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Sony, Pioneer push back release dates for Blu-Ray players

Sony has revealed that its BDP-S1 Blu-Ray disc player will now be launching in mid-August, and not later this month as previously suggested - with electronics giant Pioneer also announcing a delay for its own player.

Sony has revealed that its BDP-S1 Blu-Ray disc player will now be launching in mid-August, and not later this month as previously suggested - with electronics giant Pioneer also announcing a delay for its own player.

According to the Sony Style website, the BDP-S1 will now ship "on or about August 15, 2006." The USD 1000 player was originally given a June 30th launch date, which was later changed to July.

Pioneer has also abandoned the proposed June release date for its BDP-HD1 player, apparently due to interoperability issues. It will now launch in September at a price point of USD 1500 - a drop of USD 300 from the MRP originally suggested.

"We decided to hold off for bit just to make sure everything works well relative to all the various studios that are planning to ship BD titles," commented Pioneer's Andy Parsons.

"Launching a new format is fairly big effort, and you have such a broad spectrum of capabilities with the media itself, including BD-Java, content protection layers and various authoring tools that are being brought up to speed."

The delays raise questions about the development process of the Blu-Ray format - and concerns over whether the format will be able to build up significant momentum in time for the launch of the PlayStation 3 this November. However, Samsung is still scheduled to launch its Blu-Ray player on June 25th, around the same time as the first movie titles will appear in shops.

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Ellie Gibson

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Ellie spent nearly a decade working at Eurogamer, specialising in hard-hitting executive interviews and nob jokes. These days she does a comedy show and podcast. She pops back now and again to write the odd article and steal our biscuits.