Sony and Pioneer was expected to launch the first Blu-ray players at the end of June to counter Toshiba and its HD DVD player, which has been around for a while now. Now it seems though that both Sony and Pioneee has bumped into trouble as they’ve now announced that Sony BDP-S1 and Pioneer BDP-H1 will not be launched at the end of June. Sony’s player will instead appear on the 15th of August while Pioneer is expected to postpone its launch until September. Sony hasn’t revealed any details for why the launch has been delayed but Pioneer claims there are problems with the player’s compatibility.
This is without a doubt the last thing the Blu-ray format needs and even if Samsung is still expected to launch its first Blu-ray player on the 25th, together with the first Blu-ray movies, the launch seems to be far from smooth. Whether this is something the HD DVD camp will, or can, take advantage of remains to be seen.
