The new Samsung BDP1000 bluray player is having problems meeting up to it's HD+ pedigree. At $1000, twice the price of the Toshiba HD DVD player, it has even more problems with imaging. While it is true that the Toshiba HD DVD player has it's problems it has tested quite well in comparison, performs well for SD DVD upsacling provided the display is HDMI and for HD DVD works with either HDMI to HDMI or analog component if you have DVI or no digital connection at all.
Stacey Spears tests both players
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... ge=4&pp=30
this recent article from Projector central covers what is commonly being reported...
HD-DVD is currently well-positioned to take the lion's share of the market for one very simple reason: HD-DVD offers a much better value proposition to the consumer. That value proposition comes in the form of three formidable advantages: (1) At this writing, HD-DVD image quality is clearly superior to Blu-ray, (2) HD-DVD player prices are half those of Blu-ray, and (3) HD-DVD has twice as many movie titles on the market as Blu-ray, and that ratio will hold through the end of this critical launch year.
Part of the reason for Blu-ray's present lackluster image quality may be attributed to a strange confluence of unfortunate events. First, they have not yet been able to successfully mass-produce dual-layer Blu-ray discs. That means the storage capacity on the first releases is limited to 25 GB rather than the 50 GB available with the dual-layer structure. Second, someone decided to use MPEG-2 on these initial releases. It appears that 25 GB is not sufficient storage space for high quality video at 1080p/24 resolution when compressed via MPEG-2. Somewhere along the line vital video information is not making it onto the Blu-ray discs, and it is visible on the screen.
And for those of you wondering about the importance of 1080P there is more to put the importance of that in perspective. Beyond bypassing the internal scaler the benefits are marginal if likely non-existent since the full benefit would come with a 1080P24 mastering and output and a display that does 1080P24 (24 is the frame rate).For these reasons, we enthusiastically endorse HD-DVD. If Blu-ray can ever demonstrate that it is able to deliver similar quality at similar prices, or even better quality at a premium price, we will be happy to endorse Blu-ray as well. But based on the less than stellar performance of Blu-ray coming out of the starting gates, it is difficult to see how it can survive.
Blu-ray: Can it Survive?
http://www.projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm
