BEST BUY - No WARNER titles 11/14 (1 Viewer)

[Chris Dugger]

Once again, BEST BUY stores are vacant of the HD Warner titles.

Universal and Paramount titles seem to appear on time, yet Warner titles are no shows, sometime up to a week late...

When questions get asked, BEST BUY rep's take the "who gives a s**t attitude!".

Seems BB is making every effort to hurt HD sales in anyway they can....

Casablanca / Forbidden Planet / Mutiny are all no shows....

The question I have is for next week....

Will the Superman BluRay's make it to the shelf a week before the HD's do????

Dugger

 

[Paul_Scott]

what is this "Best Buy" you speak of?
Oh wait- I think I remember...vaugely. I think I shopped there long ago


...before they dissed my format.
Wow I haven't been in one in ages, and to think I used to go every Tuesday without fail.
Ah well, they don't need my money.They got all that Blu-ray and PS3 dough rolling in now.

 

[Jeremy Little]

The titles are on order, as usual. Warner didn't get them to the stores on time, as usual. Employees are getting asked the same questions numerous times a day, every day. This is probably where their attitude comes from, not that it is excusable.

 

[BrettGallman]

I hope my local store still has a copy of X3 on the shelves, because $23 is a steal considering the MSRP. I'm not getting my hopes up, though, because this store is notorious for not putting out new HD releases or stocking very few copies.

 

[AaronSCH]

The Best Buy in my neighborhood had no new HD DVD titles. However, Walmart had King Kong tagged but sold out and had one copy left of Accepted.

 

[AaronSCH]

I am starting to wonder if Best Buy really is trying to suppress HD DVD. I am starting to notice less space devoted to it with titles displayed on the spine whereas the Blu-ray stuff is prominently displayed full cover. And people wonder why I am so anti-Blu-ray. I am also beginning to become very anti-Best Buy. In fact, between their not supporting HD DVD fully and taking the word "Christmas" out of their vernacular while profiting from that very holiday pisses me off. I guess it'll be Fry's Electronics, Walmart and Amazon for me from now on.

 

[Ron-P]

My local BB has the same amount of shelving for both HD-DVD and BD, side by side.

There is no reason any retail store to purposely go out of their way to hurt a format. Really, what would be the point?

 

[Chris*Liberti]

It is really quite simple and has been mentioned on the forums. The incentive that Best Buy has for harming a format is the Shelving Allowance they get from Sony. I am sure Sony is paying a Shelving premium to Best Buy to encourage them to push their product.

 

[TravisR]

There's no conspiracy at work here. If BB got the product from Warners, it would be put on the shelf. If it was a deliberate effort to screw with HD-DVD, they wouldn't carry the titles at all. The only thing that this does is encourage customers to go to other stores that stock the titles on release day.

 

[Brent T]

Same with my BB, I was there yesterday (Tuesday) buying my first HD-DVD and noticed the section for Blue Ray was the same size as HD. I did noticed that there was alot of open space on the HD side while the Blue Ray was pretty packed. Could be HD selling quicker or BB taking more time to restock.

 

[Jeremy Little]

You are listening to the people from Best Buy, right? There are plenty that post here that are trying to clear the FUD being passed around. The only area being paid for is the Samsung BD endcap. That's it. The movie area are planogrammed with equal amounts of space. Perhaps the reason that Best Buy is not getting them in has to do with the size of the order? Warner isn't able to keep up and produce enough for their other customers as well? I've noticed that our purchase orders for new Warner titles are placed earlier and earlier, yet the releases show up late almost every time. I really don't know what else to say. If you want to keep blaming it on Best Buy, then I'd like to see the incentive YOU are getting to do so. The memo's issued by the company INSIST that employees not push one format over the other. They are to make a recommendation as to which format based on what kind of movies you like. If you come in looking to be able to get Disney releases, sorry buy they'll recommend a BD player.

 

[Chris Dugger]

Ok... I understand your point....

But..... If Best Buy were interested in keeping me coming through the door, I would think they would solve the problem....

There is a major problem on the Warner Brothers HD titles.... ONLY WARNER.....

This has been on going for over a month.....

So.... riddle me this..... Being the large company they are.... Being that they probably are amoung some of the largest video purchasers in the US.... Why can't they they get the issue solved?

I believe that they just don't really care....

We will see on the 28th... SUPERMAN RETURNS.... if both HD and BR are there... then home run.... but.... if BR is there and HD isn't.... the story will be told...

Dugger

 

[Brent T]

CD,

I think its pretty clear its a Warner problem and not a Best Buy problem. Keep in mind no matter how big a distributor is they are still just a middle man and can only put out product for its end users as quickly as it comes in.

 

[JPCinema]

Accosring to aBest Buy here in Chicago, they do not even have CASABLANCA HD in their computer.

 

[Chris Dugger]

Again, I see your point...

The issue I have is that BEST BUY hasn't resolved the issue with Warner....

Seems that corp would work to get this figured out...

In the meantime.... Where I use to go to Best Buy and purchase more than just HD DVD, I find myself not going as much and spending less with them.

Certainly, I am not in the minority... Which hurts a retailers bottomline.

So, if they don't care.... why should I? I can go somewhere else that doesn't have a Warner issue.

Dugger

 

[ppltd]

I am not sure about this. After doing most of my DVD purchases at Best Buy over the last 4 or so years, I have gone to DVD Empire (and Amazon) to buy my HD abd BD releases. I have not had issues wil the stocking of new releases, but have found BB consistantly out of stock, or late on getting product and coonsiderably more expensive for HD and BD disks than the on-line retailers. Maybe it is a store by store issue.

I tend to think it is probably more a problem of their internal distribution.

 

[Ron-P]

We recently hired a guy that worked for BB for years, the Costa Meas store here in CA. He told me several days ago (as I complained about the lack of titles on release day) that it has nothing to do with BB, it has everything to do with the studios getting the movies out to them.

 

[Roger Mathus]

Local Best Buy had decent stock of all the new Blue-ray titles yesterday but none of the HD DVD new releases. The BD and HD display spaces are the same but only the BD is well stocked. They had much more stock of Blu-ray, likely in anticipation of PS3. There appeared to be about 20 copies of X-Men 3.

The local store has decent stock of Samsung BD players but they do not even have a display sample of the Toshiba players. They had not updated the firmware in their Samsung demo. The hour glass was still on screen.

The Target next door had no copies of King Kong or X-men but had low prices posted and rain check forms in the bin. They had several Blu-ray titles on sale for $ 15.87. I recall Sleppy Hollow was one.

 

[AaronSCH]

Look, I am not someone that believes every conspiracy that the fringe can cook up. However, I regularly pop-in to many of the electronics and retail stores in the Phoenix area. Best Buy and Circuit City have been very sheepish in their promotion of HD DVD product over the last few months. Period. That may be Toshiba's fault but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that there is much arm twisting from the various manufacturers of the Blu-ray hardware. I worked for a publishing company a few years ago and we were constantly fighting for premium exposure on the magazine racks for our magazines. It was a constant battle because we produced local monthly publications and the rack-jobbers only wanted to sell more prominent national publications. Best Buy has as much riding on the success of Blu-ray as the manufacturers that jumped on board. The vast majority of their vendors are in the Blu-ray camp. The Sony/PS2 juggernaut has been a financial cash cow for Best Buy and it's continued success represented by the PS3 means more revenue accross the board from continued growth of software sales (both games and movies). As we approach the launch of the PS3 you will see Blu-ray all over the place and HD DVD pushed even farther to the sidelines. Maybe once the dust settles and everyone realizes that there aren't any PS3s available to purchase, we will start seeing this thing really play out. Even though I am an HD DVD enthusiast (bet you didn't figure that one out) I am most troubled by the lack of representaion in the hardware arena. Toshiba MUST get other manufacturers aboard next year to stay in the game regardless of the apparent quality of its format. It is not that Toshiba isn't a respected brand, it's just that the uneducated consumer is gonna see that Blu-ray logo all over the place in the hardware section and will eventually make a decision based on awareness. This is the Sony/Beta lesson: Marketing 101.

 

[JonZ]

Except for Batman Begins and 12 Monkeys - Best Buy in my area has had everything release day, that Ive noticed.