Japan’s Ricoh Co. said Thursday it will be ready to supply an optical component that reads both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs next year – a move that could diffuse the battle between rivals Toshiba and Sony over next-generation DVD formats.

Toshiba said on Thursday it is delaying the launch of the world’s first high-definition optical disc recorder based on the HD DVD format until the end of the month as it hasn’t built up enough prelaunch inventory.

Gamers are not waiting to see who becomes the Betamax of the blue-laser technology standoff.

I question this article:Game consoles, some using Blu-ray and some using HD DVD technology, made up almost half of the $2 billion in revenue expected for the blue-laser technology market in 2006, according to a report from the Santa Clara Consulting Group. 1. ‘Made up’ is past tense – currently there are no game consoles using Blu-ray or HD-DVD. 2. There are no game consoles planned to use HD-DVD. There is a planned add-on for the XBox 360, but only for video playback and it isn’t part of the console. Blu-ray will be in the PS3 of course.