I’m a fan of the Heroes series on NBC, but I just found out I’m not an avid die-hard fan of the series like I thought I was (unlike some people I know). It happened when I opened my Sunday paper and read through the Best Buy ad. I saw that first season of the series was being released on HD-DVD this Tuesday and knew immediately I wouldn’t be buying it…

…because it’s being sold for $100!!

This is Best Buy that we’re talking about. They’ve been known to sell seasons of 24 on DVD for $20 to $30 more than Target, Costco, Amazon, etc. So I wasn’t surprised by the source. But $100?! Are fucking kidding me?

I know it’s HD-DVD. I know that it has fancy menus, interactive content, and a ton of extras that the DVD couldn’t carry. But seriously, who would pay $100 for the first season? I don’t think any extra information that they may have on the series would be worth that extra markup. The regular DVDs for the series are going for $37 at Best Buy. That’s an extra $63 for the HD version! A pretty penny to pay for premium content.

If HD-DVD hopes to make a dent in the next generation market, their prices are going to need to drop considerably. I know we get a lot more content and features with HD-DVD, and therefore should have a justifiable cost increase. But I also know that HD-DVD could build a user base much faster if the costs of HD-DVD were competitive not just with Blu-Ray, but also with regular ol’ standard definition DVD too. Think about it, if you saw Heroes on DVD for $37, and right next to it you saw Heroes on HD-DVD for $37, which would you buy? Even if you didn’t have an HD-DVD player, would you consider upgrading to one if the content choices were in the same ballpark as regular DVD? Think about what this would do for HD-DVD disk sales. Think about how that number would compare to Blu-Ray sales.

The winner of the next gen disk wars (besides IPTV and digital delivery) will be whichever side can get to closer in pricing to current DVD prices. Don’t bore me with “But HD-DVD/Blu-ray costs more to produce!” or other whiney arguments. When I hear those I hear “blah blah blah”. The content is created already, there may be some extra time in the editing room, and the disks are marginally more expensive (but not $60 worth!) to produce. They would just be losing a little margin to win a few more users to the format. It would be worth it in the end to win the format war.

So, back to Heroes. For those that still are set on buying the HD-DVD because you ARE die-hard fans, you can save $30 by buying it from Amazon instead of Best Buy. It was going for $70 when I checked today.

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