After all the rumours about this device, we were able to see with our own eyes. LG has finally unveiled the Super Multi Blue Player (or the BH100).The device can play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs.
It has been on sale from the month of April in the US, at the retail price of $1,199.You can see movies at the resolution of 1920×1080p HD, it has touch sensor buttons and it can support HDMI Out and Optical / 5.1CH out.You won’t need to think about which slot to insert the disc because it has only one tray.
You can also play the regular DVD discs.As a disadvantage the audio CDs aren’t compatible to this player. Dr H.G. Lee, the president and CTO of LG Electronics has told us :  “We decided not to include the CD this time,” “It was an engineering decision to make it simpler. We felt for most consumers it would not be a limitation.”
Maybe they though that the player won’t support the full range of HD DVD interactive features due to hardware limitations. But Mr.Lee tryes to be confident that the Super Multi Blue Player will solve the confusion that surrounds competing HD formats.”Most consumers feel they are confused, and they are not really sure what format player they would like to buy,” he said. “So naturally they are reluctant to purchase players or the DVD content. The growth of this exciting new technology is much slower than it could be, and that’s a concern for everybody in the industry. LG has been a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, and we’re still very active in that camp, but some time in the last year we decided and recognised that the two formats are here to stay, and there won’t be a unification of the formats anytime soon. So this is our approach to solve at least part of the problem.”
With the BH100 you have to wait around 25 seconds from putting a Blu-ray disc and seeing the first menu screen. I think this is on of the fastest startup time for any Blu-ray player that is available today.
There isn’t any network or serial port for budding home networkers.
The LG company has gave us an insight about the price point, they sayed that they wanted to make the combi player no more than 20% more expensive than “premium Blu-ray only players”.