New Blu-ray Players On Their Way
 

Samsung, Vizio and LG all showed new Blu-ray players at CES. The Vizio VBR100
should bring many new Blu-ray fans into the fold when it launches in April at
$199. It will be Profile 2.0 compatible and has 7.1 analog audio outputs. LG
will have the BD390 at $399 with a GB of built-in memory and Wi-FI
connectivity plus decoding of all the lossless multichannel audio codecs. It
is coming out in June. Samsung’s BD-P4600 is good-looking, supports BD Live
and comes with a Wi-FI dongle allowing streaming movies from Netflix and music
from Pandora. Price and release date not yet known.

An unexpected but welcome development is that three different makers have now
announced combination Blu-ray/SACD/DVD-A players. Denon’s universal high-end
player, the DVD-A1UDC1 - which we already mentioned - has been delayed until
next month. At $4,200 U.S. it also includes HDCD decoding. Oppo has begun an
Early Adoption program for a beta version of their BDP-83 universal Blu-ray
player, which will retail for about $600, but the shipping date of the final
version has not yet be finalized. The third innovative maker is a newcomer so
far unknown to most in the AV field: ezGear introduced their bluCobra EZ3000,
which supports Blu-ray, DVD, and SACD with decoding of all the advanced audio
codecs and multichannel analog audio outputs. It is scheduled for release next
month at $399.

http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=5501

--
Certified SPAM-free sig