There's
been rumors floating that Samsung was going to release a blue laser player that
would play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs. This would be pretty cool! So, of
course it isn't true. According to the people at HD Beat, they got on the phone and spoke with a PR person (they
don't lie and I love that!) from Samsung, who said they are solidly behind
Blu-ray and will not be producing a hybrid player.
 Well, we
are sorry to inform you that Samsung has no current plans to release such
a device. None, what so ever. We contacted Samsung Electronics America's
PR department this morning after
this story was on Digg's front page. A
rep was very happy to talk to us and indicated that, yes, it is just a
rumor. She provided us with this statement from a few days
back.
Samsung Electronics is fully committed to the Blu-ray format
and currently only has plans to introduce a Blu-ray player to the
market. |
Well, so much for hedging your bets! We can all rest
assured though, that if both formats should flourish in the marketplace too
long, that hybrid players will be available from someone! Actually, maybe if
this would occur, two formats would be a good thing! We could at least then have
competition between formats, that could tend to keep prices falling. What do you
think? Are two formats better than one?
Source: HD Beat
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Not many know. That DVD won and was chosen over a format called divx (And it's not avi files downloaded from the internet), some day when you tell people that there was a format called HD DVD, they will also answer you, that you are full of sh*t. We only need Blu-Ray. Prices will drop due to mass production anyway.
"Samsung Electronics is fully committed to the Blu-ray format and currently only has plans to introduce a Blu-ray player to the market." Such a statement is pretty empty especially from a Samsung PR person. What Suwon's Samsung engineers and managers and the top management at Samsung Electronics and Samsung group matters far more and they have ALWAYS said they are behind both Blu-ray and HD DVD at least since Toshiba first announced AOD. In Japan, it's a bit different but practically everyone and every company believe in South Korea only "combo" players and recorders will survive. Samsung and LG were also first to announce in public that they would support and produce DVD Multi and Super Multi drives that support both DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) in the past though they had both been supporting DVD-RAM since the birth of DVD-RAM from Matsushita and Hitachi. What the PR person actually implied is just that Samsung is not yet ready to produce players and recorders that support both Blu-ray and HD DVD because such an information should only remain as a top trade secret.
unlike panasonic, sony, and philips, samsung's stake in the success of bd is far smaller, so it is their best interest to introduce dual format if market demands it.
if hd-dvd format would do better than samsung hope, then samsung will introduce the dual format player
I think you are right Kenshin, because even in the above statement, the PR person used the word "currently". What this says to me is they are ready to create one...when the time is right. 
