Samsung's Newest Shot At World's Thinnest Blu-ray Player Appears

Tweet

Samsung has long been about making electronics as thin and space-saving as possible, but their push to make the thinnest Blu-ray player has reached new heights with a model they’re looking to show off at, once again, the 2011 CES show. And why are they sufficiently excited about a Blu-ray player to fit it into the biggest electronics show on earth? Simple: the device measures just 23 millimeters thick (about .9 inches, for those of you who don’t speak metric).

The device, which hasn’t been specifically named yet, isn’t just a super-thin Blu-ray player, but also a fully-featured one: it will offer up support for 3D content, the ability to upconvert 2D into a strange almost-3D, and internet connectivity so you can use it as a streaming box too for access to things like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, among others. Samsung also says that the player will be the thinnest such player commercially available when it goes to launch.

Interestingly, commercial interest in Blu-ray is starting to pick up: sales of Blu-ray players doubled from this time last year going up to over 400,000 units, and 3D compatible players made up 15 percent of that. While most people probably aren’t too concerned about just how thick their Blu-ray player is, as opposed to things like “what it does” and “how well it works”, it’d still make a nice conversation piece. And, it’s also kind of interesting to watch Samsung’s progress on this whole “thinnest Blu-ray player ever” quest of theirs. In fact, in 2009, they reportedly put out a 39 millimeter thick model, and 2010 saw them wheel out a  29 millimeter thick model. Eventually, at this rate, their player will be only slightly larger than the disc itself.

Naturally, there’s no word as yet on pricing data or release dates, though with its formal announcement set to hit at CES 2011 in just a few days, we’ll likely be getting the heads up on all of that directly.