Home Media Research, a division of Home Media Magazine, has found that from January 1 through September 30, total U.S. sales of Sony"s Blu-ray discs amounted to 2.6 million units compared with Toshiba"s 1.4 million HD-DVD discs. Since both formats launched in the spring of 2006, an estimated 4.98 million high-definition discs have been sold, including 3.01 million in Blu-ray and 1.97 million in HD-DVD through the end of September, according to Home Media. Nevertheless, Paramount Home Video said that "Transformers" had the biggest debut of any high-definition titles, selling over 100,000 HD-DVDs on Oct 16, its first day of release.
Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research, expects for Blu-ray to lead the year overall but noted that the 18-month period of exclusivity for HD-DVDs by Paramount and DreamWorks should strengthen HD-DVD"s hand this quarter: "This definitely smooths out the edge that Blu-ray had in exclusive titles and it very much strengthens HD-DVD"s hand in the fourth quarter."