If you’ve been considering an HD-DVD player in Canada, you’ve probably brought home a few of those Toshiba discs-by-mail coupons … you know, just to take a closer look at the list and play mental Tetris with the list of available Warner, Paramount and Universal titles.

Well, that promotion appears to have expired, but Toshiba’s made it simpler: For a limited time, all three of the company’s HD-DVD players are shipping with three HD-DVD titles right in the box: “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, “Black Rain” and “The Perfect Storm”.

So, just to recap: That’s six three free HD-DVDs with the purchase of any Toshiba player. But one of them is “The Perfect Storm”.

I suspect this latest giveaway is designed to counter Panasonic’s recent announcement that its new, lower-priced DMP-BD10A player will be bundled with five Blu-ray discs. And I’m obliged to point out that Panasonic’s discs — the first two “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, “Crash”, “The Transporter” and “Fantastic Four” — are rather bigger deals, at least in terms of overall appeal.

I mean … “Black Rain”? Really? You couldn’t have talked Paramount into “Dreamgirls” or “Babel”?

Okay, maybe not “Babel”.

My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column is up, in which I find a tenuous but close-enough-for-theorizing link between “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Fountain”.

Well, it’s more of a release-date-imposed serendipity … but finding those is my superpower.

Oh, wait. My superpower is always knowing where to position myself on the subway platform so that I’m steps away from the exit when I get where I’m going. I guess the serendipity thing is more of a skill than a superpower.

Anyway, read the piece. I like it.

Lionsgate does.

Not only has the label just released a two-disc set of “Dirty Dancing” (available in a Blu-ray version, too!), but according to The Digital Bits, there’s more to come — specifically, special editions of “The Manhattan Project” and “The Monster Squad”, arriving on June 19th and July 24th, respectively.

Seriously.

Cinematical has the details on the “Monster Squad” extras, which sound like a great deal of fun. The Digital Bits has specs for the “Manhattan Project” disc here, though you have to squint. It sounds like a good package; they even got Robert Sean Leonard to participate in the audio commentary … which is odd, because I have no memory of him appearing in the film. (IMDb says he was, though.)

Way to go, Lionsgate. If enduring a terrible Larry the Cable Guy comedy every spring is the price I have to pay for the resurrection of my guilty teenage pleasures, then … wait, that came out wrong.

In Canada, by the way, these titles will be distributed by Maple Pictures. Just so nobody feels snubbed here.

Oh, and Lionsgate isn’t the only studio cranking out the classics. MGM’s all set to roll out its 20th anniversary edition of “RoboCop” on June 5th, including both the US R-rated theatrical version and Paul Verhoeven’s legendary director’s cut … and then, on July 17th, the studio brings out a movie I never thought I’d see as a two-disc set: “Red Dawn”.

I guess it makes sense that John Milius whack-job apocalypse actioner would merit a revival in the wake of “Jericho“, but … well, may God have mercy on us all.

That said, I know at least one person who can’t wait to see it … guilty teenage pleasures are strange and terrible things.

This happened so quickly I got the beginning, middle and end of it all at once.

Apparently, there was some whispering over at Engadget that Universal was getting ready to ditch its HD-DVD exclusivity and sign on with the Blu-ray peeps.

Not so, says Universal. Ain’t happening. Move along. Nothing to see here. We now return you to your regular blog experience.

And yet …

And yet …

I just have this feeling, is all.

As far as I can tell, this is how it happened.

Somebody submits a story about the breaking of the HD-DVD AACS key code to Digg. The story includes the actual code, which — as Mike pointed out in an e-mail — looks like a string of creepy numbers from “Lost”. (My first thought was that it was someone’s home WEP key.)
The Digg story gets Digged (Dugg?) by something like 15,000 users.

Digg cites intellectual property and deletes the story.

Digg catches on fire.

Okay, not on fire. But there were a lot of raging geeks yelling about the end of Web 2.0 and the death of free speech and all sorts of other 21st-century concerns. Even Digg seems to understand that the yanking of a geek news story is a bad idea these days, as far as optics go.

But at the risk of being branded a cranky old contrarian who just doesn’t get it, man, I’d like to ask one question: How is the revelation of the HD-DVD AACS key world news? How many of us are going to run to our local Best Buy and grab that HD-DVD disc of “Alpha Dog” and bring it home to share it with the online downloading community? Who’s got the time? Who’s got the bandwidth?

… okay, I understand what’s really at stake here. Studios won’t support either of the high-def DVD formats if they don’t think they’re secure, and DRM is all there is between their precious 18 GB movie files and hundreds of thousands of hungry, freeloading college students. So the perception of security is at least as important as actual security.

But here’s the thing: DRM — that’s Digital Rights Management, for those of you without the nerd phrasebook — always gets cracked. There are literally dozens of ripping programs available for standard DVD now, and people still walk into stores and buy those discs by the millions every week. People who download pirated movies will always be a niche market; the trick is to keep legitimate consumers buying the best possible product.

I am not naive enough to believe I’ve just solved the piracy problem. But I do think things would be better if certain forces just acknowledged that some piracy is inevitable, and stopped treating the rest of the public like shifty loiterers just waiting for the chance to snap up some free stuff while the corporate back is turned. It spawns an uncomfortable culture of intimidation that allows stuff like this Digg thing to happen.

Also, I’d really like that HD-DVD edition of “Shaun of the Dead”, and ain’t no stinking pirate gonna stand in my way.

The flu seems to be over, at long last — my head’s clear and my aches are minimal and I’ve gone two days without needing a mid-afternoon nap.

So now I’m jumping back into the world, with the writing and the watching and the waiting to hear back from Sanyo about my poor little projector.

No real news to report, but my new DVD column is up at Sympatico/MSN, so if you were looking for another reason to watch “Little Children”, by all means check it out.

I don’t get colds all that often — I’m usually lucky enough to escape with a couple days’ of a runny nose — so it’s been rather humbling to have been laid the f*ck out by this year’s model.

Chills, aches, sweats, the works … you know when your immune system is so battered, it hurts to shower? I called that “Monday”.

Fortunately, I managed to dope myself up on enough goofballs to get through last night’s WILDSound Feedback Film Festival, which was a lot of fun even if I did interrupt a couple of the featured titles by fits of coughing, and this morning my temperature appears to have broken, so I think I’ve turned the corner.

Which means that the DVD package pictured above is real, and not a fever-induced hallucination.

Street date’s August 7th. No word on extras yet, but hopefully they’ll include an audio commentary by Dino de Laurentiis’ psychotherapist …

Warner Home Video held their latest “press appreciation event” at the Royal Ontario Museum last night, launching BBC Video’s “Planet Earth” and introducing us to its second-quarter lineup.

There’s some good stuff in there — I’m shamefully excited about that first-season set of “The Powerpuff Girls” — but “Planet Earth”, which was screening in HD-DVD on a pair of Toshiba Regza sets throughout the event — was definitely the highlight of the evening.

“Planet Earth” will be the first BBC Video title to be released in high-definition, and it’ll be available simultaneously in HD-DVD and Blu-ray editions; label reps were mum on subsequent releases, except to say that there will be more high-def content down the line.

“Doctor Who” and “Life on Mars” seem like obvious choices, given their respective geek factors; it struck me as odd that BBC Video has no plans to release “Life on Mars” on DVD in North America, since the show just wrapped up in the UK, but if they’re waiting to tie the release to high-def formats, that might explain it.

And still, we come back to the endless loop of the format question: Which player to buy? I spent some time over the weekend mulling high-def players — tempted by the $399 sticker price of Toshiba’s HD-A2 on Broadway, gawking at Samsung’s brand-new BD-P1200 at Best Buy, fondling LG’s BH100 combo player at Circuit City — but couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

Basically, I’m waiting for a second-generation combo player — one that has more comprehensive video and audio output options, and maybe a nicer cabinet. (It bugs me that you can’t turn off the glowing LG logo on the front of the thing.)

And then there’s this, which is still entirely hypothetical at this point, but sounds awfully nice. I mean, I do think Blu-ray will eventually win this war — it’s got the studio support, and it’s starting to show the sales numbers — but as long as “Shaun of the Dead” is an HD-DVD exclusive, I’ll need something that can play it.