One of the side effects of Blu-ray's victory over HD DVD in the format war has been the fact that the manufacturers of standalone players were relieved of the pressure of coming up with new and improved models at a very fast pace. But even if the rate of launches has somewhat diminished, we keep seeing new Blu-ray players arrive on the market, including here the BD-P2550 model from Samsung, which was spotted on BestBuy's website by the guys over at Format War Central.

Beside being able to offers users the enhanced cinematographic experience inherent to the Blu-ray format, the BD-P2550 can also deliver an improved level of video performance with standard DVDs as well, by upconverting their video resolution to HDTV-compliant 720p or 1080p via the HDMI interface. Moreover, the device has also been equipped with built-in decoders for next-generation Dolby Digital Plus and lossless Dolby TrueHD (7.1-channel) audio.

And since we're on the subject of decoding, it's also important to mention that Samsung's Blu-ray player is compatible with VC-1, MPEG2 and H.264 formats. Moreover, it packs at 10-bit/108MHz video digital-to-analog (D/A) converter, as well as a 24-bit/192kHz audio digital-to-analog (D/A) converter.

From the point of view of the available connectivity options, beside the aforementioned HDMI interface, the BD-P2550 also incorporates a digital audio output, a composite video output, a component video output, as well as optical and stereo audio outputs. Additionally, the player features a USB 2.0 interface (for connecting external storage devices) and an Ethernet connector, which is used for either accessing the BD Live features or for carrying out firmware upgrades.

As mentioned right from the start, the BD-P2550 is not exactly what one might call an affordable device, since it sells at BestBuy for around $500, which is a rather large sum, especially for this time of the year (after all, sales of consumer electronics are always a little slow during summer).


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