He stated quite vocally, that there will NEVER be a combo player. EVER.
LG has one, while a bit crippled due to no HDi support, audio/video wise, it gets the job done.
Now Sammy here, who was the first to announce a combo unit, then to pull their plans, apparently is back in the game. So now there will be 2 combo units on the market by the end of the year. And the Sammy one will be 100% on HD DVD support.
What do you have to say for this PeterTHX? How bout the rest of the nay sayers and detractors who stated that Sony would NEVER allow this to happen as well?
LG and Samsung are only the first two companies to release Combo players. I tend to think all of the current manufacturers will, with possibly Sony and Toshiba being the hold outs. Even MS has confirmed that they are not unwilling to make a BD player for the XBox 360 when the time is right.
How is this pointless? Seriously. A single box, with 100% support for both formats, means the consumer wins in the end. They wont be locked out of either camp.
This is great news and just another step in the right direction for these HD formats.
While I will not sell either of my players...ever. I will buy one of these combo players when they hit the $400 mark and are a second or third gen player. No need to go out and jump on one these when I already have the best of both worlds.
Still no details on price. :frowning: If the recent price drop bantering is to be believed, I have a feeling this unit will cost more than buying two separate players which makes a dual player moot.
If it costs under 1K, I will be really surprised. If it is 1K and over, its an irrelevant product as no one but the brave at heart is willing to pay that kind of money for players on either format. Especially with the chorus of "cheaper players, cheaper players".
If it costs no more than 1K, I will finally be in. I can have my Blu-Ray and not be excluded from HD-DVD only movies like King Kong, and other Universal films down the road like E. T., Jurassic Park, and other Spielberg films I would hate to miss out on. If and when Blu-Ray finally wins, I still only need my combo player. I think it's great news.
Rumor is $1k MSRP which means usually $800 street HDMI 1.3 All audio formats supported
It's cheaper than the Sony BDPS1 and the Panasonic player. What's not to like?
It's only pointless if you are supporting one format and care how the format war turns out. If you don't like most of us then this is the machine we've been waiting for.
Provided it handles the latest BDJ stuff I'm in.
Also mentioned in the article is Samsung will produce an HD DVD stand alone player if consumer demand is high enough. Obviously it seems they aren't too happy with the BR Group after they threw them under the bus.
There were rumors of a Panasonic player so that might also come true.
This is just the beginning. More companies will release "combo" players, and the prices will come down. I still hope someone adds CD, DVD-A, and SACD to one though too. All with good quality output.
'Pointless' is exactly right. The cost of any decent combi player will probably be higher than or equal to the cost of individual players for Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I just don't understand why people have such an aversion to having two seperate units. In fact having two seperate units is always better since no combi player is ever going to be as good as seperate units and above all in case something goes wrong with a combi unit you lose the ability to play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Whereas with seperate units atleast one unit would still be functioning.
It seems to be only pointless from people who want HD DVD to just die and go to some place called Beta Heaven ....
Samsung, a Blu-ray leader in terms of first and second generation hardware now format neutral in hardware is actually pretty significant. They must think the market is ready and has enough potential buyers to warrant both formats being served.
It looks to really be feature laden and have all the advanced codecs needed...
Shane is right, I suspect a $800 street price for this. The new Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray player is getting good reviews so this should be similar for BD playback. The HD DVD part should also be very good.
What are you basing this on? My combi DVDCDDVD-ASACD player is just as reliable as a standard CD player, or stand alone SACD player, or a DVD player that won't play SACDs. I don't think playing a CD in my laser disc player made it any less reliable. I don't see how or why a Samsung combi player will be any less than a Samsung Blu-Ray or Samsung HD DVD player. I am interested in the Samsung, but as a Denon man I'm hoping they have some announcments at CEDIA (note I haven't heard anything so don't let this be the start of a rumor)
The Pioneer player for example can cost up to $1500 but it doesn't play Cds and may not be fully BD-J compliant like other 1st gen BD players .
Its a valiant attempt to get people into HD ( whatever flavour) before the download revolution begins. Audiophile/Videophiles not concerned about rack space can always buy Meridian's HD-Dvd player when it arrives and the top Sony BD player but J6P probably wouldn't be buying into that anyway . I do agree that in an ideal world 1 player =1format but the idiotic Music/Movie industries dont seem to agree ( on anything much .
If this industry had shown a united front to begin with , we would only have had one new player in our racks. PQ and SQ wise there's not much difference between the formats so this will simplify the whole mess in attempt to attract J6P.
Bravo , Samsung ! Any other troopers out there ? Denon , are you listening ?
Seeing as Samsung and Toshiba have an optical division partnership going it's fairly easy to slap one of their laptop combo drives into a chassis. (Samsung has Korean laptops with HD DVD/BD combo drives)
You think Pioneer and Sony and the others will make a combo drive? Unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. After all, NEC has Blu-ray PCs in Japan. It won't be out until December (if then, how often have players met their launch date?). Plenty of time to cancel.
And then HD on disc goes the way of DVD-A/SACD. Confusion for customers, irritation of retailers who do *not* want to carry a double inventory.