Warner's $5 HD DVD to Blu-ray trade-in: Bargain or scam?

If you were on the red team back in Format War II, also known as HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, you may have been left with substantial library of obsolete HD DVD titles. Warner Bros. is now offering a hand to those early adopters worried about having a dead library, a trade-in program called Red2Blu.

It hearkens back to box-top trade-in incentives from the heyday of breakfast cereals. For every Warner Bros. HD DVD you purchased, you can mail the cover art and $4.95 back to the company, and the company will send you the same movie on Blu-ray. There are 128 HD DVD titles from Warner Bros. that are available for trade, and each user can trade up to 25 discs.

But is this an olive branch to out-of-luck early adopters, or a simple cash grab for a format that's not succeeding either?

The program proclaims: "Upgrade your Warner Bros. HD-DVD titles for new industry-leading Blu-ray discs." However, in the Terms and Conditions, Warner says "13. The replacement Blu-ray version of the Participating Title may have different special features and/or bonus material than contained on the HD DVD version of the Participating Title, including much less or no special features and/or bonus material, and/or the Blu-ray version may have a different aspect ratio (e.g., may be full screen instead of wide screen or vice versa) and/or the Blu-ray version may have a different rating or no rating."

Outwardly, Warner is presenting Blu-ray discs as an upgrade, despite the fact that the fine print admits the replacement quality is the same, and in many cases worse. By spending up to $125, customers aren't really getting anything except the reassurance that if their HD DVD player dies, they have a Blu-ray backup. Furthermore, with HD streaming media making serious inroads, and Blu-ray lagging in adoption, there's no guarantee that even that replacement copy holds any long-term value.

So is it a peace offering to jilted HD DVD owners (since the deal lets users keep their HD DVD copy)? Or is it an attempt to crack the disenfranchised market of would-be supporters?

Betanews has contacted its old HD DVD sources to see if similar deals will be in the works from other studios.