One more company joins Blu-Ray ... Apple...

"The New York Times is reporting that Apple has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will use Blu-ray in upcoming versions of iMovie and Final Cut. The move puts Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney in supporting Blu-ray. Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop, but the division in Hollywood and notebook manufacturers between the two HD videodiscs will ensure the bona fide format war we were all secretly pining for."

Blu-ray Disc is a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by a group of leading consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). One single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold about 25GB or almost two hours of HDTV audio and video, and the dual-layer disc can hold approximately 50GB.

The companies behind the Blu-Ray Disc Association are Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM Studios and in 2004, 20th Century Fox announced that it was joining the BDA.

The primary rival to Blu-ray is HD-DVD, championed by Toshiba and NEC Corporation. This has a lower data density, but could (in principle) benefit from lower manufacturing costs for both the drive units as well as the pre-recorded/recordable media.