Now that HD DVD is dead, the Blu-ray player is pretty much a commodity item. Player manufacturers are looking for anything they can get to differentiate their players from the competition in the market. Samsung announced a partnership with Netflix today that will help make Samsung Blu-players more interesting.

The Samsung BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players will be able to stream Netflix movies instantly from the Internet to Netflix subscribers. In addition to a catalog of 12,000 movies, Netflix also offers TV shows.

Both the Samsung Blu-ray players have to be connected to broadband Internet to be able to stream movies. In addition to the streaming, the players offer full 1080p resolution and use HQV processing chips. Support for 7.1 surround sound is also included. Pricing and availability for the players is unknown at this time.

Samsung