I think it looks real promising. I am selling my PS3 and going back to HD DVD only for now. If I get a player that supports Blu-ray, this would be the one. The MSRP is $999 and it's supposed to be released late Oct. / early Nov. I'll watch it and hope the street price goes well under $800 after the holidays.
HDGuru has the first review of the new Samsung Combo player. The article is copyrighted so I can't re-post here. The review is at:
http://hdguru.com/?p=184
Looks nice from the pics, and has some great specs:
- HDMI 1.3 connection
- Support for TrueHD and DTS-MA (through a firmware upgrade that will occur before or shortly after product launch)
- 720p/1080i/1080p output. 1080p can be selected as 24Hz or 60 Hz.
- Silicon Optix Reon scaler chip for SD upconversion
- optical, coaxial, & 7.1 analog audio output, in addition to HMDM 1.3
- Startup: 35 seconds from Power On to Splash screen; 25 seconds for either BD or HD DVD discs to load
- Ethernet connector for firmware updates and interactive content, BD-Java (BD-J) for Blu-ray and HDi for HD DVD
It certainly ups the bar for combo players.
