SlipperyBrick originally brought you the story of the dual format DVD player that was the symbol of unity, happiness and sunny flower filled meadows in A/V land. Unfortunately, real life is not always so rosy.

It appears that the LB HB100 hybrid may be in trouble because it will not receive certification from the DVD Forum. That’s because the BH100 doesn’t really support HD DVD. Sure it will play the movie straight through if you put an HD DVD in the player, but you won’t be able to access the menu system.

The HD DVD menu system is called iHD. For those uber-geeks out there, iHD was developed by Microsoft and Toshiba for HD DVD. iHD is built on open standards like ECMAScript (JavaScript) and XML. This allows really any media content author to create interactive menus for any optical media not just HD DVD. However, this iHD is not supported in the LG player. This is why the BH100 won’t be able to carry the HD DVD logo.

According to an interview on BetaNews, Keven Collins, Microsoft’s representative to the HD DVD group, said that the DVD Forum could pursue legal action for LG’s claim about its player support HD DVD. Collins said that if the player does not support iHD (also reffered to as HDi) then LG will not be able to sell the player.

Your best bet as a consumer is to avoid this player if you are hoping to get full Blu-ray and HD DVD support. Unless LG adds support for iHG than trying to play HD DVD disks will be pain.