The End of Blu-ray Vs. HD DVD War Cometh January 15, 2008?

We've talked time and time again about the ongoing war between the two next-generation DVD formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, and about what each of the two sides is doing in order to achieve victory in this conflict. However, there are some pretty strong chances that both Sony's and Toshiba's (the two developers and main backers of said formats) plans might be hindered by none other than the Korean company Samsung and its dual-format player, the BD-UP5000.

From some points of view, the BD-UP5000 is some sort of urban legend, since its development was solely a rumor for an extended period of time, although the official announcement regarding its release came in July 2007. And it seems that now HD-hungry users will finally be able to get their hands on this player as the online retailer Amazon has just opened the pre-order season for this thing. The BD-UP5000 will sell for around 800 US dollars, starting with January 15'th.

The device supports both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats as well as their interactive technologies, HDi and BD-Java. Furthermore, it can achieve 1080p resolutions, not to mention the full compatibility with 24 movie frames per second playback.

As in the case of any high-end player, the connectivity options represent quite an important issue, and the Samsung's hybrid delivers in this area as well. Despite including a complete set of interfaces, the device relies mostly on its HDMI 1.3 connector, which also offers HDMI CEC (Anynet+) technology. The latter allows consumers to use a single remote control to operate the BD player, TV and other A/V products from Samsung.. Furthermore, the BD-UP5000 is thus capable of supplying HD audio decoding and supports standard Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS audio playback, as well as lossless formats, including DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD.

Will this device bring about the end of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD conflict? Well, not likely, because it's simply too expensive, at least for the time being. Sure, those people who can afford it will probably cough up around 800 US dollars, but this price is pretty prohibitive....after all, one can purchase a standalone Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player plus a PS3 gaming console (the cheapest players around) for a lot less.

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