 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
Just the other day I was scanning over the outside of a rather innocuous-looking piece of mail. You know the type - the ones that when you open them tell you that you must act now or your chances at this fantastic freaking opportunity will be lost forever oh noez!!
I was just about to toss it into the trash with all the other junk mail when I got curious so I left it on the pile of "stuff to open". Later, when my wife opened it, she exclaimed that Best Buy had sent her a gift card! I snatched the letter and realized that it was an expected gift from Best Buy, offering their condolences on my stupidity for having chosen HD-DVD during the format wars... thankfully, however, when I chose the wrong format I did so from within a Best Buy (by purchasing the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player that came with King Kong on HD-DVD).
Here's my brief opinion on the format wars and then I will never speak on them again: HD-DVD was the cooler, more powerful format. It was better defined, more stable, and cheaper to produce HD-DVD media. The Heroes HD-DVD season 1 set was quite possibly THE definition of why HD-DVD rocks and Bluray sucks egg - picture-in-picture video commentary with DVD menus that could slide out over the playing movie. Plus, HD-DVD had internet access defined into the standard whereas I think Bluray is waiting for v2.0 for that. As usual, when Sony wins it isn't because they had the better product, its because they had the more ruthless marketeers with bigger pockets.
Anywho - back to Best Buy. I was expecting $50, but the letter actually says my card is worth $100!! I'm going to have to verify that to make sure it isn't a typo, but that's freaking awesome, because that's just about 1/3rd of the price of the Xbox HD-DVD player ... and it's not like I'm getting rid of it -I still have Transformers and Heroes on HD-DVD, as well as the Matrix trilogy and Hot Fuzz!!
So is this actually an example of a huge mega-corporation being nice to its customers and "giving back", as it were? Or, is it a subversive plot to get us all back into Best Buy where they can play their inaudible mind control tones to turn us all into an army of mindless geek-slaves in their mid-30s who will conquer the world!!!!! I think its somewhere in between - The gift card is brilliant. A $100 gift card probably will cost Best Buy $40 in actual merchandise , so that's far better for them than giving us cash. Additionally, it gets us back into the store where, they hope, I will spend more than my card allows. Unfortunately for them, I have perfected the art of maximizing gift cards so that my purchase typically runs right around 99.90 for any $100 gift card... :)
I think this could stir up a lot of business for Best Buy, but, if they think I'm going to use my gift card on a new Bluray player, they're totally out of their minds. The prices of Blu-Ray players have actually gone UP since the "end" of the format wars, so I'm not stupid enough to buy one of them now, and I don't need/want a PS3.
There's another DVD of Death Note coming out at the end of April, and I will probably pick up Rainbow Six Vegas 2.
Kudos to Best Buy, I think this is an excellent marketing tactic to give the general public a "warm fuzzy" about the Best Buy brand. Not that I care, since I will go claim my $100 and leave immediately - but it might make a difference for some people who have been on the fence about whether they like shopping at the big blue and yellow monstrosity.
Personally I went with the Blue-Ray (via PS3) route, I didn't like HD-DVD
simply because MS had locked in the rights to the UI software, and Sony is
using Java and h264, standards (of a sort - java). I've heard that there
were a bunch of advantages with HD-DVD despite the lack of space, but I
wanted to support the more open of the two media's (I know, lesser of two
evils).
Yes, but I don't currently own a PS3.. and I only have limited room in the
cabinet under my TV .. I'd have to give up either my Wii or my 360 to
support the PS3, neither of which I want to do right now. If, on the other
hand, I already owned a PS3 then I would be all over the Bluray
format...but for now, I'm going to sit back, play my 360 games, and wait
for whatever the new players happen to be to come down so far in price that
I can pick one up for chump change. Either that, or wait 2 years until my
next laptop purchase which will undoubtedly include a DVD player capable of
playing Bluray (or whatever format happens to be there at the time).
Doesn't matter a whole lot in the long run. Digital downloads will likely
obsolete DVD technology in a few years. I don't own a HDDVD player of any
kind. When I want a movie, I usually get it from itms. Occasionally, I rent
using cable on-demand.
