There is also no guarantee that the device will actually work properly after the company earlier this week admitted that they needed to make improvements to their Blu Ray player for it to work as they initally intended.

In the US some of the Samsung Blu Ray players have been returned with consumers complaining that they could not get them to play and at $1,599 this is one very expensive player particularly as Blu Ray players will be half this price within the next 6 months as other vendors enter the market.

Samsung America said on Monday that it would make some improvements to its Blu-ray high-definition DVD players before Xmas. "As we approach the 2006 holiday season, Samsung will make a running line production improvement to BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc players." the company said in a statement.

The production line improvement will include a modified setting for the noise filter reduction circuit that will provide a slightly sharper picture, it said. Since Samsung rolled out the first Blu-ray player, priced at $1,000 in the USA, in late June, Blu-ray has faced complaints of subpar picture quality on discs and other technical issues. Samsung said the improvements would include adding Java title compatibility to coincide with the launch of BD Java titles.

Another problem for consumers is that there is little Blu Ray movie content to play on the new Samsung player. Hollywood is currently split between two camps backing competing high-definition DVD standards. One is Sony with Blu-ray and the other is Toshiba with HD-DVD. Samsung Australia unveiled the pricing and availability of its BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player at  the appropriately named Blue Hotel at Woolloomooloo in Sydney.

Approximately 1,000 units of the BD-P1000 will be shipped to Australia with these being launched by Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi stores at an RRP of $1,599.