Warner Brothers Entertainment recently expanded its DVD2Blu promotion to include any DVD of any movie or TV program – not just DVD releases of Warner titles.

For those readers who are not familiar with the program, DVD2Blu allowed anyone to trade in older WB movie titles on DVD and get a credit towards the purchase of a new Blu-ray version. The upgraded BD would cost about $8, including shipping.

Now, WB has expanded their program and will accept any professionally-produced DVD – movies, TV shows, sports, etc – towards the purchase of a WB Blu-ray movie or WB Television collection, with prices starting as low as $4.95. According to the ad, which is shown below and can be accessed at http://www.dvd2blu.com/ there are over 100 BD titles to choose from. Order more than $35 worth, and WB will throw in free shipping.

For Blu-ray fans, this is quite a promotion. You can send in DVDs you picked up at discount bins, discarded from libraries, or were given for Christmas presents. All you have to do is mail in the disc (not the packaging) and pay the discounted price, plus shipping (except where noted) to get new BDs for your collection.

From here, it seems like a desperate move by WB to thin out a backlog of BD titles that aren’t moving. Earlier this week, I wrote about the latest Digital Entertainment Group report that showed digital distribution of content is zooming ahead of physical distribution. The report also mentioned that tens of millions of BDs have been shipped to retail. Apparently tens of millions of BDs are still sitting at retail, too.

The costs of administering such a mail-in program aren’t cheap, either. All of the DVDs will have be disposed of, and there are the usual associated shipping and handling costs to deal with.

This move by WB is significant because they are one of the largest distributors of packaged media, along with Disney, who has yet to announce any type of redemption or discount program for their BD titles.

I recall a conversation with a Disney executive a few years back at the HPA Technology Retreat. His comment cut to the chase: “If the industry wants Blu-ray to be successful, they should just stop pressing regular DVDs and make Blu-ray the only optical disc format. That would do the trick!”

Of course, at the time, BD players were in the neighborhood of $500 – $700 dollars and largely ignored by the general public, who gravitated towards cheaper upscaling DVD players instead.

Times have changed. Nowadays, BD players can be had for as little as $80, and even 3D models are plummeting in  price – at least one is selling for less than $200, and a couple more are approaching that price point.

Given the slow but steady decline in overall sales of packaged media (DVD, BD, and the few VHS tapes that are still in circulation)  – down 8% this year over last – it’s time for Hollywood to ’sink or swim’ by committing to the BD format and start making plans for the sunset of RL DVDs. Even Netflix has announced it will exit the DVD distribution business in the next five years and concentrate on its ‘bread-and-butter’ streaming offerings.

Wonder when the next round of BD fire sales will start?