This Week On DVD and Blu-ray: May 19, 2009

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Before we get started there are a couple of things to point out. First off, Universal is selling quite a few of its DVD catalog titles for cheap as part of a promotion and including Movie Cash for one ticket to see Land of the Lost. One title I noticed on sale for only $9.99 was the 30th Anniversary Edition of Jaws, which you can buy directly right here, or you can search all of the titles by clicking here.

Next, on April 23 I decided to take Warner Home Video up on their Red2Blu program in which you can replace your HD DVD titles for Blu-ray for a small fee. All you have to do is select the titles you want to replace at Red2Blu.com, take the cover art from your HD DVDs, send them in and they will send you the same title on Blu-ray. It costs $4.95 per title plus a $6.95 shipping and handling fee per order (NOT per disc). So no matter how many titles you are converting it will only cost $6.95 for shipping and handling. The service allows you to send in up to 25 HD DVD titles per household.

My order cost me $149.39 because I also exchanged the Harry Potter 1-5 Limited Edition Giftset, which cost $14.95, but it also meant I was getting 29 of my HD DVDs replaced with Blu-ray discs instead of 25 (score!). The order went in on April 23 and yesterday, May 18, I received the complete order in one big shipment. I opened the nine-pound box and, as you can see from the image above, I have a whole slew of new Blu-rays for the shelf. If you are interested in participating just click here and get rid of those HD DVDs so you can get rid of that HD DVD player. I can’t tell you how much I love this deal since I was already in the process of buying the titles myself, which would have ultimately cost a fortune. I had already replaced the entire Stanley Kubrick collection and many others, this just saves money and in less than four weeks you will be one happy camper. Now, hopefully Universal and Paramount will get on board with a similar deal.

Finally, I am not sure if you always check the new release dates at the bottom of this article, but you are going to want to today as I have added more than 30 new titles to the database in the last week including Watchmen, Coraline, Criterion’s Blu-ray of Kagemusha and Fast and Furious. Beyond that, we have a lot of titles this week so let’s get started.