Best Buy unveils the Samsung BD-P2550

We've heard for some time that Samsung planned to have two Blu-ray players in its lineup, but it's been well over a year since there's even been a peep about the BD-P2400, now out of nowhere the BD-P2550 shows up at Best Buy stores all over the country for the premium price of $499. According to Best Buy's website, the new model has many of the missing features from Sammy's latest BD-P1500, like 7.1 analog outputs and the sought after Silicon Optix HQV video processing. What does appear to be missing though, is the elusive BD-Live, but with the included network connection and USB port, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that either Best Buy failed to mention it, or it's coming in a firmware update. Although $500 Blu-ray players aren't for everyone, it's good to see Blu-ray manufacturers offering multiple models for those in need of premium features.

[Via Format War Central]

[travis k @ Aug 21st 2008 11:59AM]

I am a best buy home theater rep and it would be silly to not have BD Live on this unit seeing as the 1500 has that feature!

[Lowest Ranked @ Aug 21st 2008 12:12PM]

Sorry, what did this have anything to do with you making $12.50 at Best Buy again?

[Tinu @ Aug 21st 2008 3:33PM]

I miss the $99 and $199 HD-DVD players :-|.

[phanbouy @ Aug 21st 2008 4:11PM]

Well I am the premier of Soviet Russia and I say that BD live is bloatware.

[Ironhide @ Aug 31st 2008 12:34PM]

Hey Lowest Rank! Isn't $12.50 what your mom charges per night? I knew he was fixated on that dollar value for a reason!

[Steve W @ Aug 21st 2008 12:02PM]

I'd just like to again thank Warner for prematurely ending the HD-DVD / BR battle and taking competition away from HD formats. Instead of Blu Ray manufacturers being forced to lower hardware prices to match Toshiba's - they're all still $500. And I still haven't seen the famed, phantom "cheap Chinese BR players" in stores anywhere.

[Flashpoint @ Aug 21st 2008 12:12PM]

Thats such a stupid position to take.

First of all, the Format war was not prematruely ended. Anyone with an IQ higher than peanut butter knew that Blu Ray would beat HDDVD - not only as a storage medium, but because SONY was pushing it with every single sale of the PS3 which allowed its market penetration to accelerate as quickly as DVD did when SONY put it in PS2.

If you wanna thank someone for causing Blu Ray to win, thank MICROSOFT for not putting an HDDVD drive in the Xbox360 ELITE/ 360 PREMIUM. That woulda allowed HDDVD to penetrate the market easily. Rather than buying a $600 HDDVD player, people coulda just bought a $400 360 and then walked out BEST BUY with the intention of purchasing HDDVD movies.


The Playstation 3 is the only Blu Ray player I woulda considered buying anyway. Not only is it a player, but its firmware can be (and has been) upgraded to accomodate new Blu Ray standards.

[canyoncarver @ Aug 21st 2008 12:21PM]

Flashpoint,

While I don't agree with Steve I think you are a little too hasty to pat yourself on the back about Blu-Ray's "big win". If you recall Warner very nearly dropped Blu-Ray and went HD DVD exclusive. Warner (and probably other studios) had concerns about Blu-Rays manufacturing capacity, failure rate on BD50 media, lack of interactive features, etc.

We were in fact told to expact $299 and under Blu-Ray players from Tier1 manufacturers during the summer of 2008, and currently only a tiny number of players have hit the $299 price point.

Hopefully by Xmas we will see Profile 1.1 BD players for $249-$299 on store shelves, but $249 BD Live players probably won't be available until Xmas of 2009.... and we have to hope that there is still enough interest in BD in the current economy that it doesn't become a niche product like Laser Disc.

[Flashpoint @ Aug 21st 2008 12:44PM]

Canyon


SSD improvements are eventually going to make disk mediums obsolete. As SSD's get cheaper, laptops will get smaller with higher capacity HDD's. Eventually, it will become easy to upload entire BD or DVD videos to the HDD (probably a software program will allow lay users to do so). Once that happens, Disks themselves will just be backups of the images. I doubt many people will want to sacrifice battery power and compact form factors for a disk drive.

I don't really see that there will be more than 2 disk formats after Blu Ray. SSD drives eventually will become the universal standard. That is unless holographic storage suddenly makes huge gains.

[chris fredette @ Aug 21st 2008 1:08PM]

I agree. It's been a while now and BD players are still not up to HD par years ago. You could buy $150 HD players last year that were awesome. and had more features. This 7.1 /HD audio crap is vertually useless to 99.999% of buyers. I've also use BD live on a couple disc's with the PS3 and it it the worst thing/service I have ever used, ever! It slow, crashes, and even downloads the wrong data. I freaking hate BD.
The menu system bites ass and the last ps3 update stopped my remote working.
I always use my HD player to upconvert because it does a better job than the PS3 and I will still get a HD movie if I can over a BD. They just look better. Unless you have tried all of these hardware you have no idea what you are talking about. I also watch on a 1080p projector with a 125" screen so my hardware is the latest and greatest. My little TV is a 56" 1080p also.
I also think the disc's are still way over priced. They should be the same price as DVD's or they will never take off. I starting to believe it is way more expensive to produce the disc's and the players so by the time they get the cost down the world will have moved on.
And for the SSD guy; I have no idea what you are smoking. You need like 16GB for a 1080p movie so at current price you wild have a $30 disc. DL DVD's are made for pennies and HD-DVD were not much more. BD is a whole different production method that apparently does cost way more to produce.

[Jason @ Aug 21st 2008 2:13PM]

Flash,

I don't know where the SSD discussion came from as I was refuting your comment about anybody who preferred HD DVD or thought it had a chance was a moron.

As far as solid state and downloads goes.

1. Call me when I can get a 50GB SSD drive for the 20 cents it costs to make a Blu-Ray disc.

2. Downloads are turds. The audio/video quality is crap and you don't even own the freaking movie. What a joke.

Blu-ray probably is the last physical format for AV we are going to see, but if studios and CEs want it to succeed in a sluggish economy they are going to have to get prices down, and fast.

[Richard @ Aug 21st 2008 12:05PM]

Is BD-Live working yet? I can't get it to work on my copy of Starship Troopers :( Don't even know if it's functional yet or still coming soon.

[travis k @ Aug 21st 2008 2:58PM]

Bd live isn't supposed to be officially supported until the fall is what I hear from the reps

[CraziestGadgets.com @ Aug 21st 2008 12:13PM]

I really like that glossy finish.. looks high end.

[Vavatch @ Aug 21st 2008 12:15PM]

@Steve W,

This should be obvious, but not all are $500. The PS3 is $399 and has full support for BD-Live. Plus it's an awesome game console that you can rent or buy downloadable movies, including HD titles, with.

[Rob @ Aug 21st 2008 12:22PM]

Are they out of their minds? How do they expect Blu-ray to gain any meaningful market share? Players cost over $350 and Fox sell their movies for $28. Right, that's a recipe for success. I have my PS3, 360 with HD-DVD add-on, and I'm ok with OTA HD. Movies, I'm not planning on buying any more Blu-rays for a while.

[Dee @ Aug 21st 2008 12:46PM]

Why is it so expensive? You would think the prices would start coming down by now. Rather build a HTPC for a couple extra $$$ with more functionality or buy a ps3 than buy this.

[Jason @ Aug 21st 2008 12:47PM]

I'm sure the people with older receivers will like the 7.1 analog out. Aside from that though, is it an improvement over the PS3?

[adam green @ Aug 21st 2008 1:30PM]

Are you kidding...this is the one!

7.1 analog out (if u want it now you need to buy 2k denon or wait for sony 550 which doesn't have hqv chip)
HQV - None of the new players have this....it makes a huge difference....
Whehter it has bd live now or ever is irrelevant to 99% of us....

What a bargain.....HQV, 7.1 analog output....nice!

[msacks @ Aug 21st 2008 4:26PM]

Prices are still way too high for these players. No one I know is interested in purchasing either a player or the movies until prices drop significantly.

[dale_nx26 @ Aug 22nd 2008 1:36AM]

these prices shows how much of financial experts people are when they posted months back about how competition within the BD community would lower the cost of these players. riiiiiight. of course it'll decrease eventually but progress on price cuts has been really slow.

[Frank @ Aug 24th 2008 1:24AM]

I'll wait for a $250 PS3.