Samsung shows second-gen dual-format HD disc player

[julian_craster]

Samsung shows second-gen dual-format HD disc player

By Tony Smith in Las Vegas



THE REGISTER

8th January 2008



CES Samsung has introduced its second Duo HD-branded dual-format next-gen optical disc player, though the machine isn't due to go on sale until the second half of the year.

Samsung's BD-UP5500: second-gen dual-format player

Presumably it'll replace the current Samsung Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD player, the Duo HD BD-UP5000, when it does. There's not a massive difference between the BD-UP5000 and the new BD-UP5500. The latter supports Blu-ray's Bonus View picture-in-picture commentary mode, along with BD Java for on-disc interactive applications.

It also supports HD DVD's HDi interactivity technology, which was once the BD-UP5000's advantage over rival manufacturer LG's dual-format player, the Super Blu BH100, which would only play HD DVD movie content. However, LG's recently released Super Blu BH200 supports HDi too.



Mind you, given last week's Warner Home Video move to support solely Blu-ray, and claims that Paramount might now do the same, does the world really need dual-format players any longer? Well, with almost a million HD DVD player owners in the US alone, undoubtedly Samsung and LG reckon their products provide those folk with the safest upgrade path.



The 5.8cm-high Samsung machine has an HDMI 1.3 port to allow it to support 10-bit Deep Colour when disc content is so encoded. There's an Ethernet port for network connectivity, both to get firmware updates and to download online add-ons bundled with discs.



On the audio side, the player supports 7.1-channel PCM sound, DTS-HD High Resolution and Master audio, and Dolby TrueHD Bistream via HDMI.

[DB7]

It's pretty obvious now that HD DVD is Betamax and Blu-Ray will be VHS.

[Windthrop]

name='DB7']It's pretty obvious now that HD DVD is Betamax and Blu-Ray will be VHS.

Which means in a hard drive, download world it's all a bit redundant

[Bell Bottom George]

But does all this mean `normal` DVDs have still got many years active service left ? - I hope so.

[Harbottle]

I'm glad one format looks like having won the "battle", so we can wait for the next format to be introduced while we still happily use our DVD apparatus



I must admit that when the recordable versions become cheap enough I would welcome something that will record say 4 hours or more in very good quality, the DVD recorder has been very limited in that you can only really record 2 hours (well maybe 3 hours in reasonable quality).

[Wolfgang]

To be honest I have hardly noticed any difference between 2hr and 4hr DVD recording modes - but for me DVD comes into its own in storage space. I suppose if you could store 12 hours on one Blu-Ray - or even 24 hours on dual layer disks which would equate to 48 hours of video transfers...



I have heard that Blu-Ray is even less resiliant to scratches than DVDs though which is already too fragile in my view so I have my doubts that it will be any use at all for longterm storage...