LG Updating Dual-Format Super Blu Player

[Rob Williams]

From our news:

LG doesn't care to take sides, which works out to the consumers favor. As we first saw at this years CES, they released a dual-format stand-alone player, meaning it plays both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Obviously this is a good thing from most angles, since you have a much larger library to choose from, you don't need two different players hogging up room and it's simply more convenient.

According to Electronic House, they are planning to update their BH100 player (seen below) with a new BH200 player. Updated functionality is added, such as BD-Live, PiP for select titles and Blu-View. Output is 1080p at 60Hz and upscaling DVDs also uses 1080p. If you want one, you can pony up your $999 sometime next month.

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The player will support various A/V formats including MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 video, MPEG1/2 audio, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS and DTS-HD audio. Also expect plenty of inputs/outputs including HDMI 1.3 out and a LAN Ethernet port for network interactivity. You won’t have to wait too long for this one. The unit will hit shelves in mid-October for $999.

Source: Electronic House
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[Greg King]

For not owning a high definition television outside of my Dell 24" monitor, the idea of this player being available at all is pretty frickin' exciting. Let the industry fight over what the next standard is going to be. I trust companies like LG to look them in th eye, tell them to screw off and continue to produce work arounds like this hybrid player.

 

[Rob Williams]

I totally agree. The huge downside is still the price. For an extra $100 - $150 on top of what this $1,000 player costs, you could pick up a Playstation 3 -and- Xbox 360 with HD-DVD add-on. I realize a lot of people are hardcore movie-buffs and not gamers, but from a value standpoint, getting two great consoles in addition seems like a good deal.

$1,000 is far too much money for any player, as far as I am concerned.

 

[MakubeX]

I totally agree. The huge downside is still the price. For an extra $100 - $150 on top of what this $1,000 player costs, you could pick up a Playstation 3 -and- Xbox 360 with HD-DVD add-on. I realize a lot of people are hardcore movie-buffs and not gamers, but from a value standpoint, getting two great consoles in addition seems like a good deal.

$1,000 is far too much money for any player, as far as I am concerned.

Agree. At that price you might as well get the 360 and PS3. It's just a much better value. Plus you can even use the PS3 almost as a regular PC.

 

[Rob Williams]

Plus you can even use the PS3 almost as a regular PC.

That is a true pain in the ass, but it can be done. I installed Gentoo on it last month and managed to play an NES emulator using the PS3 gamepad (wired), but it took so much effort, it really is not worthwhile in the end. That aside, the PS3 is -really- slow for computer use, given that the kernel is not optimized for the processor included... not to mention the 256MB of system RAM.

I realize this is probably not exactly what you meant though. The PS3 -does- allow a lot of usual computer functions, and it does them well. It's FAR better than the Xbox 360 for media tasks, I can honestly say.

 

[MakubeX]

I realize this is probably not exactly what you meant though. The PS3 -does- allow a lot of usual computer functions, and it does them well. It's FAR better than the Xbox 360 for media tasks, I can honestly say.

Precisely. I'm thinking for people that may not be interested much (or at all) in gaming, at least being able to use the PS3 as a PC for the simple stuff is another factor that makes worth getting both consoles over a $1K BluRay/HD-DVD player.

 

[Rob Williams]

One thing that bothers me about the PS3 or any console in general for web use.. is that it's clunky. VERY clunky. Half the time, web-standard technologies like Flash are not even supported, though I believe it is on the PS3. Also bad is the resolution... unless you run the TV at 1080p, the resolution for web browsing is really difficult to deal with.

Couple that with the fact that I don't really find web browsing on a TV that enjoyable to begin with... the fonts and such are not half as clear as they are on an actual monitor, but I might just be ridiculously fussy, I don't know.

At least with the PS3, you can plug in a mouse and keyboard.. that helps a lot.