Blu-ray out numbers HD DVD 3:1 in Back Friday sales

New York (NY) - The first official weekend of the holiday shopping season gave a comfortable head start to Blu-ray in the high definition format war.

Nielsen Videoscan released a report this week summarizing sales data of high definition video discs between November 23, Black Friday, and one week later.

Though Nielsen did not give absolute numbers, it reported that around 72% of all HD disc movie sales were attributed to Blu-ray, leaving about 28% for HD DVD. That’s despite the fact that HD DVD players had much better deals than Blu-ray Disc players. Toshiba’s HD-A3 player went for around $170 on Black Friday at Sears. The price leader for Blu-ray was a $400 player at Best Buy that came with a $100 store gift card.

Many are expecting this year’s holiday sales to be a major deciding factor in the format war and whether or not HD DVD can continue to compete against the more successful Blu-ray standard.

Yet the technology behind HD DVD has continuously outpaced Blu-ray, with unique interactive features and Internet connectivity being standard for HD DVD while Blu-ray sluggishly takes its time meeting the same specifications.