The so-called format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD has been going on for some time with anyone being declared the winner.

Both sides have powerful allies and until now Blu-ray has had the edge in numbers but this was mainly due to the Blu-ray unit incorporated in the latest Sony PlayStation 3.

The battle to win the hearts and minds of American customers took a crazy turn last week.

The Toshiba HD-DVD player that launched at $499 in the US was selling for just $299 at Best Buy and at Circuit City – the number one and two retailers in American.

Then Wal-Mart dropped the price to $198 and this low price was immediately matched by Best Buy and Circuit City. Then things got even crazier.

Wal-Mart, the owner of Asda in the UK, ran prime time TV ads that cut the price to just $98.

More than 90,000 Toshiba HD-DVD players were sold over a single weekend.

One thing is clear.  A selling price of £47 does not even cover the cost of the materials let alone assembling them and shipping the players to the US. Somebody lost a fortune on this deal.

Let us hope this madness does not get repeated here in the UK.