I noticed recently that my local Fry’s store has set up a number of stages to promote different products.

One of these stages is dedicated to Blu-ray and features a good amount of seating, a stage for occasional presentations and the rest of the time, Pixar shorts showing on the HDTV.

In the very least this area has taken on a kind of baby sitting role, where kids can watch the pretty pictures instead of being dragged around the store while complaining.

In any case, it is an indication that Fry’s is gearing up to push this technology, perhaps especially into the holiday season this year.

Fry’s is also having regular sales on Blu-ray Discs - this weekend they have a number of Fox and MGM titles for only $10.49.

I know a lot of Blu-ray fans are also Playstation 3 owners, so you might want to hear that the Amazon Gold Box page today is dedicated to Playstation 3.

The deal of the day is Motorstorm Pacific Rift for $39.98, and there are of course a number of Lightening Deals that change throughout the day.

And I admit that I was one of the buyers!

I see over at the Carpetbagger Blog at New York Times  that first day sales of the Dark Knight DVD was in the order of 3 million copies, and that the Blu-ray version managed 600,000 copies.

These numbers include the USA, Canada and the UK.

Warner expects to hit 1 million Blu-ray Disc sales by Saturday - which would make it the first Blu-ray title to sell 1 million copies in the first week.

The article says that Blu-ray sales were especially strong at grocery stores - certainly a surprise to me since I have only seen Sony and Disney titles at my local Safeway.

It is exciting to see these kinds of sales numbers for sure, for what was definitely the most anticipated Blu-ray release for the year.

It also looks like it managed right around 20% market share for Blu-ray Disc also, which is pretty much in line with my expectations.

I can’t wait to see some more formal sales figures as they come in…

Just after mentioning that Iron Man is racing to the million unit mark, Warner Home Video has attempted to trump the achievement, stating that their Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight will ship over a million units to retailers for the street date in early December, in good time for Holiday Season cheer.

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It is that time of year again - I just got word that Deep Discount has a new promotion, offering 25% off their already low prices across the board until  Novever 24th.

This promotion applies to in stock Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, and UMDs - it does not apply to pre-order titles.

For the best savings, I would go for the titles where the Deep Discount price is the same as Amazon or better.

This is pretty easy to do - just go to the stats page and you can compare the Amazon price and the DeepDiscount price right there.

Or you can just visit the Deep Discount Blu-ray site and look for those obscure or new titles that never seem to be in the Amazon sales.

In either case, use the coupon code DDAF when you check out to get the discount.

Amazon has a number of cool Blu-ray titles at great low prices today.

If you are one of the few that doesn’t own 300 yet, now is a good time to grab it, since Amazon has it for $14.95, a 57% saving off retail!

Amazon also has the recent Weinstein Company title Diary of the Dead release for $13.99, saving 53%.

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I read over at Video Business that nationwide retailer Target has increased the floor space dedicated to Blu-ray Discs and players.

According to the article, Target has done this in response to rising customer demand for the format.

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Over at Best Buy they are listing a new Blu-ray player from Samsung.

The BD-P2550 unit appears to be much the same as the 1500, with the addition of 7.1 analog outputs and the Silicon Optix HQV Reon scaling engine.

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Best Buy has some great Blu-ray player promotions this week.

The Bonus View enabled Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Disc Player is listed for $359.99, a saving of $40 while the Sharp AQUOS BD-HP20U Blu-ray Disc Player is $379.99, saving $20.

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It was a bit of a surprise today to see a couple of imports listed on Amazon - one of which appears to be imported by them.

The Batman Begins - Bonus Figurine Edition has been listed for Blu-ray for August 5th, 2008, with the distributor listed as WEA Japan. Retail is listed as $299.98, while the Amazon price is $209.95.

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