Samsung's New Bluray Player

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Samsung's New Bluray Player

No one wants an ugly Blu-ray box sitting in his or her home theater, but the look of the machine is secondary to its function--at least we'd like to think so--particularly since it's not something you'd be looking at very often. But that's not going to stop Samsung from making a sexy looking Blu-ray Disc player.

Samsung revealed at CES the BD-3600 standalone Blu-ray Disc player, which takes fashion very seriously. The BD-3600 looks nothing like the usual "DVD player look" of most machines today, but instead looks, well, like a shiny black wedge. The edges are accented with a tinge of red color, which matches it well with the rest of Samsung's "Touch of Color" LCD TVs. It also features touch sensitive controls, which should help speed up the tarnishing of the player's glossy finish.

The BD-3600 isn't light on features though. It includes the now-mandatory BD-Live Profile 2.0 and goes a step further by supporting streaming of content from both Netflix and Pandora. It can also do so wirelessly with the included Wi-Fi dongle that plugs into one of the player's two USB ports.

Could this be the start of fashion-oriented Blu-ray Disc players? We're not sure, but as long as it doesn't affect function, we're never one to turn away a prettier form. Look for this sometime in 1H 2009.