Latest Chapter in Blu-ray vs. HD DVD: Samsung Ships Blu-ray Player to U.S.

By Mae Kowalke

TMCnet Associate Editor

 

The battle between next-generation DVD formats Blu-ray and HD DVD heated up further Friday with Samsung’s announcement that it now shipping the industry’s first Blu-ray disc player to the U.S. market.

 

Samsung had planned to ship its new player, BD-P1000, in the spring, but delayed the launch in order to complete compatibility testing with Blu-ray discs. The new player will be available in stores June 25, with a suggested price tag of $999.

 

 

The company claims that Blu-ray discs offer the highest quality resolution available on the market.

 

“Until now, there hasn't been a pre-recorded media solution for consumers to take full advantage of the pristine picture their HDTVs are capable of producing,” Samsung’s senior vice president of marketing for the company’s audio and video products group, Jim Sanduski, said in a statement.

 

A Thompson Dialog report Friday noted that several major movie studios, including Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and LionsGate Pictures, plan to release Blu-ray format content this month.

 

Rival format HD DVD titles are also hitting the market this summer, and consumers will be able to pop those discs into players from RCA (its $499 HDV5000 launched last week) and Toshiba (News - Alert) (which bet early on the HD DVD format with its launch of the $499 HD-A1 player in April).

 

 

Associated Press reported Thursday that Toshiba is now stepping up the competition even more by planning a July launch of an HD DVD recorder.

 

In its bid to gain momentum in the U.S. market, Toshiba is selling its players at a loss, Business Week said Friday. That’s according to research firm iSuppli, which analyzed the HD-A1 player and concluded that it costs Toshiba more than $700 per unit to produce.

 

 

The Business Week report noted that the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD has been compared to that between VHS and Betamax videocassette format during the 1970s, but the comparison isn’t really applicable.

 

“It's a completely different market with very different dynamics,” the report quoted iSuppli analyst Chris Crotty as saying. “Instead of one format beating the other, I expect there to be a stalemate. Smart manufacturers will be building dual-format players soon.”