Only 300,000 HD players sold in the U.S.

After finally reaching the market in early 2006, high-definition video players of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats have been sold in about 300 thousand quantities in a little more than one and a half years in the USA, figures from Adams Media Research published by the Wall Street Journal claim. By contrast, Consumer Electronics Association claims that 350 thousand DVD players were acquired by end users in the first year after introduction in March, 1997.

Even though HD DVD leads with 58% of standalone player sales, claims Adams Media, the Blu-ray disc (BD) camp has Sony PlayStation 3, a device that has been sold in roughly 1.6 million quantities in the USA so far. While hardly a lot of people use a game machine to watch BD movies the respectable amount of consoles sold creates some additional potential for the format.

Nevertheless, with both formats being very strong and pushed very hard by powerful companies, typical end-users cannot decide which one to be bet on, as a result sales of players stagnate and so do sales of high-definition movies. In fact, studios charge a premium for high-definition discs over standard-definition DVDs, therefore, some customers may hold themselves back because of that as well.