[Torquil]

A brief stroll into most high street retailers in the UK such as HMV and Virgin proved a step too far for me this weekend. Blu-Ray Titles such as X-Men 3 and Kingdom of Heaven are being priced at £29 ($57), other titles such as AvP at £23 - and HD-DVD titles receive similar treatment.

Pricing like that is going to kill HD from the get-go (and we're already a year into both formats). J6P will never accept that sort of pricing. It was never this bad even in the early days of DVD - then the most you would have to pay was £20 per title, and there was usually a buy 3, get one free deal.

At least there are alternatives - online retailers allow us to save 20% off these prices which brings the prices into a £14-£23 range. Given the intelligent lack of region coding on many releases, importing is still the cheapest - I ordered a bunch of titles from the US and even with postage it only cost be about £13 per title on average - including "premium" titles such as the Departed.

When will this end?

[Jon Moss]

Yeah I agree, UK retailers are well overpriced when it comes to HD movies. I haven't purchased a single HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc in a high street store, instead I've ordered everything from on-line retailers. However, even then there's some odd pricing going on.

For example Play.com have the UK HD-DVD of Smokin' Aces for £27.99, which equates to about $55!!! Insane, especially as it's only $27.95 on Amazon.com. It's a straight dollars to pounds conversion, which unfortunately we're well used to here in the UK.

As you state, it's actually cheaper to import an HD-DVD from the US (including shipping) than it is to purchase one over here. Which when you think about it is quite ridiculous.

If people are thinking HD will become a niche market in the US, then it's going to be an even smaller niche market in the UK. That's if the inflated prices don't kill it off altogether.

[Cees Alons]

As a standard procedure, I always compare Amazon dot 'uk.co', 'fr', and 'de' and also Benson's World and Play dot com when I'm looking for a European release (mostly TV series, because they are 50Hz PAL from the start and most often cheaper anyway).

Lately, Amazon is almost always the least expensive one (sometimes it's Play, especially because shipment is included - but as a buyer outside the UK, they force me to select € - and their rate is lousy).

Almost always, though, I pay the least by ordering in the US (also because of the $$ rate), but sometimes customs and VAT have to be payed "at the door" spoiling the price a bit.


Cees