Samsung attempting to end format war

This is an obvious play, but I’ve been waiting a long time for it to happen. Samsung has announced a new dual format (HD-DVD/Blue-Ray) DVD player, which basically means it will play everything on the market:

Samsung’s HD disc player was going to be the first to do both HD DVD and Blu-ray completely right. But now, it’s perfect: Samsung just sent us an alert saying the dual-format BD-UP5000 Duo HD player will come hardware-ready for BD Profile 1.1—at least 256MB of internal storage, secondary audio and video decoders, virtual file system. You realize that the rest of the Blu-players this fall totally lack this, and it’s a wonder how Sony and everyone else can get away selling old spec Blu players while calling them new. This player ends that, and is the only one we recommend. At the risk of being hyperbolic, this player could be the beginning of the end of the format war’s significance to consumers.

At around $1000, it’s not cheap. But hopefully in three to six months the price will come down and more competition will enter the market.