Live From CES: LG Blu-Ray / HD-DVD Player

LG made one of the biggest announcements of the show here a CES in Vegas yesterday, unveiling details of the world’s first dual-format high definition disc player. That means you will soon be able to buy one player that can handle both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Saints be praised!

Why is this so great? Well, before this you had to decide between the two formats, a pricey bet on a winner in a format war that is far from decided. Now you can finally sit the war out and let the idiots who started it fight it out. Blu-ray dies and HD DVD survives? You don’t care, you can play both.

There are a couple of catches, of course. The price is one, as it’ll set you back $1,200 when it comes out next month. It also doesn’t support all of the full features of HD DVD, including some of their fancier menus, and it only supports HDMI 1.2 rather than the more fully featured 1.3 standard. Are these dealbreakers? Well, the price might be, but that’ll change soon enough. The other stuff is just small potatoes compared to the ability to play both formats. Thanks LG! Now let’s sit back and wait for everyone else to follow their lead.

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