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Posted by asj on 09/26/00 11:50
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1977327,00.asp
The format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD has finally reached
consumers, now that Samsung is shipping the BD-P1000 Blu-Ray player to
retailers. The BD-P1000 ($999.99 list), will go on sale June 25th,
making it the first Blu-Ray player to hit the market. Until now, the
only high-definition video player shoppers could buy has been the
Toshiba HD-A1, which has been in short supply.
The BD-P1000 is twice the price of the HD-A1, but Jim Sanduski, senior
vice president of marketing for Samsung's Audio and Video Products
Group, says that won't hurt sales. "Dealer demand is really strong,"
Sanduski says. "Yes, we are double the price of HD-DVD, but we are
confident people will buy as many as we can build."
The Samsung BD-P1000 supports full 1080p playback, something the first
generation of HD-DVD players do not. The BD-P1000 also up-converts
conventional DVDs to 1080p to improve video quality. The player comes
with HDMI, Component, S-video, and composite outputs. Samsung has also
included a 10-in-2 multi-memory-card interface for viewing digital
images directly from flash cards.
There will be just 10 Blu-Ray titles available when the BD-P100 ships,
including 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying
Daggers, A Knight's Tale, The Last Waltz, Resident Evil Apocalypse, and
xXx. Sanduski says by the end of year the number of titles will swell
to as many as 200.
This is one area where Blu-Ray could have a potential advantage over
HD-DVD. "Eighty-four percent of all the movies released last year were
made by studios that have announced support for Blu-Ray," according to
Sanduski. "That is a huge strike against HD-DVD." To be fair, some
studios plan to release movies on both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
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