Samsung Blu-ray player makes slow start, Sony delays again

June 27, 2006

As pretty
much expected Samsung's launch of the BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc
player on Saturday went off to a slow start with players struggling to
leave the shelves. Worse still, the Hollywood news website MovieWeb
reported about plenty of confusion if anything amongst the consumers. This
would most likely be the case for consumers who saw the players for the
first time and have no idea what's the difference between Blu-ray and HD
DVD. At present, the player is selling for a hefty US$999, with a choice of seven Blu-ray
titles to choose from. The player is expected to hit the retail stores in the UK in September.

If
consumers were depending on Sony to launch the first Blu-ray disc players, they
would find themselves waiting another while again with Sony now pushing back its
Blu-ray launch yet again, this time to around October 25th according to Sony
Style's website. It was just a few weeks ago that they delayed the launch to
August 15th from July. According to a Sony spokesperson, the launch
has been reportedly delayed as a result of software-related issues and not HDMI
as some have thought, especially with the finalisation
of the HDMI 1.3 interface standard.

Samsung's high-definition Blu-ray DVD player finally went on sale in US shops on Saturday, but early reports suggest that the players are not flying off the shelves.

Hollywood news website MovieWeb reported that Samsung's BD-P1000 DVD player, which hit the shops five days after the first seven Blu-ray films on 20 June, aroused "little sales activity" but "plenty of confusion" among consumers.

Samsung may find comfort in the news that Toshiba's rival HD-DVD player is also said to be selling slowly.

Quote from Tom's Hardware about new Sony delay:

Without any announcements or warnings in advance, the release date posted on the Sony Style Web site for its upcoming BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc player was updated last Wednesday to read, "On or about October 25, 2006." The previous date had read August 15, after having been delayed from a late July date just two weeks ago.

With even poor sales being reported for the much cheaper Toshiba HD DVD player, it looks like this battle will go on for a good while yet before it starts to become clear which side starts leading. The slow start may also be a had sign as we could end up seeing something like what happened with Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio, the two high definition audio formats that have aimed to take over the Audio CD.

Source: Computing News