Samsung has begun shipping to retailers the first Blu-ray Disc player to go on sale in the USA. The player, BD-P1000, can be bought from next Saturday (June 25) at an expected price of $1,000.
The same player is due to be with UK retailers in Q4, according to Stephen Mitchell, marketing manager, Samsung Electronics Ltd. Steve reckons that the BD-P1000 will be in store in good time for the Christmas peak-selling season. The UK delay, he says, isn't because there's no demand in the UK - far from it. There are now - as he acknowledges - very many UK owners of HD TV sets who want high-def players.
But, he says, there's no point launching players until there are HD movies to play on them and the UK delay reflects only the timescale of the availability of Blu-ray Disc movies over here.
Apparently there's a big European industry get-together in a few weeks' time where information will be exchanged and after which the picture for Blu-ray availability in the UK and the rest of the EU should be much clearer. We'll try to give you an update if we can but what we'd venture to say now is that all of the big-name player makers are, like Samung, likely to have product for sale in the UK for Christmas.
Of course, the big question is why are Blu-ray movies going to arrive in the UK so much later than in the USA so that there's no point selling players until this time?
There are, to our mind, two possible reasons - neither mutually exclusive. The first is that there is limited amount of worldwide capacity for producing Blu-ray Disc movies - in terms of pressing plant and the authoring houses with the skills to create them. Consequently, all efforts are initially being concentrated on the markets with the highest penetration of HD TV sets - north America and Japan.
The other reason is that the movie studios still want to have some months' delay between the introduction of on-disc movies in the USA and the UK - because, historically, there has been such a delay between in-cinema releases, to cut down on the number of movie prints that have to be made.
Samsung says that, for the USA, seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray - including recent hits as well as classics - with the total expected to reach over 200 titles by the end of the year.
One example is Sony Pictures- the movie arm of Blu-ray Disc's strongest proponent - which recently announced that it would be introducing eight DVD movies in June, seven of them on June 20, plus a further seven in July. Sony's own player, the BDP-S1, is scheduled for a US launch on or around August 15 - also at $1,000 - and the company is taking pre-orders now.
The first batch are back-catalogue titles, 50 First Dates, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Terminator I, Underworld Evolution and xXx - State of the Union.
Then, on June 27, Sony will add Ultraviolet - launching it on the same day as the standard-def DVD version.
Basic Instincts 2 follows on July 11, with six more titles arriving on July 25 - A Knight's Tale, Species, Stealth, SWAT, The Benchwarmers and The Last Waltz.
Click for larger imageThe BD-P1000 can play out Blu-ray movies via HDMI at the highest HD definition - 1080p - upscaling those that weren't mastered at 1920 x 1080p. It can also output 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i through HDMI and through component video.
Standard definitions DVD can be played and up-converted, too, even to 1080p. Interestingly, and perhaps a little unexpectedly, the BD-P1000 is also said to handle home-burned standard-def movies on all discs formats, even including DVD-RAM, and to function as an audio CD player, too.
Also worth noting - the player has a 10-in-2 memory card reader and built-in slideshow functions to allow high-res stills shot on digital cameras to be shown on high-def TV. And, as well as HDMI and component outputs, the player has S-video and composite video, too. Supported audio formats are said to be Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, MP3 and 192kHz LPCM.
Samsung's news is in sharp contrast to that from Pioneer who, as we reported last week, had intended to launch its first Blu-ray Disc player in the USA this month but has now delayed until September. That, however, isn't likely to affect when Pioneer launches over here - unless demand elsewhere is so great that there are problems producing enough players, something that,we suspect, isn't likely when the players are all going to be expensive at the outset.
Got any thoughts on Blu-ray, HD DVD or other matters high def? We'd be delighted to hear them in the HEXUS.community.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community - discussion thread about this article
Samsung USA - home page
HEXUS.headline - Pioneer US Blu-ray player launch delayed three months
Blu-ray.com - list of currently-known Blu-ray movie releases (thanks to HEXUS.community member =TcQi= for the link!)
Sony Pictures - Blu-ray movies home page
Sony USA - pre-order page for BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc player
