Gearfuse

Remember last week, all of the news stories of a new LG DVD player that had broken the barrier that stood between the new next gen DVD formats? That player, the BH100, has officially been released at CES. Any new news? Yes, they also announced that there will be a drive for the PC released also due in Q1 of 2007, called GGW-H10N. While the BH100 is a proud supporter of 1080p playback through HDMI, component- and composite-video outputs, the GGW-H10N is limited in it’s playback and recording capabilities. It has been announced that it will have a fully functional read and writer for CD & DVDs, and that it will also support BD-R and BD-RE, but that’s where the writing capabilities stop. It will only be able to read HD-DVDs and some of the online interactive features will be crippled.

One last note on design. The GGW-H10N looks just like a normal PC drive, a bland off-white that won’t stand out, but the BH100 looks like it was made out of Chocolate phones. It even has the same kind of backlight touch sensitive control buttons. No prices on the GGW-H10N, but the BH100 is said to sell for $1,200… Ouch.

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So maybe you would rather spend $800 on a BluDisc player rather than spend $600 on a PS3. Why? No clue. But if that’s something that you find attractive, the Samsung BD-P1200 is definitely your device. It is Smasung’s 2nd generation BluDisc player, and it does look very attractive from a design standpoint. A nice combination of slick lines and rounded curve give it a very techno-friendly asthetic that would look beautiful in your media cabinet. But you really can’t forget about that price tag. Apparently, Sony is the only one willing to take a loss on products (PS3). So why are these BluDisc players so damn expensive? Samsung isn’t going to make any money back in game purchases like Sony. The blue laser diodes are still in high demand, and more demand=higher prices. This product will be available in March of this year, and it will support BD/CD/DVD format and 1920×1080 (full 1080p) playback.

Another nice feature? It will upscale your regular DVDs to 720p, 1080i and 1080p resolutions! High def is created where there was no high def before, seems like magic. If you aren’t into specs, a little thing you might like is the fact that you can change the fonts and color of subtitles, menus and backgrounds. Nice little finishing touches.

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