Sony announced on Monday that it is delaying the release of its high definition BluRay disc player until August 15th. The Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc Player was scheduled to be released later this month, followed by a major push to catch up with the competing high definition format, HD-DVD, which has already been released. Fellow BluRay hardware makers Pioneer, Philips, and Samsung have contrasting plans for their players. Last week, Pioneer delayed their BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player until "Autumn" and today, Philips has announced their BDP9000 Blu-ray player as being due in the third quarter (but most estimates are settling on August). Only Samsung is sticking to their June 25th release date, but no one is holding their breath. Format wars are bad for the consumers, and the only possible winners are the companies on the winning side. While the losing companies take a hit to their egos and to their balance sheets for a quarter, it's the consumers who took the plunge and bet on the wrong format who really get hurt. BluRay certainly seems like a great product, but it's definitely having problems getting started. We'll be sitting on the proverbial fence waiting for this to shake out before we open our wallets, to be sure.