Panasonic, which unveiled its host of Blu-ray products last week, will also be launching a Blu-ray player this month, but has not confirmed the date. Samsung, on the hand has – its Blu-ray player will be out in Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi between October 20 – 25 this year.

The new player from Samsung is backwards compatible, supporting CDs and DVDs – upscaling them to "HD-like" (up to 1080p) quality via HDMI. It offers a 10-in-2 card slot, Component, S-video and composite outputs and, of course, HDMI.

According to Samsung's John Fragiadakis, Samsung's decision to back Blu-ray over competitive format HD DVD was due to the "extensive hardware support from IT and CE manufacturers, backing from major movie studios ensuring future content availability and capacity.

"Blu-ray discs can store 25G on a single layer. And recently, TDK introduced a disc that can hold 100G on eight layers, so looking to the future, when you get Blu-ray recorders as well, that's The Lord of The Rings on one disc," he said.

Given that many consumers are still umming and ahhing about which format to go with – Fragiadakis said Samsung is expecting this to be a serious audiophile only product at this stage.

"We believe the target audience of the BD-P1000 is the home theatre enthusiast. This means that by the time this enters the mass market, maybe in the second quarter of next year, Samsung will already be up to its 2nd or 3rd generation Blu-ray players," he said.

"We are also working quite closely with retailers, (who are also very excited about the new technology) to make sure that the public understands what HD TV and Blu-ray are all about," he added.

Both Fragiadakis and Samsung's Sagar Dave said the units that will be arriving in Australia will be minus the issues seen in the US units launched in July, as they were manufactured after August. "It's one of the benefits of being in Australia – we can have the issues ironed out by the time they get here," Dave said.

Samsung is also offering 1920 x 1080p resolution LCD panels for approximately $5500 - $6500 to complement its new player.

In terms of HD content – the player will be bundled with a couple of Blu-ray movies and approximately seven or eight titles such as "Mission Impossible 3" and "Kiss of the Dragon" will be available at the time of the players release. Fragiadakis and Dave said they expected an extra 30 or so titles to be out by Christmas as well.

RRP: BD P1000 Blu-ray disc player - $1599

See: www.samsung.com.au