A High-Def Player Decoder Ring
In response to this recent Gizmodo post, which posits that Pioneer (BDP-HD1) and Sony's (BDP-S1) Blu-ray players are clones, aside from their cosmetics, by virtue of their identical Java bugs (The Descent is an absolutely incredible movie, by the way), I'll share what my anonymous sources have told me:
Phillips is a re-badge of the Samsung, Sony is a rebadge of the Pioneer, Panasonic is its own player.
Note that Philips and Sony, the key inventors of the Blu-ray format, are re-selling players designed by other companies. These are indeed interesting times
Hardware-sharing isn't restricted to the Blu-ray gang. A careful choice of search keywords will reveal that the RCA HDV5000 HD DVD player is a near-clone of Toshiba's HD-A1, judging from the fact that the RCA unit accepts Toshiba firmware ugprades.
