For the last couple of months, Toshiba has mainly been making headlines on their memory and netbook models, and their blatant hesitation to make Blu-ray products.

The latest buzz about Toshiba and Blu-ray went into high gear a couple of weeks ago, when a local Japanese paper mentioned that Toshiba would start making Blu-ray machines.

No specific details were mentioned, like time frame or models, so it was easy to dismiss this news and file it away along with the endless Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors.

The news became slightly more interesting today, August 10, as Toshiba put out the following press release at their corporate website:

Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) announced today that the company has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

As a market leader in digital technologies, Toshiba provides a wide range of advanced digital products, such as DVD recorders and players, HDTVs and notebook PCs that support a wide range of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDD), DVD, and SD Cards. In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA.

Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.

I’m sure we’ll see some demos at CES, unless they’re already preparing to show something at the September IFA show in Europe.

If you’ve been holding out on getting a Blu-ray player, how do you take this news? Would you wait for a Toshiba player? Or did you already get some Blu-ray capability months ago?