Hi everyone.

It's been quite a while since my last post... so long I had to re-register. Anyway...

I have (and love) the 990, connected to a B&K Reference 200.7 (200Wx7) amp, with a 7.1 Ascend Acoustics speaker setup and a HSU VT3-MK3 sub. Digital cable and an Oppo-981 feed video to a Sony KDS-R60XBR2 (accepts 1080p).

I've been waiting (and waiting) to dip a toe into the world of high-definition discs. I've been leaning towards Blu-Ray, but holding out for better implementation (or for a clear winner).

I've been hearing rumors and reading previews of the Samsung BD-UP5000, a hybrid Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player, due out in December 2007 at about $1000. What particularly interests me is the 7.1 analog out. It supposedly has onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD. It is reported to be firmware-upgradeable for DTS-HD High Resolution and DTS-HD Master Audio, but it's not clear to me whether this will be onboard decoding (and output via 7.1 analog), or bitstream out via HDMI.

I was surprised not to find any posts on this forum about it, given the 990's 7.1 inputs without HDMI.

Does anyone else have any additional information, or opinions about this player? Gonk?

I've heard some bits and pieces about this player. It does look to be the first combo player worthy of consideration. It will be profile 1.1 for Blu-ray (although it will apparently require a January firmware update to enable that capability) and could in theory have a shot at eventually being profile 2.0 if there's enough storage built-in (it needed to include an ethernet connection to get the HD-DVD logo on there, which is one of the two major pieces needed for BD profile 2.0). I haven't seen much mention of what sort of onboard audio decoding it'll offer. If it does eventually decode DTS-HD MA onboard that'd be an impressive achievement in and of itself. The video side should be decent, based on what little I've seen written about it. The Reon chip would suggest the potential for good DVD upscaling.

Since it is still over a month away from release, I'm not surprised that discussion has been sparse. Once it gets here, that might change, but I don't envy the folks trying to help consumers out by developing combo players - especially with the severe price cuts on HD-DVD hardware that we've been seeing lately. I've been pretty pleased with the overall quality of Toshiba's HD-DVD hardware (based on the HD-A2 that I have and the firmware support they've provided for all three generations of their hardware) and certainly their aggressive pricing has made HD content more accessible, but there's a less appealing side effect. Nobody else is really making HD-DVD hardware, and there's at lease one very logical reason for it: there's no profit in making HD-DVD hardware. Likewise, building a combo player means paying licensing to both parties, trying to leverage technical support out of both parties (which may not may not be readily forthcoming if they know you are trying to build a format-war-neutral combo player), supporting content on both formats, and then trying to sell at a profit when a PS3 and an HD-A2 from Walmart combined (each coming with offers for five or more free movies on the respective format) cost half what you want to sell your combo player for. Hmmm.... That makes me wonder. Both formats have been running deals for five free movies when you buy one of their players. Will the same be true for a combo player? I'm afraid that it probably won't, but the opportunity to get five movies in each format would be cool.