New Sony DVDs Not Working In Some Players

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that the most recent DVDs released by Sony — specifically Stranger Than Fiction, Casino Royale, and The Pursuit of Happyness — have some kind of 'feature' that makes them unplayable on many DVD players. This doesn't appear to be covered by the major media yet, but this link to a discussion over at Amazon gives a flavor of the problems people are experiencing. A blogger called Sony and was told the problem is with the new copy protection scheme, and they do not intend to fix it. Sony says it's up to the manufacturers to update their hardware."

Comments

Who owns the DVD format?

[Marc_Hawke]

When this happens with CD's, didn't Phillips (or whoever owns the CD format) threaten to revoke the license, so this 'not working' CD's couldn't be called CD's anymore? Could the same thing happen with this. The owner of the DVD format would just have to say, "If it doesn't play in "such and such" reference machine then it's illegal for you to call it a DVD?