40°

CNET recommends - sell your HD DVD

"Option No. 3: Sell
If you truly believe HD DVD is cooked--which, unfortunately, I do--the smart move is to get what you can for what you've got while the gettin' is still relatively good.

Let's start with the newcomers like Andrew. Depending on where you bought your player, you may be able to return it within a certain time frame (sometimes, you have to pay a 10-to-15 percent restocking fee). Alternatively, some of the customer-service-oriented retailers--and that includes online retailers such as Crutchfield--are more forgiving about returns when you get upset with a purchase. You may not be able to get your money back, but you may be able to get a store credit. The other possibility is eBay, where several HD DVD players are on sale as we speak. Surprisingly, brand-new models of the Toshiba HD-A3 are garnering final bids not far off their new retail price ($150) and in some cases, more than what Amazon has the new player selling for ($125). Used models tend to go for less than $100.

Great, you say. But what about all those discs I got with the player, some free, some purchased? Well, you can sell those online fairly easily. Of course, you'll end up taking a loss--at least 50 percent in many cases--but prices are holding up a little better than I thought. We did a few test sales online and averaged anywhere from $10 to $14 (new HD DVDs tend to run about $20 to $25). A lot of people are selling discs, so you'll have to be aggressive about pricing if you want to close a deal. The bottom line is that, so long as you didn't purchase too many discs, you won't have to take a huge loss to cut your losses.

If you're lucky, you'll be left with just enough to buy a PlayStation 3 ($400)--or at least have a nice chunk of dough to subsidize your purchase. Personally, that's the only Blu-ray player I'd buy at this point. The standalone Blu-ray players are still too expensive and--as far as we know--the PS3 is the only current Blu-ray player that will be upgradeable to the latest Profile 2.0 Blu-ray standard coming later this year.

So, Andrew, there's your answer. Sell, sell, sell. And never look back."

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decapitator5948d ago

This is not related to me as I had faith in BD from the get go but wanted the dust to settle before picking up one. As a result, I dont have any HD DVDs yet.

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