First Blu-ray Drives Won't play Blu-ray Movies

aapold writes "Sony officially announced its BWU-100A product at its "Experience More 2006" event in Sydney yesterday, all the while acknowledging that there's significant room for improvement before the product is viable for integration into media centre PCs. Sony's product manager for data storage, told CNET.com.au that due to copy protection issues and lagging software development, the drive will only play user-recorded high-definition content from a digital camcorder, and not commercial movies released under the BD format." All this hullabaloo makes me want neither side to win. If only I didn't desperately crave HD content on my TV!

Comments

if companies from the past behaved

[yagu]

If companies from the past behaved as companies today:

• Transistor radio announced. Will not play radio transmissions other than those from owners' transmitters.
• Color TV! All Shows reproduced in realistic black and white (those are colors, aren't they?)
• 100,000 mile car tires! Guaranteed for 10,000 miles!
• 10-speed bicycles! (speeds are produced by owner pedaling at various cadences)
• Stereo Hi-Fi! Two channels of high-fidelity sound through one speaker!
• Windows! (opaque)
• Digital Cable! oh wait, never mind.

But hey, not all is lost, from the fine article:

Bautista is optimistic that both issues will be resolved "soon", and says that despite not being able to play commercial content, the drive is still useful as a "storage device"...

So the drive is "useful as a storage device". Cool! Now I can get rid of my 250GX2 SATA Raid and keep my data on something useful. Technology just doesn't get any better than this.

Note to providers of stuff: It doesn't matter why your machine can't do what it's even named after(!), it can't. Don't bring us your tired, your poor, ... the wretched refuse of your product lines until they do what they're supposed to do! What a Colossus boner.

Re:if companies from the past behaved

[muyuubyou]

Funny that you mention a couple of technologies that were pioneered by Sony back in the day.

Ibuka and Morita must be spinning in their graves. They could as well power the PS3 by installing dynamo generators in their graves.

How low has Sony fallen since they passed away?

the demise of the disc

[intrico]

Issues like this are just going to increase the demand for downloadable movies, and hasten the demise of "Disc Media" as the primary means of movie watching.

Re: the demise of the disc

[JanneM]

All of which ignores one somewhat inconvenient fact: the visual difference isn't very big in practice.

There was a demo set up at a major retailer here in Osaka recently. Two HD televisions, one playing some clip on a modern DVD player, one playing HD content. If I got close - as in one meter kind of close - sure, there was more small detail and the shadowy areas were more "lively" (though that could have been noise, to be frank). But back up to a more normal viewing distance for the screens (42"), and I saw no discernible difference at all, even when I was looking at and comparing the same spots I knew I had seen a difference close up.

For all intents and purposes, the experience I got was identical. And that was with two good HD screens, set up by people who know what they're doing, in a semi-darkened area with black drapes to get rid of incidental light. At home, with an inexpertly tuned screen amd non-optimal lighting (to be kind to myself and to the vast majority of all tv owners) I'm willing to bet that even up close those deficiencies are enough to mask any perceivable improvement.

DVD was a big hit because it overcame some truly glaring deficiencies with VHS tape. You'd had to be blind not to appreciate the difference (or rather, even if blind the sound quality difference is night and day on even a cracked bargain-basement integrated mono speaker on the set). The image quality just didn't compare, unlike a tape the disk never wears down, and you can skip around with abandon instead of tedious winding of the tape.

HD format discs are, I suspect, more like some high-end audio equipment. If you get some serious audio kit your listening experience will indeed improve a lot. But only if you do set it up correctly, only if you then play source material of good enough fidelity to take advantage of that difference and only if you as a listener actually care enough to look for and appreciate the difference. And most people don't. They'll set up the stuff to fit in their living room not fit the audio characteristics; they'll listen to popular music that usually has little fine detail to listen for (since most will listen on low-end equipment it's mixed to make the most of that); they'll sometimes, and increasingly, listen to it encoded on 128bit mp3. A high-end amplifier and serious speakers become mostly a waste of money. Meaning they become low-volume sellers, which means the prices stay high.

For HD players, you have the added headache that the media is different - your normal DVDs will look not one bit better than with a normal, good quality DVD player. Only if you buy the special content (Deutche Gramofon's pressings of classical music anyone?) do you actually get any benefit; that content will however not play in the car for your kids, or at grandma's or, well anywhere since most people have not bought the expensive higher-end equipment you need.

Had they got together on one format they'd have pulled it off; people would have gotten the new equipment on sheer momentum even if they don't get any actual benefits from it. But now that you have to choose from two incompatible formats I think the chances of either becoming mass-market is not that great. I'd not be surprised if one or both stay niche formats, with all movies out on DVD in the foreseeable future, and with only a subset deemed interesting for the niche consumers available on HD. The window for any new physical format is closing and I don't expect either of them to be able to squeeze through in time.

Is it really worth it, anyway?

[mark0]

I'm looking at a Superbit copy of 5th Element on my Oppo OPDV971H upconverted to 1080i and it looks great. I'm sure Blu-ray would look better, but would it really look so much better that I'd be ready to toss my current DVDs and player for that difference? Especially considering all of the baggage that comes with it?

I'll wait for the price to come way way down and all of the DRM to be cracked... probably when the next format is announced.

Re:Is it really worth it, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD is to high-definition what 64 kbps MP3 is to 128 kbps.

- Some people can hear the difference,
- some can't,
- some could but don't because they have crappy headphones,
- some can but don't care.

The same classification holds for high-definition video (replace "crappy headphones" with "crappy TV"). Which group are you in?

Re:Is it really worth it, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

The general quality scale goes like this although people get impressed by the 1080, it is all about the i vs p.

480i 480p 1080i 720p 1080p

Now if your player cannot deliver 720p and only can do 540p (which is what 1080i if it was progressive) then I can see why it might look better. Although personal perference varies 720p delivers more information per frame than 1080i and does not suffer from all of the problems with interleaving like;

- 30 full frames per second intead of 60
- Jitter in high speed images due to the slight shift from "frame" to "frame"
- Broken or missing lines if they do not appear in both "frames"

More likely than you like 1080i better is that your player does not upconvert well to the higher quality 720p.

Bittorrent has already won this war.

[plasmacutter]

All this hullabaloo makes me want neither side to win. If only I didn't desperately crave HD content on my TV!

go to torrentspy or any other large site and search "hr hdtv"..

blu-ray and hd-dvd are overhyped and already obsolete.

h.264 encoded matroska at 600 mb or so an hour can do the job of these overbloaded and DRM ridden things.

and what's with this.. they expect pc owners to accept the kind of draconian superuser control over their pcs which are specified in their AACS restrictions? Give me a break, it'll never happen.

HD is overrated

[MaineCoon]

At least for movies.

It looks nice, but unless I'm TRYING to look for the extra detail, I generally don't notice it.

I've watched a few high def movies; compared Lawrence of Arabia in HD format to SD format, and yes the detail is much crisper - that is, the leaves on the trees in the opening scene are discernable. I also watched Fifth Element in HD, but I've seen it several times before and the being HD didn't really look any different.

Re:Next media should be defined by the community.

[plasmacutter]

yes, it's called matroska with h.264 video, aac audio, and srt subtitles ; )..

it's been the standard with anime groups for the past couple years.

Re:Next media should be defined by the community.

[Tumbleweed]

Would it be possible to the community to layout the specifications, fabrication methods of the next generation of media?

Sure, once we know what the next generation of media will BE, we'll get back to you on that.

Fortunately, there's a format that will kill Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and it's already here: DVD.

Messing up a huge business opportunity *again*

[viking2000]

The movie and music industy are tiny in economic contribution compared to the hardware industry.

The total income if the whole world were to buy new HDTVs, HD Entertainment systems and players, as well as a buch of HD DVDs is an order of magnitude higher than what hollywood and RIAA stands to loose if you make it all easy and user friendly.

Instead they mess this huge opportunity up with copy protection BS.

I have no problem buying a few hundred HD DVDs for $20 each over a few years *even* if I can get a copy from a neighbour for free. The $20 gives me a nice full color case and DVD, and a nice looking collection.

More Products

[shoma-san]

Does this remind anyone of other Sony products like lets say "Star Wars Galaxies" that didn't work quite as well as promised? Remember installing the software with glee and logging in for the first time? You bought the collectors edition and were wearing your way to cool exclusive sunglasses when the servers crashed? And then you didn't jump on your land speeder or climb into your Xwing fighter, did you? No, you tried to kill a butterfly with your stupid melee knife and got killed.

Well, you can't trick me again Sony. Fuck Sony and all your crapy products that aren't worth a damn because I'm not going to buy them!

In other news today, the author previewed Windows Vista that didn't work quite as well as promised... As he began to install the software with glee...

mod parent up please

[Travoltus]

He meant that in this case, DRM has proven itself impractical and in fact harmful to a product, thus undermining its own credibility.

Sony and its massive 30 caliber shoot-itself-in-the-foot cannon is our friend in the war against DRM. They do more damage to DRM than any EFF lawsuit could ever hope to.

Re:PS3?

[Jthon]

Seeing as how the premium PS3 supports HDCP over its HDMI connecter I don't think this is a problem at all. Plus all the first gen blu-ray titles don't enable HDCP or content protection as they wouldn't work on most of the current hi-def TV's.

So even in that case you should be able to play blu-ray movies until studios start setting the HDCP flag. Even then it will play blu-ray movies they just get downsampled to normal content (sucks I know).

I do wish the big content providers would stop being so paranoid and just make it easy for people to watch legally purchased films.

Re:They encourage piracy....

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Right you are, and they've created yet another situation where you can only get quality, interoperabe media with *stolen* content; they won't sell it to you at any price.

They *could* compete with free, you know.

Re:Genius!

[ppc_digger]

Maybe the fifth was the cease and desist letter to DVD Decrypter :)

Re:They WILL play blu-ray movies.

[Nogami_Saeko]

I'd rather he didn't - at least not yet...

Wait until there is LOTS of blu-ray hardware and software out, as well as hundreds (thousands?) of movies released in the format. THEN hack it - then it will be too late for the companies to start making major changes to the hardware and software without impacting huge numbers of consumers (and risking a huge backlash).

If you hack it early, the media empirs will just make modifications to break the hack again, and if it's done early enough, they'll be able to do it without stirring up the masses

N.