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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."
How long before the device manufacturer's figure this pattern out
1) Create two competing technonologies that are equally sufficient but incompatible.
2) Stifle standardization
3) market more expensive devices that handle both, as both a marketing advantage, a manufacturing skill advantage,
4) and to inflate costs, assuming profit margin is proportional to gross, and the number of units sold is the same.
5) profit!
there is no ?????
A very interesting side effect is that MS can no longer dictate platform specs. This is remarkably new phenomena and worth watching.
Finally Could the slash dot filter PLEASE stop people from writing M$ instead of MS. (;_;)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The quote is actually missing some words, let me fill it in for you:
"Our main concern is with guaranteeing that the consumer's money ends up in our pockets, and in ensuring that our revenue stream does not depend on a particular technology"
There, that makes more sense.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sorry about the "M$" trouble, I didn't realize it offended anyone.. though I'm not anti-microsoft. I think Microsoft is beginning to learn that being a little to assertive with certain technologies, and pushing them on others.. is becoming pretty hard to do, now that the market is becoming more and more competitive. They're to the point where they're beginning to actually let things unravel and ride the wave in. Good or bad, I don't know.. but it's still interesting as you said.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Anyone else find the spokesman's name hilarious?
Kwak Bumjoon!
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Are we still talking about the HD/Blu-ray thing or are we on to the PC/Mac thing again?
warning: The above content may test positive for sarcasm and/or could be a failed attempt at humor and as such should be taken with a pound of salt.
I believe you answered your own questions earlier in your post when you said:
I didn't have a DVD player until they were around the $100 mark.
By saying that you obviously acknowledged that over time the technology price dropped and it became more common-place, there was more competition, etc.Wow! A humble apology on slashdot--land of thick skins.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think I was centered more around the PS3/360 thing.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Then how can we paste classic BASIC code?
Use of the "M$" moniker on Slashdot often appears to refer to Microsoft's legacy as a developer of BASIC interpreters.
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
It's going to be a longer, slower march. The number of people with no video disc players when DVD came out was pretty big; the number of people with displays that make HD worth it is considerably smaller and the people with the displays are the ones who don't care so much about the cost.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
Huh... I never knew there was anyone offended by this, either. I suppose I can stop writing it, as well. Of course, part of me still wants to write something like that... *contemplates ranting about people paying $600 to be beta testers....*
:) But I'm still not convinced there's a point to either format. DVD is fine. It's the same problem with XP Vs Vista, or as it was with N64 Vs Gamecube, etc. There's not much incentive to switch, since it's not a big enough improvement to justify the cost.. Better resolution? Sure. Enough for most to care? Not really. More space? Yup. Do most DVDs actually use the entire 4.7 Gb? No. Better copy-protection? Sure. Does ANY consumer care? No.
Anyway, I can see the benefit to the hybrid player. Why sell two products when you can just have one? Less costs = more profits
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.
That always reminds me of that 640k quote.M
It's as good as anyone really needs until prices comes down, then everyone will use HD, and pretty soon, everyone will find ridiculous watching anything in SD.
I would mod this up, but there is no category for "Gracious"
My brain is overly lubricated
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.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
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
I agree that the dollar-sign substitution thing has grown old, but somehow "MICROS~1" still makes me smile :)
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