LG says no combo blue laser drive for now

September 21, 2006

We have
been reading rumors of hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray drives for at least a couple weeks
now. Unfortunately, we have yet to read a confirmation from a manufacturer.
Today at C|net, LG lets it be known, that they have no intentions of producing
such a drive either, at least for now.

"We have had discussions about having such a device,
but there are no official plans at the moment," said John Taylor, a
spokesman for LG in the U.S. "The product in question was never really
fleshed out in a lot of detail publicly."

LG already released Blu-ray products this year.

Technically, building a home player that could read discs from either
high-definition format is feasible, according to many. The problem is
cost, according to, among others, Sony Electronics COO Stan Glasgow. Both
HD DVD and Blu-ray players are just going into mass production this year
and thus remain expensive. Standalone HD players sell for around $500,
while Blu-ray players sell for about $1,000. (The price of Blu-ray players, however, will drop to around
$500 by next year, Glasgow said.)

Say what you want, and those are good reasons to not
build a hybrid drive, but the reason we wont see one for a while, is probably
more likely due to royalties. The primary reason we have two formats seems
to be a stubbornness of one camp or the other ,to simply drop their strategy, do
everyone a favor and back a single format. No matter what, in the end, there
will be a hybrid drive, if only for the resistance to give up on a particular
format. Each day that passes, makes it less financially feasible for
one camp or the other to drop out of the race. If no one would buy these
proprietary, first and second generation drives, it would hasten the debut of a
hybrid I am sure as well.

Source: C|net