Sales figures released by the trade publication, Home Media Magazine, are sure to fuel the flames between the Blu-ray camp and the HD DVD camp. According to Home Media Magazine, Blu-ray took over the sales lead in February, owning nearly three out of every four high definition disc sales. The sales breakdown also shows people preferring Blu-ray over HD DVD when there’s a choice available between the two formats for the same movie. Case in point – The Departed in Blu-ray outsold HD DVD 53,640 to 31,590 between Feb. 13th to March 31st.

Additionally, eight of the top 10 selling high definition titles in the first quarter were on Blu-ray disc. For the quarter ending March 31st, there were 832,530 Blu-ray discs sold while sales for HD DVD numbered 359,300.

Now is this a surprise? To most analysts, the answer would be a no considering Blu-ray enjoys more support in the movie studio front than HD DVD. Three studios offer exclusive Blu-ray support while only one studio offers exlusive HD DVD content. Two other studios support both platforms.

While I think sales figures for high definition content is interesting, what I would really like to see is sales figures for the players themselves. How many Blu-ray players have been sold vs. how many HD DVD players have been sold. There’s something else to consider (and maybe it’s far fetched to consider this). It’s true that there’s a good deal more Blu-ray content than there is HD DVD content and that disparity can also affect sales from a psychological content. I’ll take myself for an example. While I own an HD DVD player for the Xbox 360, I often lack the desire to go see if there’s HD DVD content available at the local electronics store. Why? I’ve become accustomed to seeing a dearth of HD DVD discs. Since I’m used to that now, I have no desire to go to say… Best Buy to see if there’s something interesting to buy. Make sense? OK.. maybe it’s far fetched but it’s something to consider.

Finally, there’s one last thing to consider and that is advertising. Let’s face it – the Blu-ray camp is doing a far better job at advertising than the HD DVD camp. I see a great deal more Blu-ray related ads than HD DVD.

So.. let’s not discount HD DVD quite yet based on sales figures. There’s a lot to consider before officially declaring any winner. There’s one thing that does holds true for both camps – hardware players are still way too expensive for the majority of users out there. What I’d love to see is hardware based players to come down in price to a more manageable amount. I’m sorry.. I don’t believe in paying $500 for a high definition player.

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