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”.