Toshiba America Consumer Products President Akiyo Ozaka told a briefing at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that HD DVD “has not lost.”

Mr Ozaka declined to comment on Toshiba’s next steps, which he added Toshiba’s HD DVD partners would have to discuss, after Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros said it would back Blu-ray, an optical disk format for storing high-definition video. Toshiba’s remarks were the latest salvo in a long-running battle over which format will dominate the next generation of technology for delivering high-definition movies to consumers. The winner is expected to inherit a multibillion-dollar industry, although consumers so far have been confused by the standards war. The rivalry has been compared to the video-cassette-recorder format war of the late 1970s and early 1980s which ultimately Sony’s Betamax lost and JVC’s VHS won.

Mr Ozaka said North American sales of HD DVD players, including movie drives in Microsoft’s Xbox 360, totalled 1 million in the last year helped by downloads of high-definition video onto personal computers equipped with the technology.

Toshiba Marketing Executive Jodi Sally told the audience HD DVD remained the best technology, but acknowledged the Warner Bros announcement on Friday took her by surprise.

“It’s difficult for me to believe when all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead,” Ms Sally said. “Clearly, the events of the last few days have led many of you to that conclusion. We have been declared dead before. The reality is we ended 2007 with a majority of the year-to-date market share.”