Please take the whole thing in context. Some of those soon-to-be-released firmware upgrades aren’t minor. But to answer your question directly, what I saw made no direct reference to the inclusion or exclusion of 1080p.

And at the risk of beating an already pummeled and thoroughly dead horse even more…. 1080p from HD DVD is possible right now. Somewhere, someone, at this very moment is viewing 1080 lines of progressively scanned video, with the combination of a current model HD DVD player and 1080p display.

The film based content on HD DVD is encoded at 1080p/24, this stream output at 1080i/60 to a 1080p display, capable of 3:2 pulldown (hard to find one that isn’t capable) results in full 1080p. Right now with no waiting and at $500 less than the competition to boot.

Or in other words, currently 1080p film material is 24 frames per second. 1080i sends 60 fields per second; it simply splits each frame into two parts and sends them separately to the displays video processor. The difference from just sending the display 1080p/24 to begin with versus 1080i/60 to a 1080p display with 3:2 pulldown is indistinguishable.

1080p output from a hi-def disc player is by and large a marketing decision; these manufacturers know that true 1080p requires a (shocker) 1080p display and that the overwhelming majority of 1080p displays have 3:2 pull down and very capable internal video processors.

On the other hand, you really have to wonder what real benefit the 1080p output from the Samsung Blu-ray player offers. The Samsung pulls the video off the disc at 1080i and then spits in through a de-interlacer (the same one that’s found in many 1080p displays) which then outputs at 1080p. Many of today’s displays don’t even accept 1080p….