of E.T. for Atari.

Well, I guess it depends on the store's credit amounts they receive by sending them back. Maybe Futureshop realized they would make more money by returning them. I would imagine they had the option to sell them at any price they wanted, but assumed they would be taking too much risk as it is. the studios could be giving them one chance only to return HD DVD stock, so Futureshop decided not to risk anything. You also would have to deal with returns to some degree.

I'm hoping Amazon (ughhh, or even DeepDiscount) will buy the stock, but I have to say, with all this HD DVD stock moving from hand to hand, costs money, so it looks like to me we won't see $5 HD DVDs, at least at this point.

But possibly in a month or so on some titles, and here's why...

DeepDiscount orders directly from the manufacturer/studio and they drop ship a lot now. In fact, I'd bet most of their business is from drop shipping product. The titles which will be $5 would be titles which don't sell at all. And the rest will probably sell for around $7-$9. But all this assumes the studios want to notify their retail chains of the limited window for returns or selling them on the retail level, and then from there having a centralized stock for places like DeepDiscount and Amazon to advertise accordingly.

A lot of retail chains are throttling their prices on HD DVDs. Not sure if this is a test which studios will use and/or it's an indicator of retail chains just trying to squeeze their last buck out of an obsolete product.

Fry's in Sacramento already marked down the Universal titles today. Most are $14.99 with combos at $19.99 though I snagged the last "Unleashed" combo for $14.99. I got American Gangster for $19.99 since that's probably the lowest it'll be for a while, and got a price tag to peel off the stupid naked slipcover without messing it up. They still have most of the Paramount $9.99 titles but they appear to be going fast, I grabbed some on Friday and more today. Will probably wait for the other Universals to go below $10 before I get those, unless any of my wanted titles get to be in short supply.

Ive noticed the markdowns at Frys as well...hoping for more drastic prices though.

I think $10 for titles is going to be pretty much it (other than the Hollywood Video B1G1 Coupon deals, etc.). Suppose Amazon does have a B1G1. They might base it off of MSRP, which may not be better than $10. I'm probably wrong, but on the other hand, it's tough ordering titles you want, and others you want to wait a while for any future discounts. Ugh.

There might be deals for $5 or so if you can scout some smaller online stores who bought HD DVD titles, and if they aren't sending them back, we might come across some titles being blown out. Other than that, I dunno.

I just need the Pianist to be on sale!

Just came across this on Ebay....

mod note: ebay link removed. shilling or not, they are still not allowed. -namja

And I'm not shillin'....I was searching for The Kingdom and did a search by "Highest Price".

With Discovery's site having the American Version of Planet Earth for $29.99 and Hollywood Video's deals, I'm pretty much set with what I wanted on HD. I even bought some movies based on impulse.

I only need two movies to complete my wish list: Children of Men and Matrix

That's about my situation, too; I've gotten about $600 worth of hardware/movies for maybe $240, so I'm pretty satisfied at this point.

I know I'd pick up things like Star Trek or maybe Heroes season1 if they went way down, but that's probably not too likely. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of used book/movie stores (which would be the most likely places to offer movies for $10 or less) aren't carrying HD DVDs because I guess they figure they won't be able to sell them.

Within a month or two, it may be mostly ebay where we find the deals.

He wants way too much money for just the discs.

Rumor has it Best Buy will have a Buy 3 get 1 Free sales on HD DVD at the new lower prices. That means you could get 4 new releases for about $63 ($20.99 for new releases now x3 + 1 for free). Thats about $15 each...not bad at all. I'd be down for sure.

matrixrok9,

Don't hold me to it, but you might wait it out for the Ultimate Matrix Collection, because it should go lower (maybe $29.99...). I'm sure this is one collection which Warner made a shitload of copies exclusively for the HD DVD fanatic.

GizmoDVD,

Yeah, that's not too bad of a sale. Hope it gets better, like B3G2 or something.

Thanks for the info Polizei. I already have Matrix Reloaded (bought it pretty much just for the car chase scene) from Hollywood Video, unfortunately they didn't have Matrix. They did have Matrix Revolutions but I'm not a big fan of that one.

Has anyone else who ordered from the EzyDVD.com.au sale heard anything back about their discs?

My order is still listed as a pending item and has been since the first day.

I'm trying to decide on Forbidden Planet. I've never seen it, but I think I would like it; from what I've read it's classic sci-fi (one of the originators), and I always enjoy those the most on MST3K (where I've seen most of my sci-fi, I guess), so I think I'd enjoy having the movie... just the price is still a bit too high for me. It's hard for me to gauge this since HD-DVD is dying and I set a price-point of $10 for HD media long ago. I suppose I could say this is like two items (the movie and the tin), and call it $13 for each. Damn I'm already convinced I want it so I guess I should just do it; if it drops I can get a refund from Amazon and if it goes up in price and I DON'T buy it, I'll be kicking myself.

Lots of price drops on Amazon.com. $29.98 titles like "The Pianist" dropped to $11.95. Many $39.98 titles like "The Kingdom", "American Gangster", & "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" dropped to $16.95.

no change at DDD as of yet....but many of the $11.95 titles at Amazon have reached the magic $10 threshold and are $9.98....list seems longer of those....

didn't u read the expected dates of when the stock would be available ??

its as clear as mud = 28 March !