Toshiba is reviewing the launch schedule for HD-DVD, a next-generation optical disc format for high-definition video, and could delay its U.S. launch until sometime next year, it says.

This article highlights some of the good reasons they have for a delay:

The first news of a possible delay came three weeks ago, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount Pictures had scrubbed plans to launch content on HD-DVD this year. The Viacom unit is now looking at 2006, the newspaper says. It also reported that General Electric’s NBC Universal had decided to cut the number of discs being launched this year from 16 titles to about a dozen.

A dozen titles does not a successful launch make, not by a long shot. And I don’t believe the first generation of HD-DVD units will be recorders, unlike BD which was designed from the start as a recordable format so it is likely many BD decks will record. (Makes me wonder if the PS3 could burn BD-R/RE.)

Toshiba may not launch HD DVD products until 2006, breaking its previously stated deadline for the introduction of the technology.

I tend to think this article’s time frame for BD in the US (3Q06) is WAY off – I don’t see Sony giving Microsoft’s XBox 360 a year of uncontested sales, I think the PS3 will hit in the 1H06, maybe 1Q06.

The Blu-ray Disc Association said Tuesday that it has settled upon the AACS rights-management system to secure its discs, together with an additional identification and update scheme.