The breakthrough was originally reported on July 10th by Ricoh. http://technabob.com/blog/2006/07/10/device-to-allow-both-blu-ray-and-hd-dvd-on-same-hardware/

There was another news article a few weeks later with more technical details but I can't find it.

Perhaps things have been purposely quiet so more people buy $1,000 players to fund additional research and development... I first read about BluRay about 6 years ago.. why didn't we hear about this dual chip sooner?

Some people have compared this to the Beta/VHS war. IMHO, this is closer to the PAL/NTSC "conflict". Which has proven that both formats can coexist and people don't mind buying equipment that can support both, "just in case". Other than fueling an infinite number of turf-vs-natural-grass-type arguments, there are no losers and the only people who would need to "re-tool" would be the consumers which, let's face it, how many of those first-generation players will still be around 2 years from now? Early adopters are always willing to re-tool.

I bet that after Christmas we will see the hype curve on this technology really take off, and some players appearing on the market around the time most stores' return guarantees would typically expire.