Three Warner HD DVD Titles Due April 18

Warner has announced its first three HD DVD titles will go on sale April 18, with 17 more titles to follow.

Hey, guess what? When Toshiba starts selling the first HD DVD players March 28, absolutely no HD DVD content will be available.

Instead, technology enthusiasts will have to wait three weeks, until April 19, to purchase Warner Home Video’s first three HD DVD titles: Million Dollar Baby,The Phantom of the Opera, and The Last Samurai. The titles will carry an MSRP of $28.99.

Warner Bros. attributes the delay to technical issues getting up and running with the HD DVD encoding and manufacturing process, emphasizing it wants to get everything right in its initial releases.

In the coming weeks, Warner Bros. plans to offer 17 additional titles, including Batman Begins,Constantine,Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,The Matrix, and Training Day. The total of 20 initial HD DVD titles is scaled back from the initial 24 titles Warner Bros. promised at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Warner Bros. says it plans to introduce additional HD DVD titles in July, and begin shipping HD DVD versions of content originally produced for television in the third quarter of 2006.  *Correction 3/17/06 – Originally we published they would be available on the 19th. We have been informed these titles will be available on the 18th instead. We apologize for the misprint.