Sony offers Blu-ray trade-in deal for HD DVD owners, in Switzerland
By Donald Melanson 
posted Mar 4th 2008 4:31PM
posted Mar 4th 2008 4:31PM
We've already seen a couple of Blu-ray exchange programs offered to HD DVD owners looking to jump ship, but looks like Sony is now finally getting in on the action itself, albeit only in Switzerland. While some of the details are lost in translation, it seems that if you buy either the BDP-S500 or BDP-S300 Blu-ray player before the end of March, you'll then be able to send in your HD DVD player for Sony to recycle and receive a discount of 200 Swiss Francs (about $190), plus both the Spider-Man trilogy and Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy on Blu-ray. Not surprisingly, the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive and all computer HD DVD drives are excluded, and you'll need the proof of purchase and cash receipt for your HD DVD player (purchased before February 29th) in order to take advantage of the offer. Needless to say, we wouldn't recommend holding your breath for Sony to offer a similar deal 'round these parts.
switzerland. I doubt they've heard of blu ray. Why not Europe and America for early adopters. NOTE: I'm not an early adopter, I preffer DVD's for the next 5 years really
Well I'm stupid, ignore the europe part and think I wrote most of major europe :)
You don't have to tell us you're stupid. The Cubs logo already tells us that. ;)
ha ha. You might think I'm offended by that but that was pretty funny
You, sir, have no idea what you are talking about. Do you know what Switzerland is? Do you know which two cities have the highest standard of living in the world (according to American universities). Zurich and Geneva. Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world and if you would turn off the ignorance switch in your head for a few days and actually go over there, you'd see that they are way more advanced than we are. Yeah, I'm Swiss, but I'm also American and I can't stand people who don't what they're talking about.
I'm not Swiss or American, but found CUBSWILLWIN's comment very ignorant, though quite amusing.
"I doubt they've heard of blu ray" - hehe, what a moron! :D
@ Leo M.
I do like Switzerland, but man oh man is it a BORING place after dark.
I guess I can be a buffoon a lot. :)
Well, at lest they can trade the few players they have; the japanese are still using betamax (yeah, we heard it lost but it is better than VHS).
/sarcasm
In defense of a fellow Engadgeteer he might have thought about Swaziland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaziland)which would make his comment a little more on the spot.
I usually hate Sony, but thats actually a pretty nice gesture, they don't have to do that having won the format war and all.
Until Sony puts the PS3 at $299 (could care less about the bundles), there will not be a Blu Ray player in my house.
Just sayin.
GO BLUE!
im at umich now!
they really want to put HD DVD into the grave before incase it raises
meh! i want some ACTION D'ECHANGE for this $50 xbox HDDVD i just got =)
I guess this is Sony's "Finish him!!, yurz S0ul is mine". Sony is now officially the graveyard realtor and acting like an undertaker in an atempt to make HD-DVD players instinct.
I'm just trying to imagine the Sony Boardroom...
"We need to get more BluRay adopters... How do we do this?"
"Lets Pwn Toshiba by recycling their players and technology."
check out SPAMMERSMUSTDIE.COM too funny!!!!!!!!
I think there's something about when a war ends, you have to do something for the Swiss? I'm checking wikipedia...
Meh.
"we wouldn't recommend holding your breath for Sony to offer a similar deal 'round these parts"
And even if they did, I don't know if it'll do me any good. It's really not the hardware I'm worried about; heck, I got my HD-DVD player for $150, it's not that big of a loss.
No, the real issue is the software; my 10 HD-DVD discs (granted, they came free with my $150 player ;-) and 1 HD-DVD Blade Runner box set. So long as they're around, I ain't gettin' rid of my player.
Now, if Sony and the movie studios fires up a trade-in program for the software as well...
This is a worthless promotion. What we REALLY need is a trade-in program so that we can convert our existing HD-DVD libraries into Blu-ray libraries. I've got more than 20 movies on HD-DVD which I will eventually need to buy Blu-ray versions of... and the easier Sony makes it for me to do that, the sooner I will actually consider buying a Blu-ray player and new movies.
really? why not just rip them and reburn them when burners become affordable? HD DVDs are a steal right now, as are the players (just got a xbox one m'self)
Gah, that's a terrible idea. I don't want a bunch of hand-labeled Blu-ray movies on the shelf in HD-DVD cases.
Besides, the HD-DVD specific features wouldn't work on Blu-ray players.
i hear that. funny, since DVD DL never really took off, i always found myself making backups of dvds that stripped out everything but the feature film so that i could fit the movie (usually) uncompressed onto a nice new region free DVD +R (especially when i had gotten a rare pricey region 2 release, etc.
so i guess ripping and burning is already pretty habitual for me. there's something really nice and clean about loading in a disc and up pops the feature film right away
Why do you have to re-buy your collection in Blu-Ray eventiually? HD-DVD will continue playing on a HD-DVD drive just fine.
Jagster: Because I don't want to have to keep TWO disc players for different formats.
I would probably do this in a heartbeat if they did it in the US. Though, the first stand-alone Blu-ray player really worth owning, Panasonic DMP-BD50, won't be out for a while.
I also would then promptly snatch up a cheap HD-DVD player to continue to play my HD-DVDs until I can get the switched.
why does a perfectly good, working hd-dvd drive need to be recycled?
Isn't re-use a far better option?
Sony doesn't want people reusing HD-DVD players, because that means that those people probably aren't buying Blu-ray players. There are enough HD-DVD players and discs floating around right now to put a fairly good dent in Blu-ray's sales figures for quite some time to come.
Clayj
@ Mar 4th 2008 5:24PM sez:
Sony doesn't want people reusing HD-DVD players, because that means that those people probably aren't buying Blu-ray players.
------
If that's the case, donating them to some good cause that could make use of a dvd player (but can't afford them) would be a far better idea than recycling. Underprivileged kids, etc.
It's just needlessly wasteful, IMO.
Then again there are probably all kinds of lawsuits waiting to happen after donating something electrical these days.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
I think that what the studios may/should end up doing is what Buena Vista has done with Crimson Tide, and some of their titles that if you own the SD-DVD version and get the Blu-ray edition, you can send in the Proof of Purchase for both and get a $10 check in the mail. I think that if the studios went with that, they may see a major increase in sales from the HD-DVD aficionados who would love to go Blu, but don't see the incentive for the next few months. I paid $14 for my Blu-ray of Crimson Tide, went ahead and mailed in my Proof of Purchase and now I'm waiting for my $10.
umm, y isnt this happening in america????
Because you live there, and you cant spell : ).
sorry. I was on my iPhone and I couldn't spell.
Seriously?
You skipped the "wh" of "why" because you were on your iphone but you did find the time to add 3 extra question marks and an extra useless "m" after umm?
Odd way of saving time...
Hey, threefingeredlord: How do you spell "can't"?
Irony is criticizing someone else's spelling skills and making a mistake yourself. ;-)
Nah, that's punctuation rather than spelling ; ).
I guess Sony is brewing up their own "Will It Blend?" show with the HD DVD players.
"Blue-diode smoke. Don't breathe this."
Here's my dilemma - I own around 20 HD DVDs and have no problem watching them on my XBOX 360 HD player. The problem is, I've been doing my best NOT to buy anymore HD DVDs and would like to start getting the newer releases on Blu-Ray, however, I'm not yet ready to shell out $500+ for a dual-format player. (This coming from an early adopter who bought both a Pioneer Laserdisc player AND a Sony DVD player for around $1,000 each when they first came out) Just getting sick and tired of formats becoming obsolete, yet I like to buy the box-sets for all the behind-the-scenes stuff. I just got an Apple TV and am willing to give it a go, but would also like to OWN future HD purchases in digital format, cutting out the need to restock a physical library once again. Raise your hand if you, too, chucked out over a few hundred VHS movies after not using your VHS player in over 5 years ;)
Just some more fine points on the deal - you had to buy the HD DVD player before Feb 29, and it had to be purchased in Switzerland. You ship the HD-DVD player to Sony, they will recycle the player. Within 10 days you receive the 200CHF plus 15CHF for the cost of mailing the player. You'll also receive the 6 Blu-Ray movies in the mail. And you have to post mark all this by April 11.
Wow, if only rebates like this worked this quickly in the US - 10 days to get your money back. Incredible.
3rd "needless to say" post on page 1 today (go on, see for yourself), and the 6th I've read in 24 hours. Guys, please learn to write.
yeah dude, zurich is ritzy as hell. we all know rich people love to spend money on crap they don't need or understand
Nice program.
Bad timing.
I sold my qualifying 2 month player a week ago with a 66% writeoff :-)