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Samsung to Launch Dual Blu-ray HD DVD Player

Posted by Zonk on from the best-of-both-worlds dept.

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."

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cost... by Pluvius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You see, Sony is basically telling their partners to not sell BD players below the price of the PS3, because they still have this twisted hope/dream that it will help them sell PS3s

    More like actual fact.

    "The BDA cites a survey in conducted by talking to 10,000 US PS3 owners. It claims more than 80 per cent plan to buy movies on BD. A slightly smaller percentage, just over 75 per cent, said they plan to use their console as their prime device for watching movies."

    Though that proves the converse of what you said (that the PS3 is helping them sell BluRay movies), it's hard to believe that none of those PS3 owners bought one at least in part because it could play BluRay movies.

    Rob

  2. It's the Porn, Stupid by tokki · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I was hopping Blu-Ray would win. 1080p native (instead of re-interlaced 1080i), more capacity, smaller wavelength. But Sony, being Sony, couldn't help but shoot itself in the foot.

    Hostile to porn? Game over man, game over. The entirety of technology is to create a more efficient distribution network for porn. Printing press, telephones, moving pictures, home video, CD ROM, and the greatest porn distribution system ever created: the Internets (who's impact won't be outdone until direct-to-brain technology is developed).

    HD-DVD will win. I just got my 46 inch 1080p LCD, and now I'm waiting for the HD-DVD price to get down below $250, or maybe $300. Netflix has HD-DVD, so that'll be my primary source.

  3. Re:I can see where this is going. Seen it before. by Doctor+Faustus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sony does have a knack for picking the wrong side, but BluRay seems to be pulling ahead. Yes, one of the BluRay manufacturers is making a dual format player, but I seem to recall that one of the original HD-DVD players is, as well.

    Personally, I'm rooting for BluRay. It's the more ambitious format, and two years from now, if HD-DVD wins, we're going to be wishing for those bigger disks, especially for computer drives. I'm not buying anything yet, though, even with my new HDTV.

    The dual format players are nice, but unless we reach a point we're they're nearly all like that (see: DVD-R and DVD+R), I'd still be afraid to get any movies for it out of fear that I won't be able to play half of them once that unit wears out.

  4. Re:I can see where this is going. Seen it before. by Fezmid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually the only other company to do the dual format player is LG -- a former BD exclusive CE company...

    On the other hand, Samsung has come out and said that if consumers want an HD DVD standalone, that they'll make it. Onkyo and Meridian have also said that they will have HD DVD players and there's a Chinese company that said they'll have a cheap one ($200?) by the end of the year.

    As for storage -- you really think there's that big of a difference between 15G and 25G, when drives are coming out to be 750G to 1TB? I just dno't see that really mattering. Yeah, dual layer puts BD at 50G vs 30G for HD DVD, but who uses dual-layer DVD-R/DVD+R? Nobody that I know of. And aside from the capacity, the two formats don't have that many differences from an end-user point of view. While Sony is still subsidzing the BD disk process (it costs more to manufacture the disks than HD DVD does), I wouldn't be surprised to see studios switch over to HD DVD to make more money.

    Of course Warner Bros has said that they've come up with a dual-format DISK, called TotalHD. They're planning on selling those this summer, and the disk will have both an HD DVD and a BD side to it and they will live on the same physical media (I'm guessing you have to flip, but I don't remember offhand). So that throws yet another wrench into the mix.

    Short answer is that buying into BD now is stupid, since the spec hasn't even been finalized yet -- all current standalone hardware is obsoluete since it doesn't meet the updated specs for BD-J and other things. Future disks will NOT work in current BD players, even with firmware updates (it's been confirmed that there are major hardware differences). The PS3 will probably work, but nobody is quite sure -- it hasn't been confirmed as far as I know.

    Besides, HD DVD lets you easily rip movies with the Microsoft Xbox360 HD DVD add-on. For once, MS did something to our benefit ;)