So one of the most hotly contested items in the Apple community, the Blu-ray drive for iMacs, is apparently still some time off, according to sources.

Despite the addition of Blu-ray burning capability to the iMac’s Final Cut Studio software, which definitely sounded like tacit approval, the addition of Blu-ray itself is apparently not going to happen.  At least, not any time soon–check this out:

…but company chief Steve Jobs has famously described the 50GB disc format as a “bag of hurt” due to the copyright protection and licensing problems associated with the technology. The drives also remain more expensive than DVD drives even for combo drives, or those that can only read Blu-ray but can still write DVDs.

This means, of course, adding Blu-ray would only make the already pricey iMac a whole lot more so, and that’s the last thing Apple needs in a downed economy worldwide with PC makers already scoring serious points off Apple for overpriced hardware.  Add all of these together and you get one inexorable conclusion–it’ll be a while before Blu-ray becomes feasible to add to the iMac.