Add another data point to the ongoing struggle between HD DVD and Blu-ray: the North American HD DVD Promotional Group now says that "more than" 100,000 HD DVD players have been sold in the U.S., "ahead of any other high-definition format". It's also one year ago that HD DVD players were sold within the U.S.

Well, let's start poking holes and noting caveats, shall we? First, the HD DVD numbers (by their own admission) don't include PC HD DVD drives, or the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox. Point to them. On the other hand, as far as I know there are no published figures for exactly how many HD DVD or Blu-ray players that have been sold, just a wishy-washy total for both formats, which tells us exactly zilch. And I sincerely doubt that the HD DVD folks are allowing the Blu-ray drives within the Sony PlayStation 3 to be counted, either.

The HD folks point out that The Complete Matrix Trilogy on HD DVD will come in May from Warner Home Video, and "more than 70 new titles expected to be released before the end of July". "HD DVD owners will have more than 300 titles worldwide to choose from this summer, with more to come in the fall and holiday seasons," the group adds.

We do know that sales of Blu-ray encoded movies are outselling HD DVDs, although whether that's because sales of hardware players are equally high, or just because Blu-ray fans buy more movies is unknown.

Let's see -- obligatory quote from CE manufacturer? Check.

"Toshiba remains committed to drive sales with strategic pricing and marketing to complement the rapid market adoption of HDTVs," said Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Consumer Products, in a statement. "Retailers are showing a significant increase in sales volume this month so far. On Amazon.com, our HD DVD players continue to rank among the top ten best sellers of all DVD players, which says a lot about how consumers relate to price."

This last bit was true: the Toshiba HD-XA2 ranked seventh on the list of the Amazon.com top DVD players by units sold, measured hourly; the HD-A2 ranked eighth, and the HD-A20 ranked 21st. No other next-gen player (HD DVD or Blu-ray) was on the list when I checked, at 1:30 PM PDT on April 17. But again, that's a data point that's probably going to be extremely variable.

So do we know anything more? Not really, but it's a good sign for the industry as a whole, I suppose.