Samsung
Electronics announced that they have already started shipping its BD-P1000
Blu-ray standalone player to US retailers in preparation for the June 25th
launch. The launch date had been pushed back to this date due to
incomplete testing. Sony has already announced that they will release seven
Blu-ray titles to coincide with the Samsung player launch, although their
movies are planned to launch on the original date of June 20th to also coincide its Vaio PC.
The BP-P1000 Blu-ray player is capable of handling
HD resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080 and features a native 1080p HDMI output,
unlike the current HD DVD players which only support 1080i maximum. The
player also features component and legacy S-video and composite video outputs
and a 10-in-1 flash memory card reader capable of supporting the major flash
memory card formats. Audio support includes Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital
Plus, DTS, MP3 and 192 kHz LPCM. Finally, the player also supports CD
& DVD playback with DVD upscaling to HD. Unfortunately, the retail
price of the player will be a hefty US$999.99, which is double that of Toshiba's
HD DVD player. Thanks to D4rk0n3 for letting us know about
this news:
The player, dubbed BD-P1000, has been delayed by Samsung, which cited incomplete testing. It is expected to attract consumers who want to view high-definition disks on their existing HDTVs. Samsung backs the Blu-ray Disc spec, along with Sony, Matsushita, Philips and Dell on the hardware side. Seven of the eight major movie studios, including Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and LionsGate Pictures support Blu-ray. An influx of Blu-ray content is hitting the market with the launch of the player, according to Samsung. |
It looks like June 25th will be the day that the format wars really start,
but then again I cannot see the average consumer forking out $999.99 for a high
definition Blu-ray player, never mind $499 on a HD DVD player!
Chances are that only those with deep pockets and are into the latest gadgets
will be prepared to fork out on one of these. On the other hand, it will
be interesting to see if this Blu-ray player is any quicker at powering up and
how well it responds compared with the HD DVD player.
Feel free to discuss about Blu-ray and HD DVD players on our
forum.
Source: EETimes
