Portket Journal, Digital electronic updates

One of the side effects of Blu-ray’s victory over HD-DVD in the format war has been the fact that the producers of stand-alone players were relieved of the pressure to come up with new and better models at a very rapid pace. But even if the share of launches has declined somewhat, we continue to see the new Blu-ray players will arrive on the market, even here in the BD-P2550 model from Samsung, which saw at BestBuy’s home page with the guys over on the Format War Central.

In addition to being able to offer users the enhanced cinematic experience in connection with the Blu-ray format, the BD-P2550 can also provide an improved level of video performance with standard DVDs also, by upconverting their video resolution to HDTV-compatible 720p or 1080p via HDMI interface. In addition, the device has also been equipped with a built-in set-top boxes for the next generation of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD lossless (7.1-channel) sound.

And since we are on the theme of decoding, it is also important to mention that Samsung’s Blu-ray player is compatible with VC-1, MPEG-2 and H.264 format. It also packs in 10-bit/108MHz video digital-to-analog (D / A) converters, as well as a 24-bit/192kHz audio digital-to-analog (D / A) converter.

From the available connectivity, in addition to the aforementioned HDMI interface, the BD-P2550 also a digital audio output, composite video output, component video output, and optical and stereo audio outputs. In addition, the player has a USB 2.0 interface (for connecting external storage devices) and an Ethernet connection, which is used to either access the BD Live services, or to perform firmware upgrades.

As mentioned from the outset, the BD-P2550 is not exactly what one might call an affordable product because it sells at BestBuy for about $ 500, which is a fairly large sum, especially for this time of year (after all, sales of consumer electronics is always a little slow in the summer).