LG to Display Its 'Full HD' Line, Including Hybrid High-Def Player
January 7, 2007, 3:34 PM
Scott Fulton, BetaNews: A BH100 console was seen at 8:51 am this morning on NBC's Today program. No, it was not the console seen in the photograph that was making the rounds; in the live shot from CES, it was an all-black console with a brushed steel finish, though bearing a rather bright LG logo, probably for the cameras. It seemed slightly smaller than the photo as well, which showed a silver LG Blu-ray player from last year that looked doctored, with the words "HD DVD" beneath the official "Blu-ray" logo. Chances are, it may actually be a violation of licensing agreements for a manufacturer to juxtapose one logo next to the other (as we learned last year when the issue first came up).
[2:00 pm, January 7] At noon Sunday, LG Electronics made it official: The model BH100 (no hyphen) hybrid Blu-ray / HD DVD disc combo player is being shown now. There will probably be some exclusive previews today, then the floor will open to the public Monday.
What are we looking at? The first picture we've seen of the device is something we're actually going to try to verify before we post it here. It seriously looks like a poorly Photoshopped re-branding of an existing LG cabinet, and although LG itself may have circulated this picture, we've been burned before by LG, and I don't mean with lasers.
But what we did notice this afternoon was a 180-degree turnaround in the company's traditional, short press releases. This one was devoid of the usual, foggy information, and replete with some very important quotes, including this one from the president of the studio introducing the Total HD hybrid disc format at CES this week:
Ron Sanders, President, Warner Home Video: [prepared statement] We enthusiastically welcome LG's introduction of the Super Multi Blue high-definition disc player. This is a great first step towards resolving consumer confusion and uncertainty due to the two high-definition formats. The Super Multi Blue Player will allow studios to better meet consumers' growing demand for high-definition content in both the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats.
Scott Fulton: It's a welcome change that comes on the heels of the replacement of LG's US marketing chief. The "Full HD" moniker will apply to the company's high-definition products, including a new line of HDTVs. Today's statement also contained positive remarks from merchandising managers for both Best Buy and Circuit City, indicating that this device could actually see some widespread availability during the promised Q1 timeframe.
The promise of upconverting DVD resolution to 1080i is something we'll want to see for ourselves. Upconversion is something we've seen before for 720p HDTVs, some of it not too shabby, but will a 1080-line picture upconverted from 480 look like a kind of refined blur? We don't expect it to look like HD DVD, but we certainly don't want an upconverted movie to look so noticeably distorted in high-resolution that you'd rather watch it on your old 480i tube.
LG mentioned on-board support for Blu-ray Java (BD-J), which is very important because some first-generation Blu-ray players omitted this support. It did not mention iHD, the counterpart interactive layer for HD DVD, though it probably didn't need to; HD DVD discs will likely fail to play without it.
All the major codecs both formats support were listed, including on audio, Dolby Digital +, DTS, and DTS-HD; and on video, MPEG-2, VC-1 (the new codec developed largely by Microsoft), and H.264. Along with composite and 5.1 outputs, HDMI was listed, though the version number was omitted. If the BH100 does indeed support DTS-HD, then we should assume HDMI 1.3 - the latest one.
While LG's CTO is saying customers will no longer need to choose between the two formats, the question now is whether the $1,199 price tag (still lower than some feared) will be adequately lower than the combined price of two consoles heading into spring 2007.
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