Blu-ray remains the unofficial king of CEDIA Expo this year, with an unprecedented rallying of manufacturers around the victorious high-def disc, and the hardware to deliver the full experience.

Compatible with Blu-ray Profile 2.0 (supporting BD-Live and Bonus View) right out of the box, the Samsung BD-P2500 also supplies one gigabyte of internal flash memory plus a USB port for future expansion. This is more convenient than recent models from Sony and Panasonic which require an additional SD card or flash memory stick in order to support BD-Live.

Chief among the new player's video enhancements is the addition of the Silicon Optix Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processing chip to help banish the most common digital video flaws when upconverting standard definition DVD content to high definition 1080p resolution.

Internal decoding for Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and standard DTS is provided right out of the box, with 7.1-channel analog audio outputs, which seem to be a popular feature here at the show, as a consolation for folks who lack decoding of the latest high-end audio formats in their current home theater receivers and preamplifiers. DTS-HD High-Resolution Audio decoding is coming this fall via a firmware update, and all flavors of both DTS and Dolby can be output via bitstream as well, with no firmware update required.  According to a Samsung rep, DTS-HD Master Audio decoding could possibly be added in the future, via firmware upgrade, but no formal plans have been made to do so as of yet.

The BD-2500 will be available next month (October, 2008) at a suggested retail price of $499.99.

More information: www.samsung.com