Apple sides with Blu-ray Disc in format war

Apple Computer has sided with the Blu-ray Disc Association, as it enters the debate over which specification will become the next-generation DVD format.

Ooh, interesting. Now Dell, HP, and Apple are all backing BD for computing, that’s a powerful combo – Dell & HP are the two largest PC vendors in the world, Apple, of course, has the Mac market – and is a strong player in content creation. And, of course, you have Sony also using BD in their PCs, releasing BD content – and the killer, BD in the PS3. I was concerned that the Xbox2 might go HD-DVD and that could’ve muddied the waters a bit, but the recent news is that the Xbox2 will be using a standard 12x DVD drive and games will be on a DVD-9. They will be using the VC-1 codec for HD content for cut scenes, but won’t be able to playback HD movies. (Except, I’d bet, the special discs like T2 which are WMV9 on a DVD and currently only play on a PC. VC-1 is basically WMV9.)