Fans Pottier For Rings

DVD lords it over wizard rival Harry

The Lord Of The Rings has conjured up the biggest one-day sale for a DVD in the UK - by a whisker.

Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring - already a box office smash - sold 1.27 million copies in its first day on the shelves on Tuesday.

Fierce cinema rival Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone shifted 1.25 million copies the day it was released, and 1.6 million by the end of the first week.

Within hours of the first segment of the trilogy going on sale, fans had bought almost a million videos and DVDs.

Tens of thousands of people had pre-ordered copies of the film and supermarket chain Safeway reported sales of 100 copies per minute.

A spokesman for the video's distributor said it was "a particularly remarkable achievement" in view of the Tuesday, over the more usual weekend, release date.

The film is the first of a trilogy based on JRR Tolkien's books.

The DVD has a trailer of the second, The Twin Towers, which arrives on the big screen later this year - at about the same time as the special edition DVD, which offers an extra 30 minutes of footage.