The recent death of Toshiba's HD-DVD format propelled the rival Blu-Ray high-definition standard as the new industry's king. However, it seems that the Blu-Ray itself will be soon facing the same situation as its former rival.

According to THX, one of George Lucas' spin-off companies, the Blu-Ray format could be blooming later than necessary. "I think it's too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only be interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory. Do we really need another spinning format?" claimed Laurie Fincham, one of THX's chief scientists.

Fincham's statement seems to follow the same line with other industry analysts, who also claim that using a high-definition standard on a spinning disk tends to be a little outdated. For instance, the current data bandwidth rates pushed by more and more Internet service providers worldwide allow users to stream high-definition content directly from the web.

Also, using NAND flash-based media as support for high-definition content would add extra flexibility to the format, without the current reading and recording limitations of the Blu-Ray blue laser diodes.

"In the future, I want to be able to carry four to five movies around with me in a wallet, or walk into a store and have someone copy me a movie to a USB device. Stores will like that idea, because it's all about having zero inventory. I don't want to take up shelf space with dozens of HD movies," concluded THX's Fincham.

The huge amounts of money spent by companies on researching on the opto-electronics storage market could be directed to researching on new flash media, that will be not only more compact, but also cheaper than the average selling price for a virgin Blu-ray disc.

The Blu-Ray format has surely won a battle on the high-definition market with the premature death of the HD-DVD standard, but it seems that it's far from becoming the favorite support for HD media. At least, you can wave goodbye at the next episode of Star Wars delivered on Blu-Ray discs.