Maybe a Samsung Universal player? (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

It's back...
Samsung Planning Dual HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player?
Thu May 18, 2006 at 01:44 PM ET
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/...-Ray_Player/76

Uni's RULE!!!

 

[PeterTHX]

No, they don't.

My Samsung rep hasn't heard any such thing, and is pushing the new BD-P1000.

Universal players will do for HD video disc what DVD-Audio/SACD uni players did for the success of hi-rez music.

 

[Rob_HD]

Samsung people keep bringing this up again - I think it's pretty clear that it will indeed happen...

I'm sure that we'll hear an announcement before the end of March.

 

[Travis Hedger]

Something tells me that you are extremely wrong about this.

And of course he is pushing BD right now. It is about to be released. We are at best 5 to 6 months away before a uni player is available from anyone.

But with Sammy back in the game, and LG, that is 2 confirmed uni players. Are you going to go to a store that sells these when they are released and protest them or something? Stamp your feet on the ground and demand that they remove them from their shelves?

There are many people who are going to "wait" until one format wins. However, when people realize a single box, plays both HD formats, the units will sell.

 

[Kevin. W]

This format war is going to go on for years and it makes sense for these companies to jump on both bandwagons to make the all mighty $$$$

 

[Alf S]

Without a universal player that's made at a reasonable price for the average consumer, both formats will fall into the black hole of death that LD fell into...but it will be a quicker death since the average consumer can live with SD DVD for a long long time to come...whereas before LD survived so long because there was no competition for it...just VHS and beta movies...

If it all ends up going universal player...more power to the companies that will do it...they will make many folks happy and make themselves a nice chunk of change.

 

[Lew Crippen]

It was not my experience that LD fell into a black hole of death—other than the one caused by the appearance of a newer, better technology (the DVD). True enough LD was always a niche player, but for those who wanted something better than tape, it was a very fine alternative.

It was my impression that LD was a more popular format in Asia than in the States—but since I did not live in both places at the same time, I’m not really sure. I can state that LD was a very popular format in Singapore—it was possible to rent and buy the disks at almost any video/music store.

And LD/CD players were a part of many (even) cheap audio packages.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

It would have had even less success without them.

 

[JediFonger]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,126193,00.asp
^see for yourself and of course: vent.

 

[Edwin-S]

They should make sure their Blu-ray products perform optimally before talking about putting out universal players. The reviews do not seem too positive in regards to their initial Blu-ray product, so I think their talk of a universal player is a little premature. They need to do one thing right, not two things half-assed.

 

[Rob_HD]

The BD problems being reported now are primarily with the software releases, not the Samsung player.

The movies so far seem to contain shedloads of artifacting as a result of Mpeg on too small a disc. Also, over-filtering of the video to reduce the encoded video bandwidth seems to be indicated.

Also, these BD releases seem to NOT be doing a full 25 Gig single-layer disc, as was previously reported on AVS, to increase production yields by avoiding the outside tracks of the disc.

As a result, the discs seems to be only 21 Gigs:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=236865

I would welcome hybrid players!

 

[Edwin-S]

Weren't some guys posting about problems with lock-ups? Also one fellow set up his player and got a "the firmware has been illegally modified or is damaged. Please ask to service centre". This example seems to demonstrate that the Samsung player is suffering from some initial hardware problems, hence my statement about getting it right. Furthermore, there seems to be reports that the Samsung converts 1080p to 1080i and then reconverts it to 1080p. If that is true, is it not possible that the conversion process may be contributing to some of the problems with these discs? I have also read Steve Simon's Blu-ray thread and his reviews do not seem to indicate "shedloads of artifacting due to MPEG-2". He seemed to be quite pleased with his player.

 

[Ryan-G]

As posted in the thread you linked to, some space is lost by formatting, odds are good the person reporting that the discs wouldn't use outside tracks didn't understand that either.

The BR disc sited is only 2.36 gigs off full capacity, no confirmation there for the "It won't use the outside rings!" thing. Especially since I can run through my shelf of DVDs and show quite a few off full capacity by 10% as well.

 

[Paul.S]

Very interesting word on Toshiba/Samsung partnerships in Japan:

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/06/21/sa...mat_hd_player/

 

[Austan]

Maybe... Maybe not...

I know it's just a blog site, but I'll let you judge for yourself until we get a real confirmation...
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/bluray/

 

[Jerome Grate]

Hard to tell what to believe, but I found the second article disturbing about Sony pushing the release of their BD player to "OCTOBER 25 ". Yikes, if it's true.

 

[Edwin-S]

That is what they are saying on their Sony Style site. Targeted delivery date on or about Oct 25.

 

[Austan]

Others have hypothized its due to the new HDMI 1.3 specs. My theory is that want to push it close to the PS3 release.
1) Save money by having 1 round of Media Blitz which pushes both Blu-Ray and PS3 instead of 2 rounds
2) those that want to spend $1000 will and those that "cant/wont" might pick up a $499/$500 PS3 instead.