Story here. The emphasis added below is MINE.

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Howard Stringer, Sony Corporation of America's CEO, told the AP news agency that he believes the two formats are now at a stalemate. "It's been a difficult fight. We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides." However, Stringer said that he believed it was mainly a matter of prestige, and that it would ultimately not matter which format won out in the end.

He also said that he wished he could travel back in time to before he was made CEO of the company, when he believes there was a chance to unite the camps into one format.

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Music to my ears. Like Stringer, I wish that the two camps could've agreed on a single format (there were several attempts), but oh well. On that note, hybrid BR/HD-DVD drives can take care of that issue pretty easily :)

Stalemate? That's potentially fertile ground for competition as companies in both groups attempt to break it - good for Joe and Jane Consumer.

Now if we could only get the market to *care* about HD enough to buy it...