Black Tuesday For HD-DVD!! COPS!! COACH!! CHRONICLES!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

I am – Hercules!!
Toshiba denied Monday that any decision had been made but Variety reports in its Tuesday morning edition that the Japanese electronics giant will formally pull the plug on the HD-DVD format on Feb. 19 (that’s today!). I own machines that play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs and I’m hoping to pick up more HD-DVD discs at clearance prices. But. Blu-ray still costs too fricking much. You can (at least for the moment) buy a 1080i HD-DVD player for a measly $117.36 and a 1080p HD-DVD player for a lousy $147.49 and I’ll be danged if I can tell from my 144-inch screen the difference between their gorgeous images and the equally gorgeous images produced by my $356.25 1080p Blu-ray player. On the other hand, if getting rid of HD-DVD will quickly reduce the cost of Blu-ray players to $120 a unit, I’m down with the plan. Anybody care to hazard a guess on long it’ll take before we see Blu-ray players at that price? On to the titles!

A Cops 20th Anniversary Edition is coming out a little early as the infamous ride-along documentary series actually debuted in the spring of 1989, three years after the launch of the Fox Network and three years before MTV’s launch of “The Real World.” Born out of the 1988 WGA strike and the increasingly portable “minicams” of the era, it is credited in some quarters for launching the reality genre (although the genre never really proliferated on broadcast television until about a decade subsequent to its launch). The new set contains footage from each of the 20 seasons, as well as a documentary on the show, testimonials of famous fans like Richard Donner and Luke Wilson, and a compilation of parodies. The whole thing apparently runs 131 minutes and retails for $19.99.

Craig T. Nelson is one of my favorite actors, and I still laugh at his work as the misanthropic title character in Coach, which also launched in ‘89. A better deal than the “Cops” set: $18.89 for 22 episodes.

Don’t forget! Walker: Texas Ranger was created by multiple Oscar winner Paul Haggis!

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

I cheerfully predicted two weeks ago that the 28-hourlong-episode I-Spy: Season One set would never sell for less than $13.99. I was WRONG!! As I type, this set is selling for $12.99!! The cool thing about Amazon, though, is everybody who pre-ordered the set at $13.99 should automatically have their price adjusted and locked in now at $12.99.

The third and final and completely wonderful third season of “Veronica Mars” (the one with the 12-minute fourth-season “Veronica FBI” pilot among its extras) is still selling at the moment $19.99!! That’s 67% Off!! (It was $37.99 two weeks ago.) The first two seasons have been momentarily encheapened as well: $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season One <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!! $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season Two <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!! $19.99 Veronica Mars: Season Three <--- VASTLY ENCHEAPENED!!