We were just discussing on Monday how HD DVD sales are still going pretty strong, so many months after Toshiba threw in the towel, and now here comes Amazon with yet another of those fire sales that keeps these sales numbers going.

Amazon has a sale right now on 122 titles, many at up to 66% off. Though several titles are only 25% off, the bulk of this collection is on a fire sale with half of them at $9.99, and some fir $11.99 or $12.99. These are all brand-new discs straight from Amazon, and not used titles or products from their affiliated vendors.

Here’s a list of the $9.99 titles, and you can head on over to see the rest of the selection for yourself:

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An article at Financial Times points out something that many active HD DVD enthusiasts have known for quite a while now: despite its official death in February, there are still a lot of people buying a lot of HD DVDs. The statement is validated by Jeff Wisot, vice-president of marketing at Buy.com, and Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio, an excess inventory liquidator.

Here’s the scoop on the article highlights:

• Demand for the format is fueled by discs going for less than $10 a piece, and players available for under $60.
• “HD DVD sales are still very strong,” says Jeff Wisot, VP of marketing at Buy.com

He is no doubt recalling their recent sale on $60 Venturer HD DVD players.

• “Cheap entertainment always does well in a recession or depression,” says Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio.

Kugler’s company has bought millions of unsold HD DVDs, who, having already sold 1 million discs, expects to sell another 2 or 3 million by Christmas.

In the spirit of good journalism and equal coverage, the article also includes a disclaimer by Andy Parsons of the Blu-ray Disc Association pointing out that their format is not dead and they’ve had some good sales figures too.

• HD DVD slashed prices drive sales up article at FT.com

A lot of people were understandably upset when Toshiba pulled the plug on the format, and many skeptics felt that Toshiba would never live up to their word regarding continuing player support. But here’s some encouragement for the less pessimistic HD DVD fans.

I missed this when it officially came out earlier in the week, but every single Toshiba HD DVD player model now has a firmware update to version 4.0 available at the Toshiba site. Any model with a 1, 2, or 3 in its name (that’s all three generations, folks) can now be updated to version 4.

If your player is already hooked up to the internet, then you can perform the update right from your player itself. You can also download the update to CD and make an ISO file for your HD DVD player instead. This method is slightly faster, but some people end up having trouble making the discs (usually because they’re only unzipping the file and not using the ISO feature on the CD software). You can download the file by navigating to find your player model number at Toshiba’s support site: http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/customersupport/.

Over at the AVS forum’s version 4.0 thread, “papacoach” reports that 1080/24 jaggies are fixed in this update on his Transformers, and this has been seconded by other posters at that forum.

I wrote about picking up an Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-on drive at Fry’s for $39.99 the other day as my back-up HD DVD player. The limitation with that method is you need to have a 360 or a sufficiently capable PC (and software) to play back the movies. Many people meet these requirements, but there are plenty of others who’d prefer a more straightforward approach and just get a cheap HD DVD player instead.

Buy.com to the rescue! I’m not sure how long this lasts, but they’ve got two versions of the Venturer SHD7000 (essentially a Toshiba HD-A3) for $59.99. One comes with The Bourne Identity and 300, while the other comes with two of the following: Rumor Has It, Perfect Storm, or Firewall.

Lots of people got the last generation of Toshiba HD DVD players and there’s a resulting glut of Bourne and 300 discs in the wild, so I’m betting that most of you might opt for the second configuration where you get to find out which movies you get only when the box arrives.

• Venturer SHD7000 with The Bourne Identity and 300
• Venturer SHD7000 with two of: Rumor Has It, Perfect Storm, Firewall

I dropped by my local Fry’s on the way home from work and saw a nice stack of new Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-On players for $39.99, and picked one up. Now that I have my backup HD DVD player, I can more realistically think about picking up some additional HD DVD titles, with all these crazy fire sale prices.

I brought home a $15 five-pack of old-school Kung Fu movies on DVD, and also got Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon on HD DVD. Sales associates were still marking down lots of titles to $6.99, $7.99 (like Transformers), and $8.99. I saw the BBC Planet Earth for $39.99, but it was that price when I dropped by a couple of weekends ago too.

Visiting the store can be a hit-and-miss proposition because you can only pick from whatever they’ve got on their shelves (and they may also have scattered these around the store at various endcaps and clearance bins). You can get a nice list of HD DVD sale prices over at their website.

You can order from the site instead of visiting a store, but the typical things to consider are that Frys.com does not have discounted shipping (like the free shipping at DeepDiscount.com), and you may also be paying sales tax on top since Fry’s has stores in so many states. more »

Thanks to the fire sales, people have been busy building up their HD DVD movie collections, and some of you may have enough now to dispense some advice to the others who are still looking to add new titles to theirs.

Patrick, one of our regular readers, asked about having a “Top 5 HD DVD” call-out. Instead of putting words in his mouth, here’s what he said:

Can we have a top 5 HD DVD post? I’d like to hear what other titles are out there that people like which I may not have considered.

I found out there is a dutch Reservoir Dogs HD DVD today…pretty sweet.

I was thinking the criteria should not just be your favorite movies of course, but HD DVD titles, factoring in quality of transfer and extras etc.

My top to 5 out of the 30 I own are:

1. Planet Earth
2. The Bourne Trilogy
3. Pan’s Labyrinth
4. King Kong
5. Serenity

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory really blew me away with the image quality, but I didn’t see the movie until the dvd so as a whole it didn’t make the list, but would be one of the tops in image quality.

How ’bout it? What are your favorite discs? We know what Patrick enjoyed, share in the comments about your Top 5.

If you somehow managed to miss (or skip) the love-fest that HD DVD fans have had with Planet Earth, Discovery Channel wants to give you another chance.

The Discovery Channel store has a new HD DVD sale which includes the ever-popular Planet Earth set for $29.95, as well as Sunrise Earth for $24.99, both with free shipping. A third disc, Planet Earth: Pole to Pole, Mountains & Deep Ocean is only $7.99 and is actually just one of the discs from the Planet Earth collection. Just remember that these are Discovery versions which aired on that HD channel, and not the exact same as the BBC versions.

Another box set with a good sale price is Battlestar Galactica: Season One over at INetVideo.com, currently going for $19.99. If you order by midnight on Monday (Eastern time), then the BSG order can help qualify you for the 15% off shipping promotion they’re also running. It’s 15% off shipping on orders over $25. A prior promotion had free shipping on orders over $50, and many HD DVD fans easily found enough $7.99 and $9.99 discs to be able to take advantage of that deal.

While we’re on the subject of box sets, DeepDiscount has two notable collections on sale: The Ocean’s 11/12/13 set is only $19.98, and more remarkable is their $28.99 price on the The Ultimate Matrix Collection. DeepDiscount has a bunch of other HD DVD discs on sale too, all with free shipping.

I know some people think, “why the heck do you people keep buying these discs?” Well, it’s something you can only understand if you have an HD DVD player, and you’ve seen that many movies are now as cheap as, or cheaper than, the standard DVD or Blu-ray versions. For example, even though Amazon currently has a nearly 50% off sale on over 80 Blu-ray titles, most cost around $20, with Ultimate Matrix taking pre-orders for $90 on that system.

Special thanks to readers patrick and Applezz for tipping me off to a couple of these deals. Feel free to add any of your own deals in the comments.

• Planet Earth for $29.99, Sunrise Earth for $24.99 at Discovery Channel Store
• Oceans 11, 12, 13, $19.98 and Ultimate Matrix, $28.99 at DeepDiscount.com
• Battlestar Galactica - Season One at INetVideo.com

Acknowledging that their new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) tech does not actually replace a true HD source like HD DVD or Blu-ray, Toshiba is hoping to attract all those consumers who are mostly satisfied with their HDTVs and DVDs by offering the XD-E500 up-converting DVD player today.

The new XD-E500 retails for $149 (although it debuts for $179 today at Amazon) and offers DVD up-scaling that’s superior to what’s been offered in their own lower-end models, and probably from other up-scaling DVD players.

The XDE player offers a choice of three video enhancements: (1) sharp for edge detail (2) rich color (3) more contrast, of which you can select two to be active at any time. I’m sure forthcoming articles and interviews will reveal why you can only select two at a time, and we’ll be on the lookout for the inevitable comparisons against the highly vaunted Oppo up-converting DVD players, as well as true HD media.

Toshiba’s website for the new player, http://www.toshibaxde.com hasn’t gone live yet so we don’t really have a lot of pictures to show from the sales pitch, but you can see some before/after enhancement shots over at Amazon.

Toshiba’s product description page states the following:

This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.

In other words, it’s not “The Look and Sound of Perfect” but just “Good Enough.” I’m curious to see whether “good enough” and “near HD” take a hold in the marketplace. I know that you and I are probably not amongst that crowd of buyers, but I’m sure you’ve got at least a few acquaintances who think a big screen is all it takes to have a great home theater.

A reader suggested that I should be showing all of you how to transition over to Blu-ray considering that there’s usually not much to talk about regarding HD DVD. That reader happens to be a Blu-ray fan, so that bit of advice is to be expected. However if you are an HD DVD person, then you know that there’s still lots going on in terms of stores and their fire sales. Thanks to these big sales, you can often pick up some HD DVD movies at prices similar to, or even lower than, regular DVDs.

In recent months, people have discovered the deals over at INetVideo.com. At first, some were concerned that the discs might be Canadian, and others were unimpressed by the shipping charges. But word-of-mouth has generally been good regarding these folks. Their recent promotion is free shipping on orders over $50, and they’re even selling some used discs for $5.99.

DeepDiscount.com is another favorite, and they’ve got a 60% off HD DVD blowout sale going on right now. The slighly inconvenient thing about this sale is that you need to weed through the movie listings to find the cheapest prices because their sort “Low to High” seems to skip right over a lot of titles such as Troy and V for Vendetta, both of which are selling for $8.58, and even I Am Legend which is $8.99. Click around at the site and you’ll increase your odds of finding more of the sale items. Don’t forget that these guys have free shipping.

If you’ve got a Fry’s near you, then drop by and check out their HD DVD selection, which features some discs in that $10 or $11 and below range. While it doesn’t trump free shipping or gas money for driving over, if you’re looking for a particular movie, it’s better to pay an extra buck and ensure that you get it instead of losing your chance forever.

I haven’t actually transitioned myself over to Blu-ray just yet. I did get a PS3, but it’s been playing a few games (I already have most of the big games on my 360 and there’s no reason to double-dip them). I still have lots of HD DVD discs in my Netflix queue, and I’ll probably start using my PS3 for its other purpose in life a little later in the year when the summer movies start appearing on disc.

• DeepDiscount.com’s HD DVD Blowout (includes free shipping)
• InetVideo.com has free shipping on orders over $50

UPDATE: While checking into a reader query, we find out that the Star Trek Box Set is only £ 24.97 at Amazon.co.uk (As of Sunday night/Monday August 18, it’s now 14.97 which is roughly $30)