Will Pioneer release the Holy Grail of next generation optical formats? According to our friends at both HDBeat and Engadget, Pioneer has stated at a conference in Berlin that they are working on the BDR-103 combo drive. Very few details are available, but even if this thing were to retail at $1000 and assuming you can play prerecorded movies with it, the drive will be a bargain for HTPC users everwhere. Slap this baby in an HTPC with one of those new HDMI video cards and you just might have the most incredible HD rig of all time. You would conceivably be able to back up all of your HDTV recordings without reencoding them, not to mention store all of your photos or other media files on a lot less discs. Hopefully more info will be out there soon!

Engadget Link

HDBeat Link

UPDATE: It seems as if this oh-so-tantalizing rumor was just that. HDBeat has updated their blog to say that Pioneer is NOT working on a hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Drive. Oh the humanity of it all.