For the half dozen people willing to buy before one format wins out, you will have to wait a while longer.

Blue Laser Shortage May Affect Blu-ray/HD DVD Battle

Optical drive manufacturers have indicated that yield rates for blue laser diodes have been much behind demand. This shortage has forced Sony to suspend its blue laser shipments so that they can be used in the supposed 4 million PS3s being produced this year.

It seems as if the impending next-gen DVD format war may not start in earnest until 2007, according to a report from technology site DigiTimes.com. Apparently the manufacturers of blue laser diodes, which are needed for both the Blu-ray and HD DVD optical drives, have not had much success in improving their yield rates.

Many manufacturers, including Philips, Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Ben-Q and others, have already announced plans for either HD DVD or Blu-ray drives, but only Pioneer and Plextor said that they would be able to maintain actual shipments, according to the report.

This puts Sony in particular in quite a bind. Sony has obviously invested quite a bit in the Blu-ray format and the company would very much like consumers to pick up a Blu-ray player and not an HD DVD player or the HD DVD peripheral for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. In order to make sure that the Blu-ray enabled PlayStation 3 does not run into any further problems, Sony has actually suspended shipments of blue laser diodes to other customers so that the components can be used for PS3 manufacturing first.

So high-definition movie enthusiasts looking for the BDP-S1 Blu-ray player may not be able to find one. The easiest way to get the Blu-ray experience this year will likely be to be buy a PS3 (if you think spending $600 is easy, that is).

The supply of blue laser diodes is expected to ease by the first quarter of next year, and Sony still maintains that it will ship 6 million PS3 units by the end of that quarter.