Apple always had the ability to make smart business decisions. That's why it's still around a quarter of a century after it's founding. Going Blu-Ray is another smart move.

Remember Beta vs. VHS? What decided that battle was the extra capacity of VHS, not the superior quality of Beta. In this case, Blu-ray wins on both capacity and quality. With content providers split, it will be the consumers calling the shots.

Backward compatibility with regular DVDs can be bolted on to any recorder. And you'll probably see second generation blue laser recorders handle both formats anyway. It's really more a matter of firmware than hardware, after all.

In the meanwhile, look to Blu-ray to capture the market while HD-DVD is a poor second.

It's good to see more support for Blu-Ray. We need the capacity for full length movies at 1080p with extras. 1080p will be needed to differentiate broadcast vs disc based movies. Fewer people will buy any discs if they can just record and burn their own unless there is value, like higher quality. I also agree that these boxes will probably support current DVD playback.

Blue Ray will win the format war for one simple reason, games. All the games producers are in the Blue Ray camp. When the Sony PS3 and Microsoft X4?(bigger than 3)box come out Blue Ray players will be in 10 million houses within a month.

1080p chips are coming out from TI and JVC among others for front and rear projectors. It would be nice to have a disc that would make those projectors look their best and you can bet Sony will have one out.

Computer manufacturers just look for capacity, Blue Ray wins there.

The disc manufacturers and some content owners prefer HD DVD but it just doesn't offer as much convergence as Blue Ray.

Apple Computer is the best company on the planet!

MS sides with Toshiba on HD dvd...

it's them against, pretty much every tech company under the sun, including, Dell and ... Phillips and SOny and Apple.. etc etc etc

Hmmmm..

Is this the first sign of MS moving in on the OEM's turf? Partnering with Hitachi on computers??

READER COMMENTS: We want to hear what you have to say about this article!     Acceptable Use Policy Your Comments (required): Your email is only used if our editors need to contact you. It is not used or stored for any other purpose, nor posted with your comments. Enter the text from the image below Please refresh the page if you have trouble reading this text.