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Stuck with a mound of HD-DVDs and an HD-DVD player that's looking more and more worthless with each passing day? Well, in the first glimmer of hope in over a year, Warner Brothers wants to give you a chance to jump on board with the rest of the media bandwagon. "Come over to Blu-ray," the WB taunts. "But why?! I'm invested in HD DVD! I don't wanna just throw this all away!"

Well, WB heard your cries of stubborn consumerism despair. In a move that I'm somewhat thrilled to see (though entirely unsure of in the fiscal sense), Warner Brothers is offering a trade in for all the WB HD-DVDs you might have purchased during the format war. By all accounts that's really cool - if you've since purchased a Blu-ray player. I'd be remiss if I didn't confess that I thought Sony was in the background pulling the strings on this one. Check out Red2Blu for more details.

But is the deal all it's cracked up to be?

But if you haven't bought a Blu-ray player yet, and you're sitting on a stack of about 20 or 30 HD-DVDs would you want the exchange? Warner Brothers and Sony are taking a new angle on the Blu-ray evangelism route. Instead of saying "Buy a Blu-ray and gradually buy titles," they're saying "get the titles for the severly discounted price of $5 a pop via exchange and then, because you now have this new format, go buy a Blu-ray player." It's a very strange way of converting those hard-headed HD DVD folk, but come on, to their credit this is a pretty neat way of offering incentive.

But the question is, again, is it worth it?

Why you would: they're not making any more HD-DVDs, no one is. You're sitting on a dead format that was inferior from the get-go. We admire your loyalty but there is a point where being stubborn is detrimental to your entertainment health.

Why you wouldn't: you're still left with a) the hardware and b) all of the HD-DVDs you purchased that aren't from Warner Brothers. Now, if everybody would follow the lead of WB and offer a similar trade in package then this plan might gain some steam. The long-run problem is that you do have to go out and buy a whole new piece of hardware. That process becomes even more aggravating because unlike the media, the hardware manufacturers aren't going to be offering a HD-DVD for Blu-ray player trade-in any time soon. I guarantee it.

It's times like this when you appreciate a studio's first steps to bridge a gap that's been swinging empty and disconnected since the dust of the format war settled. On the other hand, this isn't a problem that just one studio can fix. To truly convert the HD-DVD faithful, all of the studios that peddled the dead format need to step up and offer a swap service. But again, a whole bunch of people are going to be left with hunks of metal rendered useless. HD-DVD player meet the Sega Dreamcast, you two have a lot to talk about.