All good things are going for Sony's Blu-Ray and we know it. With Blockbuster's full support and the aggressive move to ship more players, it's no surprise that HD-DVD is lagging behind. Blu-Ray is maintaining a five to one edge over its format competitor, says the research firm Digital Entertainment Group.

DEG reports that 1.5 million Blu-Ray players have entered households. This is mostly thanks to PS3 sales, as only 100,00 of these are standalone. However, only 300,000 homes have HD-DVD players with the numbers evenly matched between stand alone drivers and 360 attachment drives.

Warner Bros. senior vice president Steve Nickerson believes that consumers are preparing to embrace the new high-def DVD category. That said, Warner Bros. still support both formats.

Nickerson foresees history repeating itself, saying this year "will mirror the year 1999 or 2000 for DVD.” It's too early to tell which format will emerge victorious, but Blu-Ray is enjoying a good lead. Out of US$ 55 million consumers spent on high-def DVD titles, US$ 35 million were on Blu-Ray titles.

No matter how it turns out, the home video industry is hoping for growth in sales. “It’s in the very, very early days of our forecasts, but we believe that High-Definition discs will help return consumer video spending to growth,” said Helen Davis Jayalath from Screen Digest.