Warner Offers Red2Blu HD DVD Trade-in Program

Warner Bros, the company HD DVD adopters love to hate, has finally done something worthy of some consumer loyalty. Warner Home Video has announced the launch of "Red2Blu," which offers HD-DVD owners the opportunity to upgrade their Warner Home Video releases on HD-DVD for a Blu-ray Disc of the same movie.

It's not free, but it's close. For only $4.95 plus shipping and handling, it's a nice way to get some bargain-priced Blu-ray discs to replace the HD DVDs you early adopters nabbed when the format war was still raging. By visiting Red2Blu.com, consumers can trade up virtually any of their Warner Home Video HD DVD titles (up to 25) for the same title on Blu-ray for $4.95 plus shipping and handling. Warner Home Video even picks up the shipping tab for sending in the labels - providing a free shipping label to you once your order is placed.

We tried it with three titles we had on hand and the combined shipping fee, was $6.95. So for $22.67 we have 3 new Blu-ray discs coming our way (Batman Begins, 300, and The Departed). Not bad.

And we get to keep our HD DVD discs.

That's right, Warner only asks for the original color cover to the HD DVDs, not the discs themselves or the case, meaning you can hold on to your HD DVD discs. Personally, I ran mine through my color copier and placed the copies back on my disc boxes, sending in the originals.

For details and restrictions, visit Red2Blu.com. "Red2Blu" is available to residents of the United States only.