We haven’t forgotten about High Definition, honest. Incredibly it’s been a year since our first peak at the fledgling UK High Definition consumer market. And despite a distinct lack of ground breaking advances, we’re slowly seeing the first signs of what the industry hopes will be a mass consumer market: Sky now broadcasts in High Definition, HDV cameras are in their second generation and more importantly we’ve seen the release of the first Blu Ray player in the UK, the Samsung BD-P1000.

Oh the quality

It’s all very well getting excited about the prospect of High Definition films, but without the means to playback that glorious picture quality it’s all a bit of a tease. Blu Ray players (and writers) have been available for the PC for some time now, but until recently there wasn’t a stand alone Blu Ray disc player in the UK. Now Samsung have managed to steal a lead and release the first Blu Ray player last week. First generation technology always comes at a premium and at a smidgen under £1,000, you won’t be finding these little babies filling up the shelves of your local Tesco. But for those that simply have to have the latest it’s a small price to pay.

Before seeing the Samsung BD-P1000 my only experience of High Definition’s been the HDV offerings from Sony’s range of High Definition Video cameras. As with any ‘prosumer’ camera, quality’s admiral but not quite up to Hollywood standards. However, given the undoubted wow factor of the cameras’ image quality, I wasn’t expecting a ground breaking increase in quality. Oh how wrong I was. Playing through an impressive Samsung HDTV display, the images produced by the BD-P1000 were simply stunning. Seeing films you know and love in this new format is like seeing an entirely new film such is the level of detail. Been building up your DVD collection over the last few years? Be prepared to start all over again with Blu Ray.