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Hybrid HD-DVD and Blu-ray player from LG

Published on 7th January 2007 by Wil Harris

The BH100 is the hybrid HD-DVD and Blu-ray player from LG.

LG has defied digital media moguls by stepping up and announcing a home theatre player that will accept both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, in a move that could defuse the ongoing 'format wars'.

The BH100, as it is called, will cost $1,199 and be out before April.

The player sports all the usual next-gen features - 1080p output, HDMI, DTS HD and the like, although there's no information available on whether it will support the latest HDMI 1.3 standard.

The player achieves its multi-format goodness using a Broadcom chip which decodes both formats.

The formats are superficially very similar - both use blue lasers for accurate reading of disc tracks, and both use MPEG 4 and VC1 for video encoding. The only difference is really the fact that Sony owns the Blu-ray format and HD-DVD is an industry-standard successor to plain old DVD.

The buttons on the device are inspired by the LG Chocolate phone, being backlit and touch sensitive.

Also announced was the LG GGW-H10N, which is a PC drive designed to accept both formats - especially designed for Girls Gone Wild discs? It will support writing to Blu-ray discs but not HD-DVD writables, and also may not support some online/interactive features of HD-DVD. Expect that to also arrive before April, although we don't have a price yet.

Exciting stuff, and good to see technology coming to the rescue of consumers who would be otherwise stuffed by the format wars. Will you be stumping up for one of these hybrid players? Let us know over in the forums.

15 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

samkiller42 7th January 2007, 22:48

hum, this looks like it will be a winner from the start :D

Sam

Star 7th January 2007, 22:59

where are there two news posts about this or am I just overly confused with the whole format wars issue?

rupbert 7th January 2007, 23:26

Do I recall wrongly, or did Sony not state that they wouldn't license Blu-Ray to be used in a dual format machine?

saeghwin 7th January 2007, 23:57

Wait, since when does Sony own Blu-ray? I thought it was a collaborative effort on the part of a lot of different companies that included Sony.

duc 8th January 2007, 00:04

As LG-Philips is part of the Blue-Ray consortium perhaps that's the reason why there isn't as yet an HD-DVD logo on the front of their new player.

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1397874&postcount=17

Lazarus Dark 8th January 2007, 00:06

With terabyte HDD's coming I'm not too concerned about burning to bluray or hddvd. All I want is a 5.25 drive that plays bluray and hddvd movies for, say, under $250USD. Give me that and you've got a sale. Surely this would actually be simpler to make than a burner or dual format burner, why hasn't this come out first. I had a cd-rom drive for years and didn't care about burning, and had a dvd-rom for years after that, still with no cd or dvd burner; I only got a cd/dvd burner just last year! Why is there no hddvd-rom or bd-rom readily available yet? I just want 1080p movies for cheap.

rupbert 8th January 2007, 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by saeghwin
Wait, since when does Sony own Blu-ray? I thought it was a collaborative effort on the part of a lot of different companies that included Sony.

Collaborative in it's creation, but Sony owns the license.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lazarus Dark
Why is there no hddvd-rom or bd-rom readily available yet?

I'm guessing it's manfacturing, as both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD standalone players are far from 'readily available'.

DXR_13KE 8th January 2007, 14:22

a nice price for what it does. IMO

Flibblebot 9th January 2007, 13:12

Unfortunately, according to reports, the machine doesn't actually offer full HD-DVD compatibility. LG confirmed that while the player will play HD DVD movie discs it, won't offer the full interactive functionality of the system. Users won't even see the onscreen menu system on an HD DVD disc. Instead, the player will default to its own menu. The deck will also not play CDs.

rupbert 9th January 2007, 13:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flibblebot
Unfortunately, according to reports, the machine doesn't actually offer full HD-DVD compatibility. LG confirmed that while the player will play HD DVD movie discs it, won't offer the full interactive functionality of the system. Users won't even see the onscreen menu system on an HD DVD disc. Instead, the player will default to its own menu. The deck will also not play CDs.

Yeah I was confused as to why the HD-DVD functionality has been gimped, and why on earth can it not play music cds?

:?

Flibblebot 9th January 2007, 14:18

I imagine the cobbling of HD DVD is something to do with licensing.
As for not being able to play CDs, your guess is as good as mine...something to do with the blue laser perhaps?

rupbert 9th January 2007, 14:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flibblebot
I imagine the cobbling of HD DVD is something to do with licensing.
As for not being able to play CDs, your guess is as good as mine...something to do with the blue laser perhaps?

Yeah but it has both a red and blue laser.

lt paul 9th January 2007, 21:27

But for CD's it would also need an infrared laser.

Colonel Sanders 9th January 2007, 21:40

but I thought a blue laser could read media designed for red lasers- I thought the main difference was that the pits for CD/DVDs (red laser) are far larger than the pits on media with blue lasers. Since DVD players don't have trouble reading CDs (which have larger pits) than it would make sense that a blue laser should be able to read CDs or DVDs.

L J

g3n3tiX 9th January 2007, 21:45

It's ot going to stop the war, because people will buy a HD DVD, and bluray, so the two will be forced to coexist. What I think, (my pinch of salt)