A Hamilton store is claiming to be the first in Bermuda to be offering rental movies on the Blu-ray Disc format.

Wilmont Simmons, co-owner of Double W Home Entertainment on Parliament Street, said the store stocked about 100 titles so far in the high-definition format.

Blu-ray single-layer discs can store 25 gigabytes of digital information - about five times as much as a conventional DVD.

Blu-ray, which was developed by a group of electronic, media and IT companies, emerged victorious in the war of the new-generation HD formats against Toshiba's HD-DVD.

Mr. Simmons said it was necessary to have a Blu-ray player to watch the movies.

"Every week, when new movies come in, we are getting more titles on Blu-ray," Mr. Simmons said. "You can do much more interactively with these than with DVDs."