Toshiba and Sony this week as near as makes no odds confirmed there is no chance their rival blue-laser optical disc formats will be combined into a single offering.

*sigh* I think the guy from Toshiba is right – and he should be gloomy because in a head to head battle, it doesn’t bode well for his company.

But the multi-format drive comparison to DVD-R/DVD+R isn’t really apples to apples. With the DVD formats the two formats were nearly identical, for most drives it was really a firmware change to handle the ‘other’ format. No big deal. But everything I’ve read on HD-DVD vs BD says the blue laser lens is different, so the system would need two read heads – or some new lens design capable of focusing for both formats.

Storage company Iomega is looking to increase the capacity of DVDs up to 100 times, meaning it could, conceivably, create 800GB discs.

Well, have another wild card in the mix. Sounds like this is an evolution of red laser using new media. Although I take exception to this:The move would allow companies to significantly increase DVD capacity without having to transition to next-generation formats. Just what the blue blazes would you call this if not a next-generation format? Dipshits. If you’re going to move to media using multilevel nano-structures to store data, red laser or not, that sounds like a whole new system to me.