Blu-ray is growing in Europe

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) held a press conference in London Tuesday to announce that only two months after Blu-ray media had crossed the million unit sales mark in Europe, that they have surpassed 2.3 million Blu-ray movies sold, giving them a 79% share of the Hi-Def market over HD DVD's 21% for the sales period through Christmas.

It now seems that The BDA in Europe has stopped worrying about the Blu vs HD DVD fight and is now setting its sights on getting Blu-ray movies into the mainstream. Quoting numbers from Screen Digest, the BDA said:

"DVD-Video was first introduced into Western Europe in 1997, and the following year some 230,000 DVD players were installed and 2 million discs were sold through...In comparison, Blu-ray Disc made its first tentative launch in Western Europe in 2006, and the following year some 3.2 million PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles and 34,000 standalone players were installed, while 2.3 million Blu-ray discs sold through."

And for anyone who thinks that the press conference may have gone down without a specific mention of Toshiba, well this is for you. this from the DVD Times UK:

Bob from the BDA Press Office then walked in and briefly mentioned Toshiba's recent promotion of their HD DVD players' upscaling features, but then made the difficult-to-contest point that the Playstation 3 is "the best SD upscaler, bar none"

source:The Hollywood ReporterSky NewsDVD Times UK