HD on a DVD. Toshiba joins Apple. Wither blue-ray?

It’s well known that both HD optical disk formats (HD DVD and Blu-ray) burn data onto a disk with a blue laser. Well, in a recent Engadget note, they noted that the new Toshiba Vardia RD-A301 conforms to the “HD Rec extension which allows HD DVD format content to be stored on red-laser DVD-R/RW/RAM disks…“

Engadget says this is about 2 hours on a 4.7g disk. Interesting, since Apple’s DVD Studio Pro also records HD DVD video onto a DVD-R, which can be played back in HD DVD players. This was as of version 4.1.2 (this application hasn’t received any big upgrades in a long while.)

So… what’s the point of going to a new optical standard of the same HD content can be put onto existing DVD disks?