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

Genius!

[C0R1D4N]

That's gonna take the market by storm for sure.

Nothing to see

[anjin-san 3]

"Nothing to see here"

Yeah, I think that sums up the latest blu-ray problem

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?

Re:if companies from the past behaved

[noidentity]

10-speed bicycles! (speeds are produced by owner pedaling at various cadences)

Here's the 56K modem version:

* 10th speed not usable due to FCC momentum regulations

I'm sorry...

[doormat]

Is today April 1? Did I miss a memo?

They encourage piracy....

[krell]

But won't the player play BD content that has been cracked and then burned onto a BluRay disc in the format that the player will accept?

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.

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

[johnfink]

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.

Except, even with my not-too-shabby-for-the-US 8mbit/sec cable connection, it'll take about a day to download a 35gig movie. That's assuming, of course, that I can get reasonably close to my own theoretical limit of 8meg down, and whichever (genius) company is sending me the file can push the data that quickly. I can't get that kind of sustained bandwidth from any company I've downloaded anything from, aside from various Linux distros via bittorent. With a very few downloaders, those numbers add up very quickly, and our measly upload rates (384k for me) do not make the bittorrent avenue feasible in my eyes.

I think my point is, before we start looking to get high-def movies via IP, we need to get some bigger trucks to move all these internets through the series of pipes.

Re: the demise of the disc

[stunt_penguin]

"A high quality DVD rip of a movie is around 2GB"

Wrong. A high quality DVD rip of a movie is around 5-7GB. Your definition of high quality must be lacking.

double the resolution, and you end up with at most....

I don't want to double the resolution, I want HD. 1080p video has double the frame rate, a higher colour depth and four times as many pixels as a DVD. With normal MPEG 2 your 8GB DVD becomes more like 64GB. Then factor in your newer compression techniques and we come back down to 30-40GB. You're not going to get a HD movie on a disc for less than 25GB.

Shit, the HD video I shoot with the HDR HC1 isn't even full 1080i res and it comes to 10GB an hour.

Re: the demise of the disc

[DingerX]

I hate to say it, but it's one of the perverse effects of the "open source mentality": dedicated amateurs will always do a better job at technologically-interesting tasks than professionals. Why? Well, you have to hire professionals; the internet, on the other hand, is the great enabler for addicts of all kinds, including those addicted to getting the best data compression out there.

Sure, these guys get the accolades, and see their files copied across the world, but the bug that drives the true nuts isn't mass approval; it's knowing that nobody else can squeeze the bits like they can.

Paying jobs don't give that: neither the big media corps nor the big media pirates need an ace at this job.

so while they disdain the preponderance of brain-dead pirates who benefit most from their work, they take heart in the few cognoscenti who admire their art.

Yes, it's a sick world we live in. What gives me most fear is the notion that the "Open Source Mentality" itself is to blame, rather than an inefficient marketplace.

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.

However...

[Anonymous Coward]

a future root kit developed by Sony is expected to fix this problem.

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:So much for Sony in the coming format war!

[Bonker]

This is really typical of Sony. For the last 30 years Sony has iterated this process over and over again.

1. Develop really nice content format.
2. Promote the hell out of new content format.
3. Artificially CRIPPLE THE FUCK out of new content format.
4. Wonder why people aren't buying new content format.
5. Abandon new content format.

See also: BetaMax, MiniDisc, MemoryStick, UDF, etc...

I should say this is really typical of Sony USA. Things like MiniDisc were really popular in Japan, but the restrictions imposed on the format came from pressures from Sony's U.S. media divisions.

Sony execs and marketing people refuse to learn from their mistakes, so they keep repeating them. They've been doing it over and over again for literally decades now.

As a matter of fact, unless HD-DVD manages to be as easy to uncripple as DVDs (and it appears that it will be), it too will be stillborn.

PS3?

[LoverOfJoy]

FTA:

Bautista says that one of two reasons for this is the fact that commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which can only be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections.

So is this a confession that the low-end PS3 won't be able to play commercial Blu Ray DVDs? Or does the low-end PS3 use an HDCP-compliant graphics card without offering DVI or HDMI connections?

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.

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:HD is overrated

[iluvcapra]

Funny you ask, we recently had a special edition of The Natural in the shop...

For picture, the best you can get is either an interpositive (which is just one generation down from the camera negative), or the camera negative itself. The camera neg is often in not great shape, though, since it's been cut and A-B rolled. Also dust on the interpositive looks black, whereas dust on the cam neg looks white, and camera neg doesn't have the printer lights from timing I recall (I'm a sound guy, if someone at a lab is reading, please correct me). Interpositives are low-contrast prints of the camera negative, on one strip, and they're usually only run thru a printer a few times, once to strike the IP itself, and once to strike a few internegatives (these are what release prints are struck from).

For sound, the sound optical is usually contact printed onto the IP, but we almost always go back to the original Dialogue/Music/FX stems, which are recorded on 35mm magnetic film. 35mm mag film actually has quite high fidelity, nearly 70dB dynamic range and at least 15 kHz on the high end, so often the the mag sounds a bit better than what is on the optical. As well, the stems will have the discrete speaker channels (particularly the center speaker and surround), which are derived from the optical but do not actually exist on it, so we can "widen" the original mix from it's original format (either 4-channel Dolby Stereo or less) into a true 5.1.

If the filmmaker is still alive, he/she'll often sit thru the mix (my end of it) and have some new sound FX cut to modernize the sound, and maybe even try to rearrange some dialogue he didn't like or tweak the music levels (since we have separated stems, he can change either DIA, MX or FX without affecting the other two.) The Superman DVD WB has out right now is a good example of this from a sound point of view (also a great movie).

Coincidentally, The Natural was released and is owned by TriStar Pictures, which was bought in the late 80s by Columbia, which was itself bought in the early 1990s by... Sony. (fair disclosure: Sony PIctures Entertainment is my current employer).

Obligatory: "But, aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln...

[dpbsmith]

...how did you like the play?"

The manufacturers seems to be falling over themselves trying to bring flawed, faulty, and generally unfinished products to market... presumably oblivious to the possibility the first kid on the block to get one will tell all his friends about his experiences.

I do believe Blu-Ray and HDDVD are well on their way to becoming the quadraphonic sound of the new millennium.

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.

In other news...

[brainnolo]

rumors say that the first Blu-ray player won't even have a laser, because they want to introduce the technology gradually.

Sheer moronitude

[Dachannien]

Sony Electronics: Well, we're ready to sell the first Blu-Ray players, but there's this little unfinished DRM issue preventing us from getting started before HD-DVD makes any headway.
Sony Pictures Entertainment: Sorry, we need our DRM.
Sony Electronics: We could be selling these players and achieving market dominance, though.
Sony Pictures Entertainment: DRM.
Sony Electronics: You could also be selling tons of brand new Blu-Ray discs now.
Sony Pictures Entertainment: Hello? DRM?
Sony Electronics: Our players could be in homes across America and around the world in time for the winter holiday season this year, and you'd be selling high def movies like hotcakes.
Sony Pictures Entertainment: What part of "DRM" don't you understand?
Sony Electronics: Fine, DRM, whatever. I just hope we don't become laughing stocks when we go to Australia this summer.

Also

[DysenteryInTheRanks]

"Sony also unveiled a 120-inch plasma screen television limited to black-and-white programming; a version of the PlayStation that only plays games toggled in on the front panel in assembler; and the 'BurnMan,' a silicon-over-plexiglass contraption that scans in and verifies $100 bills before slowly igniting them for your viewing pleasure, one at a time."

Great Idea!

[the jerk store]

...and says that despite not being able to play commercial content, the drive is still useful as a "storage device", .... The Sony BWU100A has a write speed of 2x and will be available this month for AU$1399.

I'm a little short on storage space in my house. I think I'll go buy a new Range Rover, put it on blocks on my driveway and fill it with junk from the attic.

You for got 4.5!

[Dr. Eggman]

4.5 Blame Pirates.

Re:You for got 4.5!

[Keith Russell]

The devil in the details is Sony's split personality:

1. Consumer Electronics division develops really nice content format.
2. CE division promotes the hell out of new content format.
3. Big Media division catches wind of new content format, and demands DRM shackles.
4. Accountants see how much more profit Big Media division brings in, and forces CE division to comply.
5. New content format lands with a thud in the marketplace.
6. One division or the other abandons new content format.

I say "one division or the other" because it varies. CE will hang on to formats that are useful outside of Big Media's influence. Beta lived on in professional circles, MiniDisc found new life in NetMD, and Memory Stick is still their preferred camera memory format. UMD looks like it's dead to both sides. (PSP : UMD movies :: chicken : egg) Looks like CE is already losing interest in Blu-Ray, with this non-Big-Media-compliant drive.

Hi, my name is Lizzy Fair!

[Travoltus]

Corporations should be the ones who decide media specifications and the role of consumers is to choose which corporate offering is best.

When corporations decide for consumers what to choose, that is capitalism, when consumers force corporations to make what consumers really want, that is called communism and America will not tolerate communism!!!

[libertarian parody off]

Re:Wow

[MrSquirrel]

1 GB per dollar - Memorex Blu-Ray write-once disc: $25, 25 GB
http://focuscamera.com/sc/froogle-lead-1.asp?id=96 4669100&rf=froogle&dfdate=08_10_2006&sid=362233316

2.9 GB per dollar - Samsung Spinpoint: $55, 160 GB harddrive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16822152020

And that is just the blu-ray disc, not the drive.

*cough* *cough*

[Cynonamous Anoward]

a little tip - www.divx.com - DivX 6.1 Supports 720p. plans for 1080i and even 1080p in the works, all with advanced MPEG-4 encoding features, to preserve high quality at extremely low bitrates. DVD players should be out in time for Xmas, at price points only slightly above current SD DVD players. DivX 6 can squish a full length HD movie onto a single DVD, including multiple audio and subtitle tracks. screw new discs, new hardware, new DRM, and new high prices. kthnx.

Re:*cough* *cough*

[Cynonamous Anoward]

Not really, and it kind of misses the bigger point. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to go into much detail about how cool it's really going to get. See, as you might have guessed, I know all this because I work for DivX, I am an engineer here, I am in the office right now, and I am staring at a large pile of very cool toys, which I helped make. DivX has just filed for IPO, and we are in the quiet period, so I have to be careful what info I give out. All I can give you is a bunch of published, but not well known info. So to give you the general idea: DivX 6 does tons of things which vastly improve quality, while squashing the files down even futher. Technically, nothing prevents you from doing what you describe, it is simply the quality profiles that we use to certify DVD players as meeting our interoperability standards. These profiles are guidelines only, and the encoder CAN encode outside of them (although new versions will warn you). But we make no guarantees about the ability of hardware decoders to play such files. The profiles are to help you make sure that you are buying devices, and making or downloading movies, which will all play nice together. The other reason for the profiles is the emergence of hardware encoding devices. There is an emerging market for DivX capable recorders, digital cameras, and hybrid devices, like linux based net appliances. These devices need stricter encoding contstraints in order to produce files that will play back on whatever player you stick them in. In other words, yes, you COULD encode a huge resolution with any DivX codec, but you would be hard pressed to find a DVD player that could play it on a TV, in NTSC, let alone 720 or 1080. You'd also have trouble finding codec settings that struck a good balance between quality and file size. A 2 hour DivX 5.0 file, even in 720p, would be a long download, and only play on a fairly hefty PC. Oh yeah, and only the DivX 6 HD profile supports non-square pixels, so if you used anything older, you'd get the typical blocky scaling artifacts. But even that misses my real point from the original post. See, even if you got past all of that, you would still just have an avi file right? it's just a plain old movie, even if it's a really nice looking movie. No menus, no multiple audio languages, no subtitles, no chaptering, and no bonus "making of" movies. So, what would you say if I told you that I have a 2 hour, 720p movie on my hard drive? What if I told you that it had full DVD-style menus, 8 audio tracks, 8 subtitle tracks, 50 chapter points, and a making-of documentary? And if I told you that the encoding was so good you could barely tell it was encoded, even on an HDTV? Cool, no? So what if I told you that the entire file is under 4 GB? Now, how about I tell you that I'm sitting here, right now, watching a $200 DVD player PLAYING that file, off a standard DVD-R, at full resolution, on an HDTV? That you don't NEED a blue laser? That you don't have to pay $1500? That you never needed more storage space in the first place? That's the point. It's one thing to encode a huge video. It's another thing to fit the entire movie, bonus features and all, on a normal DVD, completely bypassing the need for expensive new technology. It kind of highlights the fact that the piracy-fearing tatics of companies like sony, are putting a strangle hold on innovation in digital video, does it not? There IS a better way, a cheaper way, an easier way, and a more environmentally friendly way, to watch a movie. And DivX is going to try and give it to you. I'll let you in on a secret, that will tell you exactly what the MPAA's mentality has done to the industry. We have a half-finished piece of software in house here. It can rip entire DVD's into DivX files, bonus features and everything. Entirely automated. A few mouse clicks, and your whole DVD collection is faithfully reproduced on your hard drive, as easy as ripping it with DVD decrypter, but with 1/8 the hard drive space. But it's likely that you will never see DivX release such software. Why

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.

DRM

[ichigo 2.0]

The really silly thing with the HDCP requirement is that eventually the bluray format will be cracked, and then people will be able to watch bluray movies with this player on a pc that hasn't got any kind of hdcp support. So in the end it's the legal bluray viewers that end up buying new monitors, videocards and bluray drives to satisfy the hdcp requirement, while the pirates can watch them with whatever hardware they want. The media publishing industry has to be full of retards, there really isn't any other explanation.

Re:So much for Sony in the coming format war!

[Traiklin]

so who are you blaming?

Sony as a whole (which encompasses more then just the almight world that is the USA)
Sony USA (which has been fucking over the US for quite awhile)

cause there is a big difference in the two, SUSA made a lot of formats die when they really didn't need to (such as MiniDisc), while in other countrys the format(s) took off and flurished.

MiniDisc is the best example, it bombed in the US but just about everywheres else it's still used today. So it makes you wonder just how much influance SUSA has in their global operations now, $600 for the PS3, Blu-Ray drives that don't even play Blu-Ray movies, The Blu-Ray spec isn't even finalized yet cause they haven't decided on a Copy protection scheme to use. Sure their main headquarters is in Japan which is right next to China but the lengths they are going through for copy "protection" is more in tune to the DMCA and stripping rights away from people.

Do they even want to sell media?

[djrogers]

All this hullabaloo is making me think that Big Entertainment(tm) is really not interested in selling media anymore. Does it REALLY make sense that the only way for 99% of us to view HD movies is to pay the cable/sat provider for HBO-HD? Does it REALLY make sense that we needed 2 new media types and players for HD video when we all know that a 2 hour H.264 encoded HD movie would fit nicely on an old fashioned DVD? No, all that this proving is that BE(tm) wants to make purchasing HD movies difficult for us, and delay it for so long, that we'll accept their 'rental' models...

Frankly, I'm sick of it... I'upgrade my sat reciever to watch NFL in HD this fall, but I have very little desire to waste money on HD movies these days. Back when I was an HT geek I probably woulda considered it, but these days I'm far closer to being joe-sixpack than an HT geek. About the only thing that'll get me to start buying HD movies is when the ITMS starts selling them and I can store them indefinitely on my mini, take them with me on my powerbook, and re-encode them to carry on my vPod. Yeah, guess that make me one of the sheeple...

Re:So much for Sony in the coming format war!

[bblboy54]

6. PROFIT!

Oh.. wait

so wait....

[SQLz]

The Blueray player can't play offical movies because of the copy protection...only pirated movies. Thats awesome.