Buried in Fine Print: Samsung's BD-P1500 is 2.0 Upgradeable
June 19, 2008

With Samsung already on its third generation Blu-ray set-top, it's about time that the company is launching a Blu-ray Resource Center The site helpfully includes a FAQ section about the various profiles, which is where I stumbled upon the fact that the Samsung's latest model, the BD-P1500, is Profile 2.0-ready. 
The BD-P1500 launched as a Profile 1.1 player, meaning it can handle picture-in-picture interactivity but not Web-enabled BD-Live features. However, it turns out the BD-P1500 features Profile 2.0-ready machinery, according to Samsung, which is something that wasn't really clear to me when the player was announced back at CES. Samsung is promising to release firmware by this fall that will upgrade its BD-P1500 to the full Profile 2.0 specification. That way hardware owners can enjoy all the studio's promised fourth quarter BD-Live titles. Here is where the Profile 2.0 issue and the BD-P1500 is explained.
If you register your Samsung player with the Resource Center, you'll receive email notifications once new firmware is launched.
I think all manufacturers should be looking to beef up their product support of Blu-ray set-tops as we are nearing this summer's onslaught of new players and ranging capabilties. Some models are 1.1, and some will be 2.0, and/or 2.0-ready. That choice may add up to a whole lot of consumer confusion, a scenario I think Blu-ray backers thought they had thankfully escaped with the end of the format war.

Posted by Susanne Ault on June 19, 2008 | Comments (1)