Mr. Hunter, a reader, dropped me a note about a conversation he had with an LG representative at an audio store. So yeah, this is third-hand, but it’s still interesting.

Supposedly LG is coming out with a universal HD DVD / BD player this fall for the princely sum of…. $1200. Which actually isn’t so bad considering that BD players don’t look to be breaking the $1k barrier anytime soon. For an extra $200 you get an HD DVD player thrown into the mix.

This kind of player looks like a safe bet for all those people sitting on the sidelines in the format war. Though you’ll probably still end up with some software from the losing side, at least you won’t have to replace your player. I hope that this device is a top-quality player with HDMI 1.3.