28 February 2006 - Hollywood Studios including Sony Pictures and Liongate have announced the launch date for Blu-ray movies in America to coincide with the launch of the first player from Samsung. Both Lionsgate and Sony Pictures have said that they will make a number of Blu-ray discs available on the 23 May 2006... Getting High Definition in your house isn’t going to be cheap however. Samsung’s first player – the BD-1000 is expected to cost $1000, however it will come with HDMI output as standard and backwards compatibility with most of today's standard DVD formats.