Apple may be preparing to support not only Blu-ray Disc but also HD DVD, it has emerged. The next major relase of the Mac OS X operating system, 'Leopard' may allow users to play and burn both types of high-definition media - making it a sort of Hi-Def Leppard, we suppose... oh well... - it has be claimed.

According to Think Secret sources, Final Cut Studio, Apple's pro-oriented digital movie editing tool may also be updated with BD and HD DVD support. The moles point to a possible hardware release sometime during the first half of 2007.

That at least is eminently easy to do given the new Mac Pro enclosure's twin optical drive bays, and Apple has form here: when it launched its SuperDrive DVD burner it was quick to stress the drives support for the DVD-R/RW format, but it wasn't that long before the drive and Mac OS X's disc-burning code could handle DVD+R/RW too.

Apple threw its weight behind Blu-ray Disc format in March 2005, but with neither BD nor HD DVD yet making any clear headway over the other - and unlikely to for the time being - there's a strong argument for supporting both or neither until a winner emerges. Or someone ships a cheap player capable of reading and writing both formats. ®