Samsung Corp's Samsung America Inc on Thursday said it would make some improvements to its Blu-ray high-definition DVD players ahead of the holiday season. "As we approach the 2006 holiday season, Samsung will make a running line production improvement to BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc players destined for the U.S. market," the company said in a statement.

The production line improvement will include a modified setting for the noise filter reduction circuit that will provide a slightly sharper picture, it said.

IOn addition, all BD-P1000 units shipped since the player hit the U.S. market earlier this year will support reproduction of the forthcoming dual-layer 50 GB Blu-ray titles.

Since Samsung rolled out the first Blu-ray player, priced at $1,000, in late June, Blu-ray has faced complaints of subpar picture quality on discs and other technical issues.

The Blu-ray consortium has long said it would launch with interactive features built on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java software.

On Thursday, Samsung said the improvements would include adding Java title compatibility to coincide with the launch of BD Java titles being released this fall.