There have been a series of articles pop up today hinting at talks taking place between Sony and Toshiba to consolidate Blu-Ray and HD-DVD into a single high-definition video disc standard (I'll call it HDVD just for the moment). The Digital Bits posted links to five different articles ( Japan Today , MSNBC , WebProNews , NewsFactor , and of course Reuters ) all reporting on it. It's also popped up on Slashdot . The Japan Today article suggests that an agreement to merge the two formats into a single format (similar to what happened back in the 90's to yield the DVD format that we all know so well now) could come as soon as next week.

If this turns out to be true, it's great news for the consumer - nobody wants a format war, and a single format that draws on the strengths of both technologies would be an awesome way to achieve HD on a disc. But it is happening pretty much at the eleventh hour (with Toshiba trying to roll out HD-DVD before the end of the year and Sony following with Blu-Ray early next year), so I'm going to have to remain more dubious than optimistic until a formal announcement of a real agreement arrives.