Depends which "Samsung HD" player you are talking about. Samsung only ever made one dual format player, the BD-UP5000. Any other model you should not be expecting to be able to play the disc.
HD-DVD is not the same as "blu-ray", only a few dual format players were ever made, the Samsung mentioned and a couple LG models. Only a few combo drives for computers, also.
HD-DVD is also not the same as "HD upconverting", tons of regular DVD players somewhat misleadingly plaster "HD" somewhere in their model name & on the box, but they only play regular DVDs. Only players with the

actual "HD-DVD" logo can actually play the discs, and these were almost all made by Toshiba.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
People who don't hang out a lot on forums like this often get confused about this.
If the guy clearly listed his sale as "HD-DVD", it's more your fault than his, though perhaps he should have made more warnings about compatibility in his post.