Just after the Black Friday week sales, HD DVD was proud to put out a press release about its surge in HD DVD player sales thanks to the cut player prices, however, the Blu-ray camp is once again back with the other side of the story. Apparently, the Tracking firm Nielsen VideoScan has unveiled that 72.6% of HD disc sales were on Blu-ray disc, showing Blu-ray had an even greater market share of HD movie sales than usual according to this Home Media Magazine report.
During the Black Friday week, some retailers including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, sold HD DVD players for under $100, which helped Toshiba sell 90,000 players throughout the weekend of the sales. The player prices have since come back up, starting at around $200 again (going by Amazon.com's current lowest pricing).
Going by this DailTech report, two possibilities for the unusual Blu-ray disc sale surge during the week includes the release of the Blu-ray only titles Live Free or Die Hard, Hairspray and Ratatouille and also that the Nielsen Video does not include Wal-Mart sales. For example, if the majority of the cheap HD DVD players were sold at Wal-Mart, chances are that most of the buyers would have bought their first set of HD DVD titles along with the player at the store.
