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Home A/V at CES 2006



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Tru details on Blu-ray players


Pioneer's BDP-HD1.
(Click for larger image)
Hot on the heels of Toshiba's HD-DVD player announcement, the Blu-ray camp showed off its hardware. The most fully detailed unit--at least until Sony's event later today--is the Pioneer BDP-HD1, available in May for US$1,800. The player features 1080i/1080p upconversion and home-networking capabilities, along with the standard Blu-ray features--namely, the ability to play the 50GB discs. It includes analog standard-def outputs, but the Blu-ray group is still discussing whether to allow high-def output over analog. This extremely expensive player stands in stark contrast to the US$499 HD-DVD player announced by Toshiba, giving the HD-DVD camp something to brag about, at least for now.

LG also announced a Blu-ray player at its press conference, and its PowerPoint slide also mentioned "1080i/1080p upconversion". To utilize the Pioneer and LG players' 1080p output, a high-definition television needs to have 1080p input capability--a rarity in today's HDTVs, but something we expect to become more commonplace in 2006 models. LG didn't announce pricing and mentioned an availability time frame of "spring" in the press conference Q&A session, accompanied by a chuckle and an admonishment that a couple of issues still impede Blu-ray's availability.

Sharp will also be also showing a Blu-ray player at its booth, but details are still vague: No pricing, and availability in the "summer of this year". Philips, for its part, chimed in with a "competitively priced" player, and its spokesperson seemed optimistic that the Blu-ray group would approve the passing of HD resolutions via an analog output--but we'll believe that when we see it. Again, we expect to hear about Sony's Blu-ray player at its press conference at the end of the day.

Credit: David Carnoy, CNET.com

 

 
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