Samsung Electronics America Inc shipped North America's first consumer Blu-ray disk player to retailers today. The playback device is scheduled to be sold to the US market on June 25th, that’s about the same day as the first Blu-ray movies. Samsung's Blu-ray disk player is the BD-P1000 and will retail at $999. Blu-ray will be the most powerful disk media format available to the public with the ability to store 50 Gigabytes on a dual layer disk.
Blu-ray movies will be mastered in 1920x1080P and will send this high resolution video through the BD-P1000's HDMI output. Samsung's BD-P1000 will up-convert standard DVD movies to 1080P. The BD-P1000 is backward compatible to DVD, CD and can playback DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD+R. Supported audio formats include Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, MP3 and 192KHz LPCM. For playback of your own high resolution still image slideshows Samsung included a 10-in-2 memory card reader that can read all the major memory card formats. Let's hope it runs a lot quieter and less buggy than early reviews have demonstrated of Toshiba's HD DVD player.
Why do I care?
The next generation disk media is seen as a boon for anyone who owns an HDTV and demands disk media that can produce images up to the capabilities of the new television technology. Currently DVD only offers image quality at a resolution of 480P through a progressive scan DVD player. So, the DVD is a serious bottleneck in image quality when using an HDTV. Even so called up-sampling DVD players cannot exceed the source material's limit of 480 lines of resolution. Most HDTV owners know that the image quality they receive from digital cable, satellite TV or over air HD broadcasts are far superior to what they get on DVD. HD broadcast television sends video signals to your HDTV at resolutions of 1080i or 720P. An HD DVD or Blu-ray disk is capable of delivering video at a resolution of 1080P, that's about five times the resolution of the original 480i video that is stored on a DVD movie disk.
The biggest benefit to Blu-ray over HD broadcast TV is that it's free of many imperfections inherent in Mpeg2 compression used by broadcast television. Macroblocking occurs when high definition images move too fast for the decompression wall of Mpg2 video. Highly compressed broadcast TV diminishes sound quality affecting frequency response, separation and soundstage in your audio. These problems should not be an issue when using the new high def disk formats. Newer compression and audio formats (Dolby Digital Plus) will provide your audience with audio that is superior DVD and video superior to broadcast HDTV. It's more than the best of both worlds!
Clouds of War
Although the Blu-ray format is locked in heated competition with rival HD DVD, Blu-ray has received favorable industry support and appears to be in the lead. Blu-ray, developed by Sony, was able to get more movie studios on board its format securing more movie titles. The perception of Sony's Blu-ray being ahead in the format war is partly due to its greater numbers, it can hold more information per disk. A single HD DVD can hold 15 Gigabytes of data. A single layer Blu-ray disk can hold 25 Gigabytes of data. Although both disk formats are a considerable leap from DVD's 9 Gigs. The storage capabilities of both formats are enough to meet the increased demands of movies in high definition.