Anybody remember the whole Betamax vs. VHS battle? Sony, the chief backer of Beta, wasn’t as nice as Toshiba and the retailers are pertaining those that purchased the Toshiba and Microsoft backed HD-DVD.

This time, some said that HD-DVD was doomed from the beginning with the Sony PlayStation 3 serving as their “trojan horse” to get into millions of homes and help push Blu-Ray over HD-DVD’s popularity. Meanwhile, earlier released Blu-Ray players were having problems playing such recently released and Blu-Ray profile updated titles like Pirates of the Caribbean.

With that said, just under a month ago, Toshiba finally pulled the plug on HD-DVD and a lot of people are looking at their last movies coming out, or have came out. Terminator 2 will be the last real release – I think there’s a Veggie Tales that’s being touted as coming out a bit later, if Paramount doesn’t stop that from being released as well.

So what to do… what to do.

Seems like Best Buy got your back. Yeah… that Best Buy.

Until December 31st, 2008, if you purchased a HD-DVD player and/or HD-DVD attachment (think: Microsoft XBOX360 HD-DVD add-on) before February 22nd, 2008, you’re eligible for a $50.00 that Best Buy will be proactively mailing cards to some of its customers and expects to distribute more than $10 million in gift cards. Also feel free to hit up the Best Buy HD-DVD trade-in program.

This offer starts March 21st.

Even though I avoided this battle for the “next generation” of video, this might be helpful for quite a few of you – I’m still enjoying my Betamax