After lagging behind the game earlier today with its first HD camcorder Samsung has picked up the pace – as we knew it would – with a glut of next gen High Def goodies…
Big ass Full HD LCDs, DLPs, and third gen Blu-ray players are all on the list so let's get cracking.
Monstrous HDTVs are where it's at these days so kicking us off are the 50in and 58in '94 series' (above left), a high end range with Full HD native resolutions, 15:000:1 contrast ratios, three HDMI 1.3 ports, digital tuners, 18bit colour processing and even USB ports for connecting directly to camcorders and the like. Q4 is their target date and $3,600 and $5,300 respectively are their highly appealing RRPs.
On the DLP side we get three new lines, the 76, 87 and 89 series. All are available in 50in and 61in sporting three HDMIs and 10:000:1 contrast ratios and these suckers are 3D-ready! That's right, 3D glasses (not the paper ones) are available as an optional extra. Other than that the 87s distinguish themselves by offering 'CinemaSmooth LED Light Engine' technology (no explanation given, but I'm figuring LED backlights) while the 89s (above right) add this plus Bluetooth for wireless head/earphones.
RRPs work out as $1,900 and $2,600 (76), $2,300 and $3,000 (87) and $2,500 and $3,200 (89). Again we're in Q4 land.
Next we've got third gen Blu-ray player goodness in the shape of the BD-P1400 (bottom left) and BD-P2400 (bottom right, not that you can tell) both of which offer 1080p native playback, DVD upscaling to 1080p using HDMI and use the company's latest HQV (Hollywood Quality Video) image processor. Component, S-Video and composite outputs are also squashed in and RRPs are getting ever more attractive with the former just $550 and the latter $650 when they launch in September.
Clearly that late camcorder was a rare stumble…
writed by Gordon Kelly
