No more speculation, kids. Samsung made an official announcement that the BD-UP5000 is coming—and it will be better than we anticipated.

The duo HD player will be BD Profile 1.1 Ready. That means it will have all of the hardware needed to play BD Profile 1.1 discs. However, it won’t play BD Profile 1.1 discs until it gets a firmware update, which won’t be available until January 2008.

In case you can’t keep up, Profile 1.1 allows Blu-ray players to store audio/video data and title updates. It also adds secondary video and audio decoders for picture-in-picture viewing and interactive audio commentary.

Samsung also adds: “Profile 1.1 discs are currently not available and compatibility must be fully tested before we can assure complete compliance to BD Profile 1.1 requirements.”

All that is a nice distraction from the company’‘s other news: They are not coming out with the HQV-enhanced BD-P2400. That’s OK. You can use the $600 towards the BD-UP5000’s $1,050 expected price (according to Gizmodo).

The BD-UP5000 is shipping at the end of this month, but it won’t be available at retail until mid-to-late December.

Rachel Cericola - Contributing Writer

Over the past 15 years, Rachel Cericola has covered entertainment, web and technology trends. Check her out at www.rachelcericola.com.