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Samsung along with LG and Acer were all strong-hold Blu-Ray players. We has recently seen Acer and LG try to develop dual Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives and now Samsung has seemed to lessen their devotion.

The Korean company has added an HD-DVD player (and possibly recorder) on their M55 notebook computers—the world’s thinnest and lightest 17-inch widescreen notebook. Other notebook specs include a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7600 Go graphics card, 120GB hard drive, 802.11 a/b/g wireless connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, inputs and outputs galore, including HDMI, and powered by an Intel T2500 Core Duo processor.

Is the format battle already dieing down?

Read [Pocket Lint] Via [EngadgetHD]

The 599 euro (£400) HD-E1 will be released two days before rival Blu-ray players in Europe, only a slight lead as compared to the two month head-start the format had here in the states. BD will of course also be available in Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 3 which will be out in the not so distant future. A second Toshiba HD-DVD player will be released in December.

Prices for Toshiba’s first wave of HD-DVD machines have been set considerably higher than in the US, where the first HD-DVD machines were released in April, and some retail for a little as $499 (£260, 390 euros). By contrast, Samsung’s first Blu-ray player was priced at $999 (£524, 760 euros) in the US.

Read [Electronics Weekly]

Though not as sleek and sexy as the Toshiba models or Sony Blu-ray players, RCA has come out with their own HD-DVD player, the HDV5000.  The HDV5000 supports MPEG2, MPEG4/AVC and VC1 video formats and plays DVD/DVD-R/-RW/DVD-RAM discs and mp3 audio files from CD-R/CD-RW discs.

The RCA HDV5000 provides high-definition up-conversion of standard DVD discs and includes an HDMI output for digital audio and video. The HDV5000 will output copy-protected HD content through the HDMI interface in either 720p or 1080i - and standard definition DVD discs can be upconverted to 720p or 1080i. The the audio side the player will support Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD (2 channel), DTS and DTS-HD (5.1 channel) via S/PDIF or HDMI outputs.

Read [RCA]