Samsung has announced its BD-UP5500 Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player at a press conference held at CES 2008 in Las Vegas.

The Samsung dual format BD-UP5500 supports both the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD soundtracks playback are supported as well. Other features include standard DVDs to full-on 1080p upconversion and out-of-the-box Blu-ray profile 1.1 support (which allows for picture-in-picture commentaries on newer Blu-ray discs), an Ethernet port new firmware downloads and accessing online content, and HQV processing for enhancing HD and SD video.

The samsung BD-UP5500 Duo HD player will be available in the second-half of 2008 for about $599.