Okay… now on to the news from Monday afternoon, the highlight of which was the Blu-ray Disc Association press conference. Pioneer' s Andy Parsons moderated the panel, which featured the home video presidents of Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Warner and Disney. The group issued a promotional booklet at the event featuring the bold blue headline, " Blu-ray Victory Inevitable." Of the research the group presented, the most compelling data by far was a list of the Top 20 Selling DVDs of 2006… indicating that only 4 of the 20 would or could be released on HD-DVD, and only 1 was exclusive to HD-DVD (Universal' s King Kong). But of the 20 titles, 19 of them would be available on Blu-ray and 16 of them would be exclusive to Blu-ray. The group cited research by analysis firm GFK indicating that Blu-ray had already won the high-def format war in Japan, with more than 96% dominance of the market. They also reiterated the announcement that Sony had shipped 1 million Blu-ray equipped PS3s to U.S. retailers as of 12/31 (my guess is that they were shipped RIGHT at the end of 2006, in the very last few days of December), and that their survey of 10,000 PS3 owners indicated that 80% planned to purchase Blu-ray movies (after seeing the copy of Talladega Nights included in the package) and that 75% of them planned to use the PS3 as their primary movie viewing device. At an " intend to purchase" rate of 80%, the group calculates an installed base of Blu-ray players in the U.S. of more than 800,000 in the next few weeks alone (provided the million PS3s sell through quickly, which remains to be seen). They also indicated that Blu-ray software sales surpassed HD-DVD sales in December, with a strong surge coinciding with the PS3' s November launch (a 700% increase since mid-November), and that they project Blu-ray software sales to outpace HD-DVD sales by a factor of 2 or even 3 to 1 in the first half of 2007.