Think that will ever happen? A LD and blu-ray combo player?

No, it won't. There's too little request for it. Though tonight I dreamt I found a clone of the HLD-X0 at a price at $1500 and bought it immedietly. That would've been awesome indeed.

But if one was released would you buy it?

Could you hack a LD/DVD combo to play blu-ray by adding the hardware/software?

I wouldn't even begin to know how to do that... It would be cool though!

Though truthfully, I wouldn't buy it until someone shoved a VCR in there too, so it'll play every piece of physical media I have!!

Daro: A brand new HLD-X0 clone at $1500? No doubt I'd buy it!

But honestly, no, I probably wouldn't buy a Blu-Ray/LD combo player unless the LD player would've been something decent. D704 at least, anything less wouldn't be worth considering imo. I think combining two existing LD and Blu-Ray players into one could be difficult if video for both should be sent through HDMI. Integration sounds like a very tough task as both kinds of players have entierly different construction.

I've actually done this. You take a nice $2000 LD player and set a $60 Bluray deck on top of it. Pretty easy. If you're splurging, use a $200 PS3 for the BR.

Doing this the way you described would be a *massive* undertaking for no benefit whatsoever. It makes way more sense to just have two decks. There is literally nothing in an LD player that can be used to play BRs except for the tray and the power supply. The laser is different, the spindle is different, and nothing in the circuitry carries over at all.

I think it's safe to say that this will never happen.

You are probably right.

Totally unrealistic if you ask me, to produce such a player, even though it would have been a cool gimmick!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/betamaxhd.html

do anyone know when the patents for example the opticsl laser for x0 runs out? that might be the ld savior

Good April Fools joke.

Have you looked at the X0's schematics/service manual? It would be very, very hard to clone/rebuild.

I have and yes, making a duplicate is near impossible by now. Many components are most likely outdated and will need to be replaced as well. I've heard somewhere that the HLD-X0 was built by hand but I cannot give any source.