WesleyTech.com is reporting that Samsung has cancelled their new flagship Blu Ray player, the BDP-2400.

According to WesleyTech, there is no explanation for the cancellation. They also note that the forthcoming Samsung combo player, the BD-UP5000, has been postponed until December. Since Blu Ray specifications are in a state of flux, one can easily jump to the conclusion that Samsung was unable to release either unit within the time window necessary to include the Blu Ray Profile the units were designed to implement. We'll see if that ends up being the case, or whether Samsung is scaling back their Blu Ray support in favor of a combo player focus that eschews partisan players altogether.

The Home Theater Specialists of America has made it's CEDIA announcement that it is backing Blu Ray over HD DVD official yesterday.

The HTSA says it's decision was based on an internal study that showed 92 percent of category sales by HTSA members were Blu Ray. However, that balance was comprised mostly of dual format combo players. Executive director Richard Glikes of the HTSA said disc capacity, larger manufacturer adoption, content availability and better resolution are all things that make the consumer want Blu Ray over HD DVD. (Someone needs to inform Mr. Glikes that HD DVD and Blu Ray have their content encoded at the exact same resolution)

One sort of questions the relevance of this announcement, especially when the people running the HTSA can't seem to get their facts straight before issuing a press release.

Initially I saw this and decided it wasn't worth putting up, but a few interesting comments were made at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Tuesday.

Disney CEO Bob Iger made the comment "We believe it's a no-brainer ... that the industry should be behind Blu-ray". Referring to the announcement made by Paramount and Dreamworks, Iger commented "I think those studios were likely taking easy money. We haven't taken any money because we believe it".

Fox head honcho Rupert Murdoch offered "Paramount switched out the other day. God knows why". Murdoch also summed up his feelings on the format war "The public is going to want Blu-ray. The public can tell the difference".

On the opposing side, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman remarked under the cloud of rumours that have director Steven Spielberg leaving Dreamworks next year when his contract expires "..the financial impact to Paramount first and especially to Viacom overall would be completely immaterial". The statement is noteworthy given that Mr. Dauman has a reputation for being very guarded when speaking publicly.

It appears that after the shockwave the Paramount decision sent, we aren't going to see any more major announcements until after the holiday shopping season. We'll see what the two formats are willing to do to advance their cause, and take amusement in comments like these from the two side's talking heads.

According to this thread on AVSForum, the Samsung BDP-1400 is the first Blu Ray or HD DVD player capable of sending compressed audio via bitstream over the HDMI connection.

Previously, all Blu Ray and HD DVD players would decode Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD and output them as LPCM via the HDMI connection. The only problem with this is that no player as yet decodes DTS-HD or the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. For the new variants of DTS, Blu Ray and HD DVD players extract the core DTS track only. Now that AV receivers and pre/pros are beginning to appear that feature onboard decoding of these new codecs, Samsung is the first to offer users the option of sending uncompressed Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver or pre/pro to decode.

The Samsung BDP-1400 Blu Ray player is available now, and has a suggested retail of $499.