Selling 100,000 on its first day and 190,000 for the week, the HD DVD Transformers disc has set sales records for most discs sold for any HD format on opening day and is the best selling HD DVD disc ever.

These numbers are not surprising, considering that Transformers was so successful in its theatrical run, having made $700 million internationally. The HD disc sales numbers demonstrate that there are at least 190,000 HD DVD owners, which extrapolates to more hundreds of thousands of them who didn’t buy the disc in its first week. It also shows that the HD DVD customers are indeed out there, and they’re not necessarily the same crowd that propelled 300 to its sales records.

Cruising around on the forums last week, I read many posts written by people either getting off the high-def fence, or choosing to go dual-format just for this movie.

Some may grumble about format-exclusivity preventing this disc from doubling or tripling its sales had it been available on Blu-ray as well, or that director Michael Bay is a Blu-ray fan himself. Those grumblers should take solace in their own format-exclusive movie titles and get over it.

• Transformers Mania – previous post on Transformers movie fun

UPDATE: Subsequent to filing this article, competitors came out to voice their doubts whether Transformers really sold in the quantities that Paramount/DreamWorks is claiming. We may not know for a few more weeks what the real numbers are, but there’s lots of evidence and proof that the disc did exceedingly well. Why? Because even a couple of weeks after its release, Transformers continues to trounce sales of other prominent movies. According to Video Business, it’s handily outselling Spiderman, even two weeks after its October 16 release.