There are always consumer casualties in a format war, none more so than the high-definition (HD) DVD battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, but Warner wants to make the transaction for disgruntled HD DVD owners as painless as possible with its new Red2Blu swap site.
The Red2Blu site has been set up to encourage consumers to rid themselves of their dead-end HD DVD titles in exchange for shiny new Blu-ray replacements.
However, there are some caveats: this won’t be entirely painless because consumers are expected to pay US$4.95 per ‘swap’, plus shipping costs of between US$6.95 and US$8.95.
Only 25 HD DVD titles may be traded in per household, and there are only 128 titles on offer.
Here’s another bummer: only US residents can apply for this, so us Europeans will have to use our HD DVDs as coasters.
By Marie Boran
