Date: November 27th, 2008
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Samsung Canada
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CORPORATE INFORMATION
Head Office Corporate Information
Samsung delivers management reform through New Management to maintain high international competitiveness. SAMSUNG is dedicated to contributing to mankind's quality of life. The year 2000 will be declared as the First year of Samsung Digital Management to speed up the digitization of all areas of management with an ultimate objective to become a leader in the digital age of the 21st century. Samsung has continuously improved its financial structure by increasing profits, reducing costs, and enhancing brand image. SAMSUNG's stability and development potential are universally recognized.
Canadian Corporate Information
After only a decade of growth since first entering the Canadian market in 1987, Samsung Canada, headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, has emerged as the market leader. We are growing in Canada by about 20% per year and continue to build a strong presence in every market we enter. Operating as part of Samsung's Americas group, our Canadian operations gain considerable competitive advantage from Samsung's local Americas R&D, manufacturing, and technical support. Samsung Electronics in Canada focuses on consumer electronics and information systems products. Consumer electronics began in Canada in 1987, followed by IS in 1992. The information sales division has grown 61% since 1992. Samsung has introduced a wide range of IS products into the Canadian market, which include hard disk drives, CD-ROM drives, printers, fax machines and monitors enforcing its leading market position and fast year-over-year growth with a strong local presence and reseller network to serve Canadian consumers from coast to coast. Samsung is building a strong presence in Canada as it has all over the world.
PRODUCT INTRODUCTION
With HD-DVD nothing but a
distant memory, the manufacturing focus and of all major electronics manufacturers and distributors now glaring at the Blu-Ray HD specification, the market as of late has been flooded with Blu-ray disc players to make them affordable to the consumer on a more modest budget. With the economic slow down in full force, large consumer electronic equipment such as a Blu-ray disc players, a large plasma/LCD TVs and a home theater systems have had their prices chopped by most large retailers in order to stimulate people to buy now and not wait until Boxing day.
Because of this fact, a quick trip to your local electronics box store's home theater department will show you that these large ticket systems are now being bought up at a rate that is even surprising most salesman. To be blunt, they can't keep up and after one sale they have an eager 25-55 year old couple waiting patiently to help them not just kick some tires, but to buy a large TV, a home theater system, and yes, a Blu-ray player all in one shot. They cannot keep them in stock and anything coming in is snatched up surprisingly fast. Now this might be only what I am seeing in Canada, but I know in the US, they are seeing a similar situation. Sure everyone is trying to hold onto their money, but this one big ticket purchase while prices are slow is just the thing to keep the economic blues away. I can't blame them. If you are ever in a low mood, go rent a Blu-ray movie, pop it into your home theater system and watch your worries fade away as you are immersed into another world of 1080p flat panel TV goodness soaked in true HD digital surround sound. Hey, in the long run it is cheaper than hitting the bottle.
Now back on topic here and enough of the rambling. The Blu-ray player being reviewed today is Samsung's fifth generation BD player that has been upgraded to support the Blu-ray 1.1 profile which will allow you to access more special content on certain BD movies. Although it is not a full Blu-ray 2.0 profile player YET, it is said that the additional specification can and will be a future firmware upgrade in the future. Couple this with that additional upgrade possibly including
DTS-HD Master Audio decoding and you have a complete and up to date BD player with all the capabilities of a much more expensive player. Let's hope the upgrade comes through, but then again, for the everyday user, a lot of these special additional features will only be used by a mere small fraction of consumers.
But let's dive into this player and see what it brings to separate itself in a rather increasingly crowded BD player market.
