Quoting 8ballMax:

Quote:
Quoting FunkyLA:

Quote:
Quoting 8ballMax:

Quote:
Quoting FunkyLA:

Quote:
Following from LG and their stand alone HD DVD and BluRay player
Comes the news that, Samsung are also going to go the dual format route, see here
and also here

Note official Samsung Press Release here

So, I guess by the end of this year, I will be buying a Region Free modded version of something like this!

Maybe

Edit to correct links and to add samsung link

Pure speculation and rumor.  Notice that neither quote a source, anonymous or otherwise,  at Samsung .
Maybe

I suggest you re-read my post sir 

I suggest your Samsung link was not in your original post when I replied, Sir .

I feel that you might well be correct, Sir

You know, it can be argued that if Samsung now sees the relevance of releasing a duo-format HD player that they are starting to believe that this format war is far from over!!!  It is a smart decision really, average consumers want simplicity more than statistics when they make a big $$$ purchase and duo-format takes away all the fret and confusion this format war has created!!!

Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

Quote:
This will allow HD DVD to fade away gracefully.  After all, who doesn't want the best possible experience from a title on disc.  This will allow Warner Bros. to produce all title releases on Blu-ray discs in the future where they have more bandwidth, space, and flexibility to give us the best experience.

This should also severely slow down HD DVD player sales as well...not that they needed anymore slowdown in player sales.  Standalone Blu-ray sales should slow down as well, but PS3 sales should continue to grow.  Then, major studios can make content based on the majority of players (Blu-ray via PS3).

This is great news!  Let it begin!  The sooner this thing is over...the better. 

Blah, blah, blah blah...

Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

Quote:
This will allow HD DVD to fade away gracefully.  After all, who doesn't want the best possible experience from a title on disc.  This will allow Warner Bros. to produce all title releases on Blu-ray discs in the future where they have more bandwidth, space, and flexibility to give us the best experience.

This should also severely slow down HD DVD player sales as well...not that they needed anymore slowdown in player sales.  Standalone Blu-ray sales should slow down as well, but PS3 sales should continue to grow.  Then, major studios can make content based on the majority of players (Blu-ray via PS3).

This is great news!  Let it begin!  The sooner this thing is over...the better. 

Let me rephrase this:

This will allow Blu-ray to fade away gracefully.  After all, who doesn't want the best possible experience from a title on disc.  This will allow Warner Bros. to continue all title releases on HD DVD discs in the future where they have more control, not kowtow to Sony, and additional flexibility to give us the best experience.

This should also severely slow down Blu-ray player sales as well...not that they needed anymore slowdown in player sales.  Standalone HD DVD sales should slow down as well, but X-Box sales should continue to grow.  Then, major studios can make content based on the majority of players (HD DVD via X-Box).

This is great news!  Let it begin!  The sooner this thing is over...the better. 



Both make equal sense. No winner yet.

Here is another view on combo players at large from Hugh Bennett.  It's long.

Combo Players...A Bad Idea

Quote:
The DVD Writer: Pax Optical
By Hugh Bennett - Posted Apr 3, 2007
 

"I came not to bring peace, but the sword." Matt. 10:34
Some suggest the conflict between Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD DVD can be resolved by simply offering devices compatible with both formats. I'm not so sure. It's easy to paint a rosy picture of peaceful coexistence, but compromise comes at a price.
Click here to learn more!

Schemes for various HD DVD/BD hybrids have been afoot since it first became apparent that both formats were headed to market. One such kludge, of course, is Warner Home Video's upcoming Total Hi Def (THD) that combines HD DVD and BD content on opposite sides of the same disc. Hopefully my last column (see The Truth About Total Hi Def Disc) debunks the myth that THD solves anything. It is, in fact, just a counterproductive gimmick. Others endorse a hardware approach in which the player, drive, or recorder accommodates HD DVD and BD discs. An idea championed by a few software developers, component manufacturers and industry analysts, the first co-ed player from LG Electronics is just hitting the streets with a soon-to-follow computer recorder that reads and writes BD as well as reads HD DVD. But are such hybrids realistic?

As with THD, the feasibility of a hardware solution is an all or nothing proposition—in order to render the format gender-gap moot for consumers, it's necessary for all device manufacturers to immediately and unconditionally jump on the bandwagon. However, given profoundly entrenched strategic, political, ideological, economic, competitive, and even personal positions, how likely is it that Toshiba or Panasonic, for instance, would offer universal versions of all their player models and do so globally? Or Sony with its already multi-million strong army of PlayStation 3 consoles? Fouling the market with a hodgepodge of hybrids as well as discrete HD DVD and BD units could make a puzzling situation only worse.

I'm also concerned about the false sense of long-term security hybrid devices engender. Quite simply, what happens if either HD DVD or BD eventually goes belly up? Will manufacturers continue to produce co-ed hardware or just callously drop the defunct format from future offerings? If so, consumers could be stuck with obsolete movie, software, and data collections just as if they purchased HD DVD or BD-only units. As with any insurance policy, it pays to read the fine print.

To my mind, HD DVD/BD hybrids are technological pack rats that create more problems than they solve. Designing, fabricating, marketing, supporting, selecting, and owning too much stuff inevitably leads to increased cost, confusion, complexity, and mediocrity. For example, even with co-ed players, won't the usual suspects still author, test, produce, and offer HD DVD and BD, retailers carry both, and customers have to choose? The situation with writable is even bleaker.

If hybrid devices are to be truly credible, they must be compatible with the entire pantheon of disc types from past and present format families. In practice this means that every co-ed consumer electronics player and recorder, computer drive, and burner must forever read and write all CDs (ROM/R/RW), DVDs (ROM/±R/±RW/±R DL/±RW DL/RAM/CSS-MR), BDs (ROM/R/RE/Hybrid SL & DL) and HD DVDs (ROM/Twin/R/RW/RAM SL & DL). Again, will all manufacturers embrace universality or just pick and choose? Add to this the dog's breakfast resulting from escalating reading and recording speeds, new and incompatible high-performance disc types and media with various printable surfaces (LightScribe, LabelFlash, inkjet, thermal, re-transfer, hub, non-hub), not to mention the triple (HD DVD) and four to eight-layer (BD) types manufacturers keep waving in our faces? Pity us all.

The problem is also cumulative. Despite the naysayers, optical storage still has a bright future, with multi-layer, two-photon absorption, near-field SIL, Super-RENS, holographic, or what have you. But each time manufacturers offer devices that accommodate every disc format on the market they risk dooming future generations to build in past complications and inherit any genetic defects.

Hardware manufacturers are already spread thinly and have limited resources to properly develop, test, and sustain both HD DVD and BD technologies (on top of legacy formats). Additional baggage translates into increased costs as well as slower advancements and diminished quality (long the case for DVD recorders)—non-optimized write strategies, inferior legacy support, incomplete features, inconsistent compatibility, variable writing quality resulting in poor media performance and archivability, etc. Surely, rather than suffer a Swiss Army knife, it's in everyone's best interest to have devices do a few things very well. In the face of consumer commitment, satisfaction with DVD as well as mounting competition (video on demand, illegal/legal downloading, streaming, etc.), it was enormously shortsighted to launch two high-definition formats.

But there's no going back. Rather than an easy fix, hybrid HD DVD/BD devices are little more than flawed cop-outs that seek to let the optical storage and entertainment industries off the hook for their lack of common sense and seeming indifference to customer needs and interests. Like it or not, only time and struggle can possibly sort out this mess.

If I buy a Blu-Ray burner for my Computer... and I transfer my daughter's ice skating competition tapes to it, and burn at least 880 copies... and I sell them (I have a retail license) all in a week (and we have far more than 880 friends, relatives, coworkers and fellow ice skaters who would buy one)...

It would become among the top 10 selling HD discs that week.

Because it takes far less than 1000 sold discs to be among the Blu-Ray/HD DVD top 10 sellers in a week.

The argument that either format is "winning" is like arguing that a mosquito landing on Lake Erie contributes significantly to the lake's pollution.

You cite numbers of Blu-Ray discs delivered to retailers and discounters, yet, we know this proves nothing, as the massive shipment of the soundtrack LP for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" proved. Retailers shipped back more than 95% of the discs they received, unsold. I'm certain Blu-Ray "Casino Royale" will have a higher percentage of its numbers sold, but shipped to dealers and sold are not even close to being the same thing. How many DVDs (non-Blu-Ray) of "Casino Royale" shipped?

Numbers are meaningless. But less than 1% of the market is shared by Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Which is far less popular than prerecorded cassettes were (or vinyl LPs) in the 10th year of CDs. How many new prerecorded music cassettes and LPs do you see in music retailers today? Beta had a lot larger percentage of the home video market when Sony quit making the recorders...

You may be right, Blu-Ray might win. But you know, HD DVD might, too. But I still think a non-mechanical delivery device has a better chance of winning than either of these methods. When Radio Shack retails a 2 GB SD memory card for $29.99, the thought that a non-recordable memory card with an HD film on it could be sold for $20 to $30 doesn't seem too far away. And my 3-year-old HD TV has memory card slots in the front... how much software updating would it take to play a prerecorded SD, CF, MMS, XC, or other card in my TV with no external player?

I'm not buying either a Blu-Ray or HD DVD player anytime soon.

Quoting VibroCount:

Quote:
How many new prerecorded music cassettes and LPs do you see in music retailers today?

Actually, quite a lot on LP - I admit it is a specialist market, but most bands/artists still release Vinyl for the collectors market.
But, I agree with your comments, just wanted to be pedantic