Samsung announce new Blu-ray players with Ultra-Violet

Rovi, the company behind DivX and a lot of the technologies we see in tech today have announced a new 'disc to digital' solution for blu-ray players and PCs

Samsung have unveiled their new Smart Blu-ray players that will be the first to feature Rovi's 'Disc to digital' functionality, letting users download digital versions of their Blu-ray or DVD onto portable devices like the iPad.

Coming to all Samsung Blu-ray players in 2012 the service will arrive alongside cloud-support and 3D support making it Samsung's strongest line-up yet.

Rovi 'Disc to digital' features

In partnership with other tech companies and four major film studios the 'disc to digital' service would see users being able to place a Blu-ray in their Samsung Blu-ray player and then be given the option to download a digital copy of their film via UltraViolet.

At the moment it's in the early stages, with UltraViolet still considered a fledging online store, however its potential is fairly huge, it could potentially allow users to no longer have to buy separate versions of every film, instead just placing a DVD in their player, then downloading a digital version of the film which could then be played on a iPad 2 or Asus Transformer Prime.

Of course it wouldn't be business if it wasn't free, Rovi have said that they would charge users a 'nominal' fee for the privilage of being able to download a digital copy of their film. However it does come with the added advantage of letting you use a DVD and then if a high-definition digital version is available, download that as well.

The service has huge potential, and having the confirmation that Samsung Smart Blu-ray players will feature this technology is a big step, however it is early days for the service and will no doubt require full cooperation from all the film studios for it to work.

The BD-ES6000 and BD-E6500 will both be arriving in the coming months however no official word on pricing or release date.

What do you think, is this the best of both worlds or should we be able to have digital copies of our films for free? Let us know what you think via the comments box below...