April 28, 2008

Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray Player Set For Release Along With HT-BD2F Home Theater In A Box?

It looks like the Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player has finally been released, along with another home theater offering. This announcement has us a little confused though given just last week Samsung announced a delay in the release, pushing it back to June. The BD-P1500 offers 1080p resolution, Blu-ray disc, DVD, and CD play back, Bonus View allowing picture-in-picture viewing, bookmarking, USB-enabled firmware updates, and BD Live interactive features.

The new home theater, Samsung's HT-BD2F features 5.1-channel sound and support for a variety of audio codecs including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD and lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. Samsung's initial home-theater-in-a-box release, the HT-BD2 carried almost identical features but had a 7.1-channel surround sound system. As a result, the new release will feature a lower price.

Along with the announcement of the new product releases, Samsung also gave us a glimpse into their overall Blu-ray strategy. A leader in Blu-ray product development, Samsung predicts the Blu-ray market will achieve an average annual growth of 80% through 2012. By then the company expects 51 million Blu-ray units will sell per year, well above the expected 5 million this year, which is already a three-fold increase from last year. The company expects its own sales to increase to W400 billion (Korean Won) this year and surpass W1 trillion by 2010, and intends to be the market leader.

Samsung is also working hard to allow for mobile product compatibility with its Blu-ray offerings (such as camcorder and digital camera plug-ins) as well media streaming options bringing the best of the web to your HDTV.

Via Akihabara News

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