It might surprise you to know I read the Best buy pullout in every weekend's Sunday paper (which now arrives on Saturday for reasons I can't discern). I'm primarily interested in seeing what's being pushed on the mass market and how.

What remains fascinating to me is how hard they push HDTV displays, and how HDTV sources to show off those spiffy, high pixel count TVs always take a back seat. It's no surprise that consumer research shows that most HDTV owners watch DVDs- that's what they're being sold by the chain stores.

This weekend's Best Buy flyer is actually a step up. There is a full, two-page spread on HD DVD and Blu-ray, each with its own page of players and discs. Superman Returns, which is available on both formats, is the prominent movie that's advertised on each format's respective page. While that's fine and good, the man in blue came out in November. Advertised a few pages down on the New Releases page is Sony's DVD of Stranger than Fiction, a wonderful movie starring Will Ferrell that slipped under a lot of people's radar in '06. Nowhere is it mentioned that this movie is being released on Blu-ray day and date with this DVD.

This is just one of several high profile day and date next-gen releases in the last couple of weeks- Oscar nominated movies like Babel and The Departed have hit both HD DVD and Blu-ray day and date with DVD, and The Prestige just came to Blu-ray.

Best Buy could be centering its advertising campaign on the coolest thing about the new formats- every significant new DVD release is now being accompanied by a Blu-ray and/or HD DVD release. But instead they're focusing the most attention on cool titles that are now several months old. So as far as the mass market is concerned, they'll probably be made aware that the The Departed is on HD DVD and Blu-ray around June.