We’ve been tracking the blog sites for news and our next installment of the "Format Wars." Here are the latest developments from the Blu-ray camp.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
of Projection Monthly

First a likely disappointment from Sony came from an updated Sony Style website stating the CE giant will slip the previously announced June 25th ship date for its Blu-ray player to August 15. Word on the street (in the form of Gamasutra.com) says the delay is due to the 4M PlayStation 3 consoles Sony is looking to build for the November-06 launch. There is also some concern over the dearth of information coming from Sony on the delay.

Pioneer also put off its ship date of the BDP-HD1 unit to September, but softened the blow by dropping the price by $300 to a cool $1K (still 2X the Toshiba H1-DA HD-DVD player price).

Now the good news, the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player is now shipping and in the hands of a blog reviewer Dan Bradley (for complete review look here: http://dvd.themanroom.com/dvd-newsview.php?id=0151).

The official word from Samsung is the BD-P1000 plays Blu-ray software titles at the highest resolution available via a native 1080p HDMI output for films digitally mastered in 1920 x 1080p. The BD-P1000 also up-converts conventional DVDs to 1080p so the picture quality of any traditional DVD will look noticeably more detailed when used with the disc player.

By comparison, the Toshiba H1-DA player can upconvert DVD’s going from 480p resolution to a 1080i or 720p format.

All this upconversion sounds good but the reality is that the image quality is highly dependent on the type of scaler and image processor that is used. In these relatively low cost players, we suspect the processors are only of mid-line quality.

And to this point, Dan Bradley did an up-conversion match-up between the BD-P1000 and H1-DA players and their respective formats. He states a "negligible difference" between the two players in up-converting standard DVD content. Bradley also concludes that for costing twice as much as the Toshiba, the P1K is not twice the machine.

Our take: Since a side-by-side HD image comparison will have to wait-the jury is still out on this player and the Blu-ray format over HD-DVD. It looks like Pioneer is getting a clue by dropping their price to match the $999 price of the already-shipping Samsung unit, and Sony may be caught in the difficult spot of having to sacrifice higher profit Blu-ray player shipments to manufacture the more strategically important PS 3 players. The company may have chosen to slip the player ship date to make the console available by Christmas. The PS3 will include a Blu-ray player but cost hundreds less in its bid to go head-to-head with Microsoft’s XBox. Microsoft wisely chose not to include the HD-DVD format player in its console, choosing instead to launch an accessory player later in the year. This keeps the pressure on Sony, delivers higher profits on the XBox console and an upgrade revenue stream after the purchase. Microsoft may well have out maneuvered Sony in this one. -SS