HD DVD players selling out in major cities

Those eager to get their hands on the first ever HD DVD players in the United States cleared shelves quickly at Best Buy stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

An employee at the Best Buy store in Midtown Manhattan said Tuesday that all 10 Toshiba HD DVD players were sold out on Monday, the day before the players' official launch.

Customers also bought up all the HD DVD movie titles, the employee said.

The Best Buy store in San Francisco sold out of six Toshiba HD-A1 models, which retails for $499, according to a store clerk. Best Buy's branch in Northridge, Calif., about 25 miles north of Los Angeles, also reported that it quickly ran out of the handful of HD DVD players it received.

HD DVD and Blu-ray are competing technologies vying to replace the DVD format. Both sides are represented by movie studios, electronics makers and software companies. At stake is the $24 billion home-video market.

Toshiba is the first company to actually present a player on one of the formats to the public. In addition to the HD-A1, Toshiba also sells the $800 HD-XA1.

Several publications have reported that the number of units made available in the U.S. is around 10,000, a relatively small roll out.

"We don't share the exact the number that we shipped," said Jodi Sally, Toshiba's vice president of marketing. "I can tell you that we're going to be in about 3,000 stores nationwide and we're continuing to ship the devices. We're shipping just as fast as we can."