The lower-priced, $499 version of Sony's PlayStation 3 lacks support for HDMI, which has led to questions about whether that version will be able to play true high-definition, Blu-ray movies. HDMI is basically the high-definition connection between an audio or video source and a monitor or television.

In an interview with BBC News, Sony executive Phil Harrison said that the "technical method of extracting audio and video" from the devices is slightly different.

Justin Finnegan, a Sony spokesman, explained it to me this way yesterday: The $599 version of the PS3 will have one cord that handles audio and video and connects the machine to a television. The lower-priced version will have separate cords for audio and video. Both machines will be able to play high-definition video in the Blu-ray format.