What happens to all the HD movies that are "sent back"?

My guess : They will be returned to the distributor who will then pawn them off on places like Amazon, Overstock, etc. who will get rid of them in quick cheap sales. I doubt they will be destroyed, a complete waste of money when there will be an HD DVD base group eager to buy them all up.

So is it wise to just sit out the sales going on right now in the hopes that they'll get ridiculously cheaper in a few months?

I hope you are right.

I'm pretty sure they will all be destroyed.

well atari buried all the ET games in the desert

Why would they be destroyed when there is money to be made? Doesn't make sense to me. Not saying this isn't what's going to happen.

What is the incentive for returning these movies?
Were they on consignment sale to begin with?
R the retailers getting a refund of some sort?

If not, then selling them @ any price would be additional revenue for every1 involved no?

I don't know how it works, but one would think getting anything for the movie is better than nothing. Although, there could be some sort of write-off that makes it more advantageous than selling them for a couple of bucks.

larry

HD DVD's are being released until July I believe.

The movies stop on 5/27 but Bandi has already announced a 6/24 date for Freedom 6 and is scheduled to announce a July date for Freedom 7.

There are still 22 more releases coming to HD DVD

IMO - You are not going to see any "dumping sales" until at least the middle to end of June.

Yes. I say always wait for a bargain. They will happen.

please not the tax implication answer! I know 4/15 is coming up but cmon!

But wouldn't you be concern that there might not be any stock left?
Esp. with how BB & CC are supposedly sending back inventory & Amazon not having budged on their prices in weeks.

That leads me to believe that their is some sort of incentive for the returns of stock by the retailers that we consumers are not aware of.

I remember ordering 'Planet Earth' HDDVD from Amazon. It arrived with a busted case and I spoke with them about trying to get a new case. They couldn't replace just the case and said that they'd simply send a new one to me. They also said that they didn't want the old one back. Suffice it to say, I ended up with two perfectly fine copies of the BBC series with one broken case. This was the first real sign that they were clearing out the HDDVDs considering that they didn't want the my old copy at all.

It's no big mystery. Newbury Comics (a store in New England) is returning their stock because they get "full credit" from the distributor when they return stock they can't sell. The store "makes" more money that way, than trying to sell the stuff for cheap.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're all rounded up and destroyed. Quite often, warehouse space to store stuff costs more to rent over the time it would take to sell off the merchandise...so they just trash it. I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that happening to Paramount's Blade of Glory blu-ray discs.

It's all about the bottom line....

larry

What happens to the discs depends entirely upon whether anyone else will want them.

They will be returned and destroyed if the studios request it. It just depends on whether the studio will want to resell them at a discount or just have them shredded and recycled.

Very few resellers will have a 100% credit plan in place and most will have a 50% to 80% recovery rate minus the cost of reprocessing and repacking. I am guessing ( and hoping ) that the discs will be sorted, unwrapped, and stored at a distribution center until a discounter like Amazon or Overstock buys them.

I guess we won't know exactly what happens to them until they suddenly disappear from Best Buy or Circuit City and end up in an Amazon fire sale.

I have no harm in picking these so-called "Sent back" HD DVDs if they are available for less than $7 a movie.

Why sell HD-DVD at only $5, when you can sell the Bluray in the near future for $40? The more HD-DVD titles are sold, the less incentive there will be for the consumer to be "persuaded" to embrace Bluray and every HD-DVD sale means potentially one less Bluray sale.

This is true, but don't expect the titles that are already out on HDDVD to come out on blu anytime soon. They are already catalog titles and are already out there in HD. They will sell many more copies of "new" catalog titles since nobody has them in HD yet. And of course new releases will be the cash cows with the highest prices and the most sales.

buried alive...buried alive...

Is there any room next to them left?

KHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody wanted the ET carts. I think if there were millions of copies of some mediocre movies we could see that, but there's still demand out there. Players are still selling - so if the price is low enough, even the people scooping up the players just for upconversion might bite. I still have a handful of titles I might want to buy, but not for more than 6 or 7$.

Atari had a lot of unwanted games by 1984 - check out O'Shea LTD to see they have what seems like a "cave" full of brand new 2600 games.

Keep your eyes on Big Lots ...

we have a winner!!!

My employer sent all HD DVD's back to the distributor and received full credit. From there it is a total guess what will happen, but I can't see them being destroyed, it seems foolish.
If only I knew where said distributor was located....
can you imagine, cases and cases by the hundreds of unsold HD DVD's marked for destruction....
if one was to find them, and they were to be destroyed, no one would ever miss a few dozen cases....
SORRY! Thinking out loud again!

At least around here, it seems that Sears is sending their HD DVD stock over to K-Mart.

My local K-Mart's did not have any HD DVD stock, until after the Toshiba announcement. Now, suddenly, they have stock, and the HD DVD cases have Sears price tickets on them.

My bet is they will be destroyed in order to remove another obstacle from Blu-ray adoption. Studios, especially Warner, want a clean break from HD DVD. I think many of the players sent back will meet the same fate, although perhaps for different reasons (tax write-offs, fewer warranty repair obligations, less fallout from a possible unfavorable ruling in a class-action suit). IMO, many of the HD DVD releases will become quite rare, including some of the most recent ones.

My guess is that they will find their way to the rebate fulfillment house, to be used to fulfill Toshiba's remaining 5-free-movies rebate.