In a bid to make customers a bit more loyal, Warner Home Video announced a program, under which the company will exchange titles on HD DVD media to the same titles on Blu-ray discs. The move will allow end-users to obtain industry-supported Blu-ray discs while keeping their no-longer-supported HD DVDs, which ensures long-term ability to watch the movies on new players.

Warner Bros. was a company that shipped its titles both on Blu-ray disc media as well as on HD DVD, but it decided to discontinue support of the latter in early 2008 to concentrate on Blu-ray. Shortly afterwards, Toshiba, the main supporter of HD DVD among consumer electronics manufacturers, came to a decision to stop making HD DVD players. As a consequence, many consumers now have Warner’s HD DVDs, but do not have a proper opportunity to replace their players with new ones in case those devices malfunction. For them, the initiative from Warner may become a rather viable solution.

The Red2Blu program is opened to U.S. residents only. The swap will not be free, however. Customers will have to pay $4.95 per disc as well as $6.95 for ground shipping and handling ($8.95 in case of some states). Considering the fact that many HD DVDs might get slightly damaged since they were bought starting in 2006, $4.95 per disc does not seem a lot. What is even more important, Warner only asks to consumers to send artworks from HD DVDs and allows keeping the disks themselves, which means that one can still watch them.

By participating in the program, customers are also eligible to receive a coupon in the form of a promotional code for $15.00 off your purchase of $50.00 worth of Blu-ray titles at regular prices on the WBShop.com site.

Tags: Blu-ray, HD DVD, Warner