Blu-ray catching up to HD DVD

2 February 2007 23:54 by Dela

According to figures from Nielsen VideoScan, the Blu-ray Disc format may be catching up with its competitor, HD DVD, in terms of movie sales. Ever since both formats launched, the HD DVD format has held a clear lead in many aspects, but in January, Blu-Ray started to quickly close the gap. In the first week of January, Blu-ray movies outsold HD DVD by a ratio of 2 to 1, and the following week was 3 to 1.

At the end of 2006, only 695,000 consumers owned a player for either format, which split in to 270,000 HD DVD players and 425,000 Blu-ray players. The majority of Blu-ray players are PS3's; only 25,000 Blu-ray stand-alones were sold in 2006. As for HD DVD figures, half of them are Xbox 360 add-ons.

It isn't clear whether the boost for Blu-ray was the initial rush to "check it out" from gamers with new PS3s, or the fact that HD DVD had no new title releases over the period. HD DVD still seems to have more titles available for purchase than Blu-ray right now.