Until mid-February, HD DVD was ahead. This may have been because the players in this format had been out longer or because they were cheaper.

On the hardware side, Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by five to one, but this is largely due to Sony's PlayStation 3. Since Blu-ray discs aren't selling that strongly, it's tempting to suggest that PlayStation owners either aren't interested in using it to play Blu-ray discs, or the current list of titles doesn't appeal to them. An HD DVD drive is available for the Xbox 360.

A Universal Studios spokesperson was quoted as saying that five times as many disks have been sold for each HD DVD player purchased than there have for each Blu-ray player. However, this could be due to the recent surge in Blu-ray hardware sales - it takes time to build a collection of discs.

Even though the PS3 has yet to go on sale in Australia, JB HiFi - one of the country's leading disc retailers - has made a policy decision to stock Blu-ray as its sole high-def format.

Apple committed to Blu-ray back in 2005, but we have yet to see a product from the company. With new notebook and desktop models expected in coming months, we would not be surprised to see Blu-ray drives in at least some configurations.

For now, at least some studios seem happy to sell their movies on both formats, and Warner Bros has developed a multi-layer scheme that will allow them to put a movie in both formats onto a single disk.{moscomment}