It’s about five months since Samsung showed us their BD-UP5000 dual-format player, and now they’ve updated it to… the BD-UP5500.
It’s not immediately clear whether the new model is a replacement for the 5000, but both are being shown at CES, and the 5500 won’t make it commercially until late summer.
The BD-UP5500 sounds to be fully Blu-ray Profile 2.0 compliant — at least, it has full interactive features and BD-Java — and it should correctly handle HD DVDs too.
Audio-wise, it supports 7.1-Ch PCM, DTS-HD High Resolution and Master audio, and Dolby TrueHD Bistream output via HDMI 1.3.
Details of pricing and exact availability will follow. The question is for how much longer we’ll need dual format players?
