The North American HD DVD Promotional Group is celebrating its first anniversary since it launched HD DVD hardware and movies and claims that 100,000 HD DVD players have been sold to the North American market.

HD DVD players appeared on the U.S. market one year ago. The HD DVD Promotional Group said that the 100,000 units sold within a year do not include PC drives or the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive.

The Group say these figures clearly put it ahead of of any other high definition format according to the group, although it clearly isn't taking into account the sales of Sony's PS3 console.

According to Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Consumer Products: "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."

Toshiba has ratcheted up the competition against Sony by dropping the price of its HD-A2 HD DVD player to under US$400.

In addition, the group said that 70 movie titles are expected by July, reaching the 300 later in the summer.