If Blu-ray had actually done the job right, it would have marched on after its bloody victory over HD DVD and taken the battle to the armies of DVD with the goal of vanquishing the last-gen technology to the Hades of the tech world. Instead, it stood around cheering and big-noting itself. Now, DVD is preparing to take the next-gen format by surprise with a stealth attack in the form of the Samsung F1080 upscaling DVD player.
Okay, so it isn’t that stealthy, and it isn’t that violent, but the F1080 is a very attractive piece of kit, especially for a DVD player. It features Samsung’s AnyNet+ technology and touch sensitive controls, which is always a nice addition to home theatre kit. Plus it will upscale your DVDs, bringing a pseudo-HD experience to your loungeroom.
And the price? $199. That may seem a bit pricey for a DVD player these days, but that’s the price you pay for style, I guess.
On paper, the Samsung YP-S2 is just another shuffle-beater, a 1GB player for US$39. But in person, it’s the most stylish of its class, in five colours, including those below and a white with faux marble grain. (Sadly Samsung didn’t have that one on hand.) It charges via a removable USB dongle that plugs right into the 35mm headphone jack, saving space—just don’t lose the extra piece. It’s not fully see-through, like Sony’s similar OLED-screen MP3 players, but it does have a glowing multicoloured LED that is supposed to indicate status. As you can see in the gallery, it’s not totally fingerprint-proof, but US$39 doesn’t guarantee perfection. [Samsung]
These Samsung YP-S2 Pebble MP3 players look quite similar to the Creative Zen Stone (because they both look like small rocks), and hold about 1GB of MP3s and WMAs. They’ve got about 10 hours of playback, but don’t do a whole lot else (other than looking and feeling like rocks). They’ll be available in the UK around May, but no release date or pricing yet for the US or elsewhere. [Shiny Shiny]
