[hmurchison (Unverified) Posted Jan 18th 2007 3:21PM]

There are plenty of numbers to be had.

The HD DVD Promotions Group announced North American sales of 175k players. NPD announced that an estimated 92k HD DVD add on were sold. Thus it's safe to assume that the remaining market for Toshiba players was about 80k.

This thread has information stating that the estimated standalone Blu-ray players are likely 25k

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070115-8625.html

Warners keynote at CES showed that HD DVD movies outsold Blu-ray by 2:1 according to their data.

The numbers are becoming more clear. Without the PS3 and a studio advantage Blu-ray would be dead. They are championing their content advantage whilst HD DVD will be shoring up their players with at least 6 new models coming out this year. The War has just officially started. Now we get to see who executes their strategy the best.

[Scott Hettrick (Unverified) Posted Jan 20th 2007 7:55PM]

The actual numbers are so small for both formats at this point that it's not likely that any studio is going to announce unit sales for any specific title until you start seeing title sales in the hundreds of thousands of units and especially the first title to hit the 1 million unit mark, as was the case with DVD.
Boasting about sales of a few thousand units versus a thousand or so less of the other format doesn't really serve anyone.
The only valid measure right now is the aggregate numbers of titles sold (not shipped), which, as you noted, is what Fox reported at CES in the following statement in a release that also included a chart:

"... Blu-ray sales performance surpassed HD-DVD for the first time the week of December 24 and did so by an impressive 20 per cent. What�s more, by the end of the first quarter our research shows the sales gap widening to Blu-ray outselling HD DVD by a 3.5-to-1 ratio,� noted Mike Dunn, President Worldwide, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Scott Hettrick