HD DVD player sales pass 100k mark in US

Rising demand

US consumers have bought more than 100,000 HD DVD players, the next-gen optical disc format's backers claim. The figure doesn't include HD DVD drives built into PCs, nor the external HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360, leaving the 100,000 units almost entirely comprised of Toshiba's three players.

Back in January, Toshiba said it had shipped 60,000 HD DVD players in the US from their debut in April 2006 to the end of December 2006. That's 6667 units a month, on average for 2006. For 2007, the average monthly sales jump to 10,000 units, so momentum is clearly building behind HD DVD and not just with games console owners.

That said, Microsoft sold more HD DVD drives than Toshiba did players in 2006, and we'd expect it to be doing so in 2007. Even so, HD DVD hardware sales are dwarfed by PlayStation 3 purchases, which have boosted the rival Blu-ray Disc's fortunes considerably.

Last week, it emerged BD was ahead in sales of pre-recorded content in the US, with year-to-date sales of 549,730 units to HD DVD's 249,451 discs. Since sales of each format started, some 708,600 HD DVDs and 844,000 BDs have been sold.