Retailers Turn Up Blu-Ray Publicity

   You can take home the most dangerous forensic expert home to DVD this August. Dexter: After the format war ended in favor of Blu-Ray, there was a bit of a stand-still in the marketing aspect of Blu-Ray, but that is all about to change. According to Home Media Magazine, Best Buy and Circuit City, two of the nation's biggest electronics retailers, have just began new promotions both geared towards celebrating the Blu-Ray high-definition format.

    Circuit City is offering a free Blu-Ray movie when you buy two $29.99 BD titles and they are also selling the Sony 1080p Blu-Ray player for $400. Best Buy is also offering that Sony player for $400 and they are also running a sale on the Samsung 1080p BD player for $500 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Best Buy is also offering a $10 gift card when you purchase two of the following recent Sony Blu-Ray titles: Casino Royale, Superbad, Resident Evil: Extinction, Surf's Up, Spider-Man 3 and Open Season. Both retailers expressed the importance of spotlighting the high-definition format.

   "We think [Blu-ray] will be a milestone in home entertainment," said Circuit City spokesperson Jackie Foreman, who also added they're goal was to help consumers adopt to Blu-Ray "with confidence."

   Brian Lucas, a Best Buy spokesperson, said the #1 Blu-Ray retailer is doing, "whatever we can" to educate consumers about BD, which includes informing buyers that the format war with HD DVD is indeed over. Lucas also said that the lull in Blu-Ray marketing was more of an inventory concern.

   "Some of the [gap in BD marketing] was making sure we had enough Blu-ray titles in stock," Lucas said. "We had to demand-plan correctly and have items in stock. We run promotions every week and they focus on different categories."

Date：2008-5-19　【Return】