We can't really see the logic in releasing a Blu-ray player without BD-Live in 2008 -- and neither can Samsung, which just announced its fourth generation BD-P1500 will be BD-Live Ready. The bad news is the May release date announced earlier has slipped to June, and the formerly comfortable $399 MSRP is now a less promising TBA. We're not sure if that "ready" tag means it will be BD-Live enabled out of the gate, however DTS-HD "High resolution" is confirmed on the way in a future firmware update. A slight delay for a significant upgrade in features? We'll allow it.
Update: Samsung let us know the press release was in error, the MSRP will remain at $399.
April 28: What's Amazon's #1 Selling Blu-ray Player?
What's the best-selling Blu-ray player at Amazon.com?
As of April 28, the answer is...Samsung's BD-P1400 Blu-ray player, available now for $399 -- $100 off the suggested list price. The high-def DVD player can playback Blu-ray discs and can upconvert standard-def DVDs so they will be near-HD quality. The set-top can also display Blu-ray discs in 1080p video.
The player can be delivered in one business day at Amazon.com and it also plays audio CDs as well as various DVD formats.
Who the hell would clone the BD30? Philips should have known that the DMP-BD30 has no internal decoding for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution, or DTS-HD Master Audio.$399 is a decent price for that player. As a result, Philips has another two months to sucker people with their beyond ugly dumbed down Panny DMP-BD30 clone that can't decode TrueHD Bonus View player at $399.
Are you sure about that?the DMP-BD30 has no internal decoding for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution, or DTS-HD Master Audio.
Who the hell would clone the BD30? Philips should have known that the DMP-BD30 has no internal decoding for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution, or DTS-HD Master Audio.
Hate to burst you alls' bubbles, but even though all HD DVD players decode True HD, HD DVD was only required to decode the left/right primary channels. The 1500 right now decodes two channel True HD and Samsung has said it will support full internal decoding with a future update. Probably along the same time that they enable BD Live. It will only bitstream DTS master Audio.
S~