Samsung to Launch Dual Blu-ray HD DVD Player

narramissic writes "File this one under 'if you can't beat em, join em.' Samsung, one of the main backers of the Blu-ray Disc format, Friday said it plans to release an optical disc player this year that will play both Blu-ray Disc and the rival HD DVD format. With the announcement, Samsung becomes the second company to shift from a single-format stance (LG launched a dual player in North America earlier this year.) 'Our main concern is with the consumer and not a particular technology,' said Samsung spokesman Kwak Bumjoon."

Comments

Re:Does it even matter any more?

[Pluvius]

The fact is that if you actually look at the total sales of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies you will find that Blu-Ray is not leading by that much.

The problem with using absolute numbers is that they ignore the fact that HD-DVD movies have been out in stores for two months longer than BluRay movies, the fact that BR players are much more expensive than HD-DVD players, and the fact that the PS3 (the major component to BluRay's recent success) had been out for only four months before the cut-off date of that report. Taking those facts into account, BluRay's lead on HD-DVD becomes more impressive.

Certainly Samsung is releasing a dual-format player to take advantage of the fact that the general public has no clue which format is going to win out; few people even have next-gen movie players. I just don't think it will be necessary for too much longer.

Rob

Re:It's the Porn, Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

1080p v. 1080 is not a Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD issue. All HD-DVD media is encoded at 1080p. The first PLAYERS only OUTPUT 1080i. Hardware limitation - the info is there, and the newer players are 1080p.

Re:the pro-and con of overloading drives

[Danga]

For what it is worth I work as a software developer in the field of computer forensics/data recovery specializing in optical media so I thought I could clear some of your misconceptions up.

But what does happen is that it takes longer and longer for the gorram computer to mount the cd/dvd. This is especially noticable when one inserts a damaged CD into a drive. the computer grunts and groans freaking for ever trying to decide it it is looking at a CD, and CD-R, D DVD-r, and DVD+R, a DVD. And each of these seems to have some different time consuming error protocol that involves trying to spin the thing at different speeds. Now they are going to be adding not one but two more protocols. And I imagine it won't be long before we have HDDVD-R and HDDVD+R and so on thrown on top of this.

This is NOT an issue with the drive (well a drive that is in good working order). A mounting problem is an issue with your OS. When you insert a disc into the drive the drive should go into what is called the "ready state" relatively quickly because all the drive does is basically tries to see if it can access the disc (it looks for a TOC among other things). When you insert a damaged disc the reason the computer grunts and groans is because the disc is damaged and it may be having trouble getting TOC information etc from the disc. The reason it is spinning up and down a whole bunch of different times is most likely because your OS is attempting to mount the disc and is trying to look for a file system on the disc and is having a lot of trouble doing so.

If you have an external case for a CD/DVD drive then a simple way to see that the problems you are seeing are the OS's fault is the next time you have a disc that exhibits the problems you mentioned above is to shut down the machine and then re-insert the disc into the drive. Most likely the light will blink a few times and the drive might spin up a little more than normal but the drive should stop trying to access the disc in much less time that when the computer was running.

As far as more formats coming out "adding more protocols" that is not really the case. Other than having to add different hardware the rest of how the drive acts should remain the same. The only way a drive is able to tell what kind of disc is inserted is by looking at what is called a profile number which is recorded at the factory on the disc and each type of disc has a different one. For example 0x9 is CD-R, 0xa is CD-RW, 0x11 is DVD-R, 0x1b is DVD+R, 0x2b is DVD+R DL, 0x51 is HD DVD-R and on and on. It really is not that much more overhead and sure a few more things might be added to the MMC standard but the drives functionality is nearly identical.

it's going to take minutes when you shove in that Bad CD before your computer lets you eject it.

You hit the nail on the head with this one without even knowing it. It is your COMPUTER ie the OS or some other software trying to access the disc that is locked up and has probably issued a command to lock the tray so that you cannot eject the disc by pressing the eject button on the drive.

Please stop blaming drives when it really is not the drives fault.