With somewhat strange timing given the company's impending launch of its own Blu-Ray player (BD-P1000), Samsung has announced its plans to consider a dual-format unit to be released later in the year, possibly as early as christmas 2007 for the major territories.

The news will come as somewhat of a surprise for the Blu-Ray advocates
who had previously been enjoying a wave of good publicity following the release of Sony's Playstation 3, and the rapid market share boost that Blu-Ray enjoyed shortly afterwards.

Whilst this isn't the first multi-format HD player on the market, it will be the first to support the interactive technologies of both, meaning full functionality from both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs is possible from one unit.

No indication of cost or design has emerged from SamSung yet, but given previous pricepoints for multi-format players, expect to dig deep this holiday season.