HD DVD has a secret weapon

* CORRECTION We should have written: "Figures from March estimate that Sony shipped 5.5 million consoles by March, but has only sold over three million of them." Apologies.

ACCORDING to the CEO of Walt Disney, Robert Iger, there is no high-def format war outside of the US.

In his own words: "If you look across the globe, the only place there is really a format war is in the United States. In other markets where next-gen DVD is starting to penetrate, Blu-ray is winning, and substantially; so much so there isn't even a perceived format war."

Do you hear that Europe? There is no war! Go back to sleep! Everything will be just fine! The US is taking care of it. You have only friendly fire to fear. But seriously, it's a silly thing to say when you consider that HD DVD players and PS3s now share space in the same stores. In fact according to ERT Weekly, most UK electrical retailers - over 60 per cent - prefer HD DVD to Blu-ray.

Now, if Iger had said that the war outside the US right now is just a little - but fierce - conflagration, he'd have hit the nail right on the head. Especially in the UK.

I remember when DVDs started kicking off: lots of "oohing" and "aahing" over the quality and benefits, followed by a small number of outrageously priced DVD players and then, finally, the appearance of some DVDs to rent down the local video store. Not many, but enough for people to go: "Oi, what the hell are they?" It was only then, at that last bit, that DVDs were actually on anyone's radar. Over the space of a year, the tiny DVD shelf in the corner - next to the smut - grew to a couple of shelves and then a wall. Pretty soon, it was 50/50 and soon after that the VHS death-knell was sounded when "Special Offer" baskets crammed with VHS tapes started taking up space all over the store. A decade on and you can hardly buy a video, never mind a video tape.

We are still at the Expensive Hardware bit of the high-def curve because my local DVD club has no high-def movies to rent. Oh, it will sell you a PS3 and a cheap high-def telly but there's no movies to rent. Until they are, high-def is for boffins only.

We also have the added complexity of two rival high-def formats which is going to delay any great consumer rush. HD DVD is the underdog at the moment. Considering all the Blu-ray marketing and megaphone hype, many people could be forgiven for not knowing that's there's another format out there. The Blu-ray camp is winning the media war. Also, cramming a Blu-ray drive into the PS3 was a stroke of genius, even if it did jack up the price considerably and allows rival consoles - the Wii, Xbox 360 and even the PS2 - to trounce it on the sales front. As a result though, the Sony-led camp have created a Blu-ray market of millions of users. Sales figures from March estimate that the PS3 has sold 5.5 million units. That's a nice start to any new format's potential customer base. Toshiba and others will have to sell an awful lot of dedicated HD DVD players to get anywhere close and, of course, that that's not going to happen.

But then, out of the blue, Toshiba pulls a fast one and if, successful, will catapult HD DVD back into the race. According to Toshiba senior vice president, Hisatsugu Nonaka, from 2008 every Toshiba laptop will sport a HD DVD drive as standard. Talk about setting the cat among the pigeons. This is a bold statement and a bold move.

Some of you might think: "Big deal, it's just one laptop vendor" and that's true, but then you have to look at the numbers. IDC estimated that Toshiba sold 9.2 million laptops in 2006. Assuming Toshiba sales increase even slightly, then there's going to be the possibility of 10 million HD DVD players out there by the end of 2008, or sometime in the early part 2009. If you consider that Acer also offers some HD DVD-enabled notebooks - and could easily do something like Toshiba if the price was right - HD DVD is not just suddenly back in the game but also, leading the charge.

Of course, there is a caveat to all of this. One of the reasons that the PS3 is not selling as fast as Sony wants, or needs, is because of that high price tag, courtesy of that Blu-ray drive. If Toshiba wants to make HD DVD the standard, it's going to have to do it by controlling the cost of adding a HD DVD drive to its laptops. It will probably mean sucking up a loss just to flood the market.

With HD DVD back in the game, there's some nice competition ahead and lower prices on the way for players and movies although, I can't help feeling that some would have liked HD DVD [or Blu-ray] to die off sooner rather than later. I know I'd like to see a clear winner. After all, at the end of the day, consumers are still faced with two rival formats and I for one will not be buying either until one of them croaks, or there's a cheap dual-format player. This is me not holding my breath. µ