Ridgefield Park, NJ, June 15, 2006 - Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced today that the industry's first Blu-ray disc player has been shipped to retailers in the U.S. market for availability on June 25th. The Samsung Blu-ray disc player (BD-P1000) will allow consumers to view High Definition discs on their existing HDTVs.
The Blue-ray and its competing format HD DVD together represent the next generation disc formats. While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser which better utilizes the space on the disc allowing more than five times the amount of information.
The Blue-ray format is backed by companies such as Sony, Disney, Apple and others. The competing HD DVD format is backed by Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft and others.
"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", said Jim Sanduski, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Samsung's Audio and Video Products Group.
Samsung BD-P1000
The Samsung BD-P1000 plays Blu-ray software titles at the highest resolution available via a native 1080p HDMI output for films digitally mastered in 1920 x 1080p. The BD-P1000 also up-converts conventional DVDs to 1080p through the HDMI digital interface so the picture quality of any traditional DVD will look noticeably more detailed when used with the disc player. The BD-P1000 is backwards compatible and plays both standard DVDs and CDs in addition to supporting all DVD formats including, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and DVD+R.
Additionally, Samsung has included a 10-in-2 multi memory card interface that supports all the major formats including Compact Flash™, Secure Digital™, XD Picture Card™, Memory Stick™ (all TM) and others. By including a memory card interface into the Samsung BD-P1000, the native high definition resolution contained in 2-megapixel and larger digital still pictures can be fully rendered on a high definition television via slide show functionality built into the player.
Connectivity includes HDMI, Component, S-video and composite outputs. Supported audio formats include: Dolby Digital & Dolby Digital Plus, DTS, MP3 and 192KHz LPCM. The BD-P1000 will be available in stores on June 25, 2006 at a MAP of $999.99.
The launch of the Samsung BD-P1000 coincides with a major influx of Blu-ray content. Seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray, with the initial line-up of recent hits as well as classics, expected to grow to more than 200 titles by year end.
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