Woolies delivers new blow to HD-DVD

Stores will stock only Blu-ray disks after they outsold rival by 10-to-1

Woolworths stores will stock only Blu-ray high-definition movies from March in the latest setback for the rival HD-DVD format.

The company says Blu-ray outsold HD-DVD movies by 10 to one in it stores over Christmas. It will continue to sell HD-DVDs online.

Woolworths claims to be Britain's biggest seller of high-definition movies, with sales rising by 40 per cent a month.

"Sales figures clearly show that the market is moving towards one format of high-definition DVD," said the company's DVD buyer Steven McGunigel.

The main reason was that 750,000 UK homes have a Sony Playstation 3, which packs a Blu-ray player, he said. Microsoft offers an HD-DVD player as an optional extra with the rival Xbox 360.

The HD-DVD camp, led by Toshiba, was thrown onto the back foot at this month's Consumer Electronics Show when the Warner Bros movie company defected to Blu-ray.