LG surprised everyone at CES this year by announcing that their combo BD and HD DVD player is indeed a reality and would be available soon. “Soon” turned out to be “almost immediately”, and gadgetaholic has a review.

Remember that this player plays both Blu-ray discs and HD DVD discs, but does not support the HD DVD format’s iHD functionality. And it retails for a cool $1,199. (That’s enough to buy both an HD DVD player and a BD player (the PS3).)

So what does gadgetaholic think of this player? Load times are slightly better for BD discs than for HD DVD discs. The lack of iHD functionality really scuppers the use of special HD DVD features. They couldn’t find any picture quality difference between this player and other players for BD and HD DVD discs. But they didn’t seem to use a very thorough method. But they didn’t think highly of the DVD upscaling abilities.

All in all they think the player is a decent BD player with HD DVD capabilities tacked on.

LG BH100 Reviewed