Samsung Cancels Hybrid Player

Samsung Electronics announced that they will cancel the awaited production of their first hybrid player. The company has not released any information regarding this change of plans.

"Samsung is going all-out for Blu-ray. We were the first one to market the Blu-ray player," says David Steel, vice president of Samsung Electronics. He also pointed out that Samsung has no plan of developing a HD-DVD drive or a combo device capable of playing both HD formats. And what’s really weird about that is the thing that Samsung were in fact the first to think at a hybrid solution. In July 2006, Samsung officials said that they can’t think at a Blu-ray player without adding HD-DVD capabilities. They actually insisted that a "universal player" is the only way to go, not only for them but also for the rest of optical drives producers.

I can think of a strategic reason behind this idea. As Samsung has always been a low-cost producer, at least when compared to brands such as Pioneer and Sony, they were afraid that a hybrid player would end up costing as much as a Blu-ray one from Pioneer (about $1500). And they probably preferred to end up with larger sales for their $750 Blu-ray device.

In the end, it’s hard to say who’s right and who’s not, especially since it would have been a good thing to actually have at least one hybrid player on the market reasonably priced. However, you could look at it this way: a cheaper player forces the price of the disks to go down. And that’s also a good thing. I still can’t tell which scenario "tastes" better though.

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