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Several big-name retailers have begun selling two Toshiba HDD-DVD players alongside a choice of just four high-definition movie titles: Serenity, Million Dollar Baby, The Last Samurai and Phantom of the Opera. More titles are scheduled to be released over the next month or so.

The first Blu-ray players and movies are due to go on sale on 23 May.

Early adoption of both technologies is expected to be slow, not least because the discs cost around 2.5 times as much as the equivalent bog-standard DVD.

Both Sony, Blu-ray's principle backer, and Toshiba have announced laptops equipped with their respective HD drives.

The general consensus is that one of the technologies will eventually force the other out of the market. The problem is no-one knows which will prevail.

The UK's first glimpse of HD DVD will not come until the autumn, when Toshiba releases its HD-XA1 HD DVD player, which the company believes will be the only HD DVD player available this year.