Blu-ray Beware: Iceberg Dead Ahead

A little over a week ago, EDN published my cover story on blue-vs-red laser optical storage past history, current status and future forecasts, and I devoted a blog post that same day to late-breaking news on the topic. Since then, more prominent cracks have developed on the Blu-ray façade.

• According to an internal memo intended for the company's US sales team, LG Electronics has dropped the Blu-ray-only player it showcased at CES just two months ago, and is investigating the possibility of a dual-format Blu-ray-plus-HD DVD replacement. More recently at Cebit, a company spokesperson put a slightly different slant on LG's status; while production of the Blu-ray player was still planned, LG was adding HD DVD players to its stable.
• Elsewhere at Cebit, Fujitsu Siemens refused to pick sides in the format stalemate.
• A recent interview Variety did with Howard Stringer strongly implied that consumers won't be able to purchase Blu-ray-supportive PlayStation 3s until at least the Christmas 2006 shopping season (geography- and supply-dependent), although in fairness I'll note that Stringer wasn't directly quoted in this particular portion of the piece. Sony's official stance is still that the console will launch sometime this spring, but content developer Namco Bandai's president thinks a spring release is impossible. And Taiwanese system manufacturer Compeq is reportedly slated to begin building PS3 PCBs in late June or early July.
• Toshiba's launched its first HD DVD-supportive laptop, with production to begin next month. Meanwhile, Sony's first Blu-ray laptops won't ship until mid-year….errr…..'around September'….even though single-layer (30 GByte) recordable media will be available this month, with dual-layer discs due out 'later this year'. The media's going to be expensive (not to mention the drives you'll write it on), but a freeware burning suite has emerged.
• Finally, the Blu-ray standards body has admitted its members will ship hardware based on an interim iteration of the format's copy-protection scheme. There's no word yet on how upgrades of gear already in consumers' hands will be handled.

If the reports suggesting PS3 delays are true (and I admit I have a really hard time believing they're not), I gotta say….if I were a Sony investor, silicon supplier, or hardware or content partner, I'd be pretty PO'd right now. Sony's Game Developer Conference keynote in a week and a half will be very interesting; I'm looking forward to it. Meanwhile, this four-part article series published by Digital Media Net's various community sites gives Toshiba's slant on the whole blue laser mess.

As Slashdot pointed out just two days ago, the next DVD format war is still wide open.