Holding your breath for the winner in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD War? Hold it a little longer. The next-gen DVD format war has been reset to sometime 2007 due to the shortage of blue laser diodes needed by the optical drives for both systems.

According to DigiTimes sources, manufacturers of the blue laser diodes admitted they are way behind. This prompted Sony to suspend shipping its own blue laser diodes to other customers. Instead, it is diverting them to its PS3 production line. Sony pledged to ship 4 million (or 2 million, depending on who's doing the PR circuit) PS3 units by the end of this year.

Philips, Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Ben-Q and other CE players already announced their HD DVD or Blu-ray drives, but according to DigiTimes only Pioneer, Plextor and possibly Toshiba are likely to meet their roll out dates.

Despite consumer demands, the race for the next-gen DVD format is still doing warm-up rounds for now and until blue laser diodes supply pick up around first quarter 2007.