Samsung ready to ship Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray PC drives could be in PCs by end of this year

Samsung is to release the UK’s first Blu-Ray Disc player next month and PCs could have internal drives later this year.

The Korean giant’s BD-P1000 will be available in mid-October at prices from about £1,000. It is backwards compatible with CD and DVD and can play Blu-Ray discs at up to 1080p resolution. Sony will offer a range of movie titles from 16 October.

Blu-Ray is widely expected to be the long-term successor to DVD, although a competing format, HD-DVD, has split content creators and hardware makers.

Samsung described Blu-Ray as offering the “ultimate viewing experience for high-definition content” but the format is also expected to offer removable mass storage for business users once small-format and portable BD-ROM, recordable and rewriteable units become available. Dell and HP are among Blu-Ray backers.

However, with Sony’s delayed PlayStation 3 expected to play a critical role in Blu-Ray growth, the volumes necessary to make drives affordable for volume PC makers might not be there for quite a while.