April 20, 2006 - HD DVD launched in retail stores with something between a whimper and minor bang earlier this week. Although there were only two HD DVD titles from Warner available in most stores, The Last Samurai and Phantom of the Opera, Toshiba’s initial, admittedly smallish run of players was sold out after just two days of availability.

According to reports, Toshiba delivered 10,000-15,000 players to 3,000 stores in the US, with more to follow. The $499 HD-A1 was the predominant SKU, with smaller quantities of the $799 HD-XA1 rolling out at some stores.

Toshiba is co-promoting the HD DVD launch with NetFlix, which will be offering online rentals of HD DVD discs, and leveraging its sponsorship of Universal’s King Kong. With the purchase of an HD DVD player a coupon for a free month of rentals at NetFlix is included, and consumers who purchase a player before May 31st will receive a coupon by mail good for $25 toward the purchase of Kong on DVD or HD DVD. The big monkey hasn’t been announced on the latter format, but lets just hope this is a good sign and not just a PR stunt!

Warner’s Million Dollar Baby was also supposed to be in the first wave, but didn’t quite make the Tuesday launch. It’s expected late this week or early next. Universal’s Serenity is also on tap for late this week or early next, and Universal is also expected to have Doom and Apollo 13 in stores next Tuesday.

Other HD DVD titles announced to appear in coming weeks include Jarhead, Ron Howard’s , Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), Bourne Supremacy, Chronicles of Riddick, the monster mash that is Van Helsing, and the obligatory submariner, U-571.

Warner’s HD DVDs come with an insert promising over 50 HD DVD titles to be available in 2006, including "all the newest releases." Mocked up on this insert were Batman Begins, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the latter-day sword and sandals epic Troy, The Dukes of Hazzard (unrated, thank heavens), Full Metal Jacket, The Perfect Storm, Shawshank Redemption, and the Matrix.

The discs that have shown up so far at retail have been priced between $24.99 and $29.99, and the other announced titles are in line with that pricing. Interactivity and features have been touted by HD DVD’s supporting manufacturers and content providers, and indeed The Last Samurai is loaded with special features, including several documentaries and featurettes, deleted scenes, a director’s commentary, and more.

According to the discs’ packaging, both The Last Samurai and Phantom of the Opera are in 1080p, and while both discs include a Dolby Digital Plus 5.1-channel soundtrack, Phantom includes a 5.1-channel Dolby TrueHD track. While Dolby Digital Plus is a higher bitrate "lossy" compression codec, TrueHD is based on Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), the lossless compression standard used for the ill-fated DVD-Audio format. MLP is capable of compressing up to eight channels of 24-bit/192kHz resolution digital audio with bit-for-bit reconstruction of the original signal on playback.

So, while the run was smallish, Toshiba sold its initial run of HD DVD players out with two just two titles to watch on them. More time and titles will tell if the interest in this product will range beyond early adopter zealotry. And of course, Blu-ray hasn’t even started its run yet. But with HD DVD players prices only $100 higher than a 60GB iPod, who knows?

Look for UAV’s early impressions of the players and discs next week, along with an in-depth primer on the two competing HD formats. The era of HD on a silver disc has officially begun!