Samsung Sued Over "Defective" Blu-ray Player

Anneka notes that, although both Netflix and Best Buy threw logs on HD DVD's funeral pyre today, things are not all going Blu-ray's way. A Connecticut man is suing Samsung, the maker that brought the first Blu-ray players to market, over its "defective" BD-P1200 player. The lawsuit seeks class-action status. The problem is that the Samsung BD-P1200 is a "Profile 1.0" player that can't play some Blu-ray discs and Samsung has no intention (or ability) to upgrade these players via firmware. Quoting Ars: "The meager requirements of the 1.0 profile mean that Blu-ray players which fail to implement the optional features won't be able to take advantage of picture-in-picture, which requires secondary decoders. 1.0 players are also unable to store local content, lacking the 256MB of storage mandated by the 1.1 profile. Profile 1.1 discs should still play on 1.0 players, however, but the extra features will not work."

Comments

There's a reason...

[Koiu Lpoi]

There's a reason we call it the bleeding edge - because it cuts you. And you bleed. It's much like new software - I won't touch a new OS or game until it's had at least one patch or service pack.

Re:There's a reason...

[erlehmann]

at least one patch ? try any free software project (and see your reasoning totally fails it).

Re:There's a reason...

[BosstonesOwn]

While I agree with you , I do feel for the folks who bought these players when they were $600 + , there is no reason that features should have been missing from the players when they came to market. HD-DVD doesn't have this problem , wonder why ?

These companies need to stop doing this. People need to stop accepting the planned obsolescence excuses and realize they are milking us. These players should not have "versions" or "profiles" make it a single deployment standard and stop trying to add features the competition already has. They should have added those in the beginning.

Im just getting tired of seeing folks who bought in early getting porked by companies like Sony and Microsoft. I understand software revisions. And I don't mind it, but why are vital things like a second decoder not in the spec to make it at least upgradeable. Or even just disabled until a special disc is put in to flash the firmware to activate it ? I am tired of us folks paying to be alpha and beta testers for the corporations.

Re:There's a reason...

[Koiu Lpoi]

It only fails because most free software projects are in a constant state of development, thus my model has no initial stable release for which to base it upon. Then again, I meant to imply that I was only talking about major pieces of software, and sadly, free software occupies very little of that space for me.

Re:There's a reason...

[ncohafmuta]

I personally think this lawsuit is totally bogus. You can't sue a company for failure to provide features that you think SHOULD be in a particular revision.

Case in point, I'm wondering if the people that buy draft-N wireless gear now are going to cry fowl when the real N standard gets certified with extra features?

Re:There's a reason...

[wikinerd]

There's a reason there are standards: to ensure consumers can choose from a consistent set of purchasing options all adhering to some minimal functionality (the standard). Manufacturers who release products that imply adherence to some standard while in fact they fail to meet its requirements have no place in a healthy economy. If a company still wants to release such pseudo-products, they should label them clearly as not adhering to a standard with a big visible label on the front of the box.

Re:There's a reason...

[tepples]

It only fails because most free software projects are in a constant state of development, thus my model has no initial stable release for which to base it upon. Then again, I meant to imply that I was only talking about major pieces of software, and sadly, free software occupies very little of that space for me. Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH are free software. You are running all of them on Slashdot's server when you read this comment. I am running all of them, plus Firefox (also free) on my Windows PC, when I submit this comment.

Re:There's a reason...

[webmaster404]

Thats the whole reason though we have standard formats for hardware, you know that its going to work, for sure. A CD that is Compact Disk certified will play in any CD player, from the oldest ones to the newest ones, with Blu-Ray though this just adds uncertainty that those that have the Blu-Ray label on them won't play in some Blu-Ray drives and this story will only make people stick with DVD.

Re:There's a reason...

[PJ1216]

it wasn't planned obsolescence. it was still basically draft. they rushed the release to try and cut down the lead HD-DVD had for getting out early. plus sony needed to get the ps3 out as well. thats why they're quickly releasing new profiles and what not.

Re:There's a reason...

[Koiu Lpoi]

I'm "running them all"? No, Slashdot's servers are. Were I running servers, it might be a different story. Then again, which of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH can be called "bleeding edge"? All of them are very mature products, having gone through several release cycles. It's no wonder then, that they're being used, instead of the bleeding edge. Pointing out that they're being used doesn't show how I'm using Open Source, only that a website I'm on does. Not that it matters, because we're talking about bleeding-edge adoption, not open-source usage.

I recommend you read what the context of my post is before pointing out what's wrong about it.

Re:There's a reason...

[BosstonesOwn]

While i agree the lawsuit is bogus , I think this does send a message. And that message is stop making the end user a beta tester.

You mention networking gear. It doesn't really hold up here. When people bought "pre-N" gear , and "draft-N" gear , they knew what they were getting themselves into. These blu-ray players were sold as blu-ray players. Meaning they would play all future blu-ray movies. Funny I have an old RCA dvd player that plays new dvds, yeah I guess I am expecting to much for it to not randomly reject blu-ray discs.

Look they sold this as a blu-ray player , one should expect it to play every blu-ray disc, be it new or old as long as the disc is in good condition. These things are flaking out on people and not playing some discs , blocking features ( which I admit is really the problem I hate. ) That and the fact that they are now adding more features while increasing the core of the device itself , meaning they are changing specs mid stream. Something that HD DVD knew would happen and put the specs out to combat , they wanted one set standard , it seems like the blu-ray standard is not a standard and an ever evolving mess.

Re:There's a reason...

[wvmarle]

Here I for one totally disagree.

For a start: my laptop has a 10Mbit Ethernet port. Now 100 Mb is standard, and 1 Gb available. Is there any reason why I should expect my laptop to get a free upgrade? I don't think so.
Do I have reason to expect it is compatible with 1Gb networks? Maybe. Albeit at a lower speed. Same for these BluRay players: they were up to standard when sold, and are now the newer disks still play - without the new features of course. Why should the old player get a free upgrade? No reason for that.
People should buy products (hardware, software, whatever) based on the CURRENT feature set. Not based on promised upgrades, that is a nice extra but not relevant.

Wouter.

Re:There's a reason...

[fangorious]

HD-DVD doesn't have this problem , wonder why ?

There are a lot of HD-DVD players that limit you to 1080i.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent poster's point was that free software projects tend to make releases only when the product is finished, in contrast to commercial vendors which tend to make releases to meet arbitrary marketing dates. Your assertion that free software doesn't have stable milestone releases is incorrect.

Re:There's a reason...

[BosstonesOwn]

That is a limitation of the hardware , not the platform. HD-DVD can also place 1080p content on a disc. It's not like blu-ray where discs are just not playing no matter what the content is.

Re:There's a reason...

[BosstonesOwn]

There in lay the issue , the network works backwards. A 10 mbit lan card works on 100 and gigabit , it's in negotiation. These players are failing to play newer movies.

It's more like saying that your nic is rejecting cat6 because it is newer then cat5e. It's just not right.

Re:There's a reason...

[penix1]

From TFA:

As we pointed out in our coverage of the 2.0 spec, there's no upgrade path for older players due to the changed hardware requirementsa simple firmware update will not suffice.

Ummm...Even the summary, which is usually wrong in most cases, points out that it will play Blu-ray disks but lacks some of the special features found only in players that support the new standard. What this guy is bitching about is two different things. First, the fact that he can't upgrade (via a flash ROM or something) to the new standard. What he fails to understand is the new standard also requires different configurations of hardware that his player doesn't have (there's a reason it is called a NEW standard). This is the bogus part of the suit.

Second, he is bitching about the BD-P1200 in particular which does have a reputation for being a crap player even with the old specification and Samsung's refusal to address that issue. This is what that part of the suit boils down to:

With HD DVD players hitting store shelves in April 2006, the Blu-ray Disc Association was feeling the pressure to get their products out as quickly. Samsung was first to market with a Blu-ray player, releasing the BD-P1200's predecessor, the BD-P1000, in June 2006 after a delay of a month or so. Like the first-generation P1000, the P1200 supported the original Blu-ray 1.0 profile. For a while, Samsung had the Blu-ray market to itself as Sony and Pioneer players were delayed even further. The competitive pressure from HD DVD was arguably the reason for approving Profile 1.0, even though it limited the potential of the first players and ensured that they'd never be compatible with future profiles.

That is the angle he needs to play up. Samsung's willingness to make a quick buck at consumer expense in compatibility. If it can be proved that Samsung did this with full knowledge that they weren't going to support the player after the 2.0 spec release, WITHOUT informing the customer about it, then willful fraud comes to my IANAL mind.

Re:There's a reason...

[Adambomb]

I think what he means is more that you are making use of instances of them, even if all you're getting out of it is the http stream.

When I ssh into a machine and start using it I consider myself to be running programs, since I am the one causing the instances of them.

I'd hate to try this:
"Why did you 'rm -rf /'?"

"I didn't! The server was doing it!"

Re:There's a reason...

[novakyu]

While I agree with you , I do feel for the folks who bought these players when they were $600 + , there is no reason that features should have been missing from the players when they came to market. Just to add a little more noise to the thread, I do not agree with you at all and I do not feel for these people at all.

Anyone dumb enough to buy into a format war (ensuring constant changes for both sides and devaluing of the losing side) deserves whatever they get. If they really needed to throw away that money, the least they could have done is donate it to a charity or, if they really had to gamble it on something, buy some penny stock.

Re:There's a reason...

[Eivind]

Or more precisely: If you don't like stuff breaking on you -- stop VOLUNTEERING as a beta-tester.

Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock KNOWS that buying the latest-and-greatest new bleeding-edge standard before it is established in the marketplace means:

a) There's a significant chance that it'll be obsolete in 3 years because some other standard ends up owning the game.

b) There's a 100% chance that you're paying a MUCH higher price for a MUCH poorer product, compared to those who wait a bit.

c) There's a significant chance that your product has bugs, shortcomings, problems.

d) There's a significant chance that the standard will fluctuate, so by the time it solidifies, your gadget is no longer fully compatible.

It's not as if any of this is news. Furthermore, much of it is unavoidable: If a producer elected not to bring products to market until these things had settles, they'd be handing their market-share to the competitors.

If you don't like this deal, there's a simple cure: Wait a year or two *THEN* buy any random high-def video-player. It'll cost 1/3rd what it costs now, or less, it'll work better and it'll support the stable version of the standard.

Re:There's a reason...

[monsted]

Nope, these players fail to play *new features* on new discs. The original movie format should work just fine, but things like Picture-in-Picture and the persistent storage thing doesn't. This only means that some extras are unavailable. Thus, his player does what he paid for, but doesn't do what someone with a newer player paid for.

In the end, we'll probably see Sony screw it up in another way to make his older player break completely, but that's a different story. BD+ will probably be on the receiving end of a lot of curses...

Re:There's a reason...

[prefect42]

Vital things like a second decoder? There was me thinking I liked the idea of Blu-Ray for the better picture...

Re:There's a reason...

[howlingmadhowie]

seeing as i've never seen a blueray disk or a blueray player i really don't know if this is true, but usb ports on computers are labelled quite clearly in the advertising if they are 1.1 or 2.0 or whatever. is this the case with usb players and disks? does the disk have written on it "i am a version 1.1 disk" and does it say on the box for the player "this is a version 1.0 player"?

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

The analogy is broken; in your case the original hardware still interoperates properly with the new design. Besides, with DVD players, the analogy's different. People EXPECT their player to work into perpetuity/obselescence, and they don't expect it to be broken within a year of buying it because the standard is in flux like Blu-Ray currently seems to be.

What if you bought your Xbox 360 or PS3 and they suddenly decided to add a new feature halfway through the life cycle that meant only people who bought the newest hardware could play modern games? It's still a 360/PS3, but now it can't play modern games that use the same brand name on the box?

How is your average consumer going to understand this? I bet there's a lot of people out there who don't 'get' HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray already, what hope is there of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray 1.0/Blu-Ray 1.1/Blu-Ray 2.0? They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot and yet, as always, they're positioning themselves as the winner of the long game despite their decisions.

Just once I'd like to see some hubris go Sony's way and they have a crashing failure for their approach to these things.

Re:There's a reason...

[cb95amc]

I would put that comparison more in line with VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray.....Those standards evolved over many years, not a matter of months.

Its not like the manufacturers didn't know this was coming.....That was one of the problems with Blu-Ray, it was rushed to market to compete with HD-DVD (and for the PS3) and they hadn't finalized the standards...

Don't forget we still have BD Live compatible players to come (Profile 2.0), which will mandate an Ethernet connection and more local storage (1GB) for downloadable content.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i'm going to sue Apple, because I know they are going to bring out OSX 10.6 in the future and yet they are still trying to get me to buy 10.5! And they know it! Honda want to sell me a hybrid car, but I know they are going to bring out a better one in six months! Must... Litigate...

Re:There's a reason...

[pisto_grih]

Just for once I'd like to see people stop lambasting Sony in this thread when its a Samsung product.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

I differ. I expect most of my devices to have an upgrade path.
My harmony remote and my Tivo do.

Most of my DVD players don't, but that's because I buy $39 players.
If I spent $600 on a DVD player, I'd have a different expectation.
If I spent $600 on a HD-DVD player, and couldn't make it blue-ray compatible,
I'd be annoyed, but only if promises were made that I would be future-proof
(I might expect to pay $20 for the 'upgrade kit')

Everything is an embedded computer now. Firmware upgrades are a fact of life now.
This is the main way that capabilities are added and bugs are fixed.

If the manufacturer says "the hardware won't support it, no matter what we do in software", that's one issue.

Either get a software-based player (sorry if you live in the US), or

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you bought you laptop and it included only a single headphone jack, eventough the salesmaterial sayed it could connect to the internet, you wouldn't be pissed? I mean, they wheren't lying, It just wouldn't be able to connect until someone has the connection working through the headphonejack....

The point here is that people bougth an pretty expensive blueray player, that won't play blueray dvd's.
Because of the small print inside the box reading profile 1.0 Which the average consumer knows nothing about.

Re:There's a reason...

[Shooter_PA]

Wouter, I'm going to disagree with your statement. I don't find any computer product to be analogous with a stand-alone blu-ray player. First, you compare an ethernet NIC (defined by the 802.3 IEEE STANDARDS) to a non-standard patchwork profile. Secondly, a 10Mbs link is still fully functional on any speed ethernet port, but some first generation Blu-ray players are incapable of playing some new blu-ray releases and can't use any of the new interactive features. The issue is the lack of a standard and a rushed format. Finally, if you want a faster NIC you can buy a new one for a reasonable price without buying a brand new laptop-can you say the same for a gen 1 blu-ray player? If a simple and moderately priced upgrade was offered for gen 1 blu-ray owners then your point would be salient, but upgrading would require a brand-new and very expensive Profile 2.0 player.

I also don't buy putting all of the onus of these issues on the consumer. I place most of the blame square on the shoulders of the Blu-Ray consortium for allowing such shoddy recommendations (aka Profiles) to masquerade as standards. I would not have a problem with companies selling a product that had a two year life cycle IF they had informed consumers and offered the device at a fraction of the price. I admire the boycott approach, but that doesn't help those who made the mistake of buying early. Personally, I'm staying out of the HD wars until HD downloads are the ubiquitous delivery method.

Re:There's a reason...

[phorm]

which of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH can be called "bleeding edge

Um, any or all of them could be, depending on the version being used. All regularly have updates with new features for enhanced (if not always liked) features and performance. Yes, they're definitely mature in that they've been around and are for the most part "tried, tested, and true", but that doesn't mean that development has ceased not that improvements aren't being regularly made.

Re:There's a reason...

[Gr8Apes]

Well, I know I'd be pissed if I bought a Blu-ray player and a Blu-ray disk, and somewhere in the itsy bitsy tiny print, there was something about a 1.0 and a 1.1. Blu-ray players came to market with NO details on what profile they support. Just try to find out what profile a Blu-ray player has. It's not on the box. I checked 4 different ones.

When 2.0 comes out on disks, those will not play on any current player, with the possible exception of PS3's (Sony claims they will....)

For these, and many more reasons, I bought a HD DVD player, which supports a far superior format. Yes, I said superior. No region encoding. More features. No potential for content provider code running essentially as root and rewriting (bricking) your player. As for Blu-ray's reputed "more" space, show me a dual layer disk. It's not even known whether current players will actually play a dual layer disk. HD DVD players will. As to the codecs, HD DVD supports more advanced codecs. Blu-ray is largely old technology with a new specification that makes them incompatible with everything else out there.

This is not to say everything on Blu-ray is bad. I like the coating, and wish all DVDs would apply it. Anything that improves scratch resistance is a good thing.

Re:There's a reason...

[Koiu Lpoi]

No parallel to Blue Ray and bleeding edge, thus irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:There's a reason...

[penix1]

OS 10.5 won't suddenly stop working when OS 10.6 comes out. Your Honda hybrid car you buy this year won't stop running when Honda releases their new model. That is the difference.

Re:There's a reason...

[fangorious]

not having the local storage or a network adapter to support profiles 1.1 and 2.0 is also a limitation of the hardware. HD-DVD can do 1080p, there's just a lot of players that don't.

Re:There's a reason...

[monsted]

I would like to point out that i am unhappy about HD-DVD losing the war, but since i can't do a thing to change it, i now own a PS3. The PS3 is right now the only player physically capable of playing every profile, but of course comes with other annoying limitations.

The HD war will definitely end up with all customers on the losing side, no matter when they jumped on the wagon and which side they picked.

Re:There's a reason...

[Floritard]

You can't really compare a laptop to a movie player. One is assumed upgradable (even as limited as laptop upgrades go) and one is not. Historically, movie media formats were not so plastic. VHS/DVD were not released to the public in "beta" (no pun intended) form while new features were added and bugs were ironed out. Sure early players have problems that newer players find ways to fix. That's the inherent risk of being an early adopter.

But format changes? Those are completely artificial and new risks. It's a movie format. The spec shouldn't change. You buy the player and - depending on the quality of its design - you're set for years. Kind of the point of buying a player in the first place. If the format is going to keep changing the discs might as well come ready-made to play themselves.

This same nonsense is happening with all media. The recording industry, now that they're being dragged into the 21st century, can't figure out which audio format they want to use. Console makers (sans Nintendo) can't figure out which features they want to include (and therefore which feature set is to be considered standard) in their shiny new consoles. Personal peripherals (cameras/phones/PDAs/portable audio players/handheld gaming devices) can't (or refuse to) decide on a common memory card format. The result is a lot of unnecessary consumer confusion and betrayal.

I won't be buying any new media players or consoles. I'll stick to PC-gaming for now, and as soon as XBMC makes the jump to linux I'll put together a proper HTPC. For those that have the time and the know-how, a versatile media player that can be updated and upgraded is about the only way to ride out this mess.

Re:There's a reason...

[wynler]

Let's look at the customer's perspective between the HD DVD players that lack hardware vs. the Blu-Ray players that lack hardware.

Crappy HD DVD hardware that doesn't play 1080i:
Customer inserts disc, movie and bonus materials both play.  Customer doesn't know anything's wrong unless they're a videophile.

Crappy Blu-Ray hardware profile 1.0:
Customer inserts disc.  Receives message "This disc is not compatible with this player.  You may still watch the movie.  If you would like to view the bonus features please upgrade to another multi-hundred dollar player."

Customer buys a profile 1.1 player, in a year from now...
Customer inserts disc.   Receives message "This disc is not compatible with this player.  You may still watch the movie.  If you would like to view the bonus features please upgrade to another multi-hundred dollar player."

Wait a minute.  That's not a problem with blu-ray, that's brilliant!

Re:There's a reason...

[Anarke_Incarnate]

Analogy problem detected. The USB Consortium has made all 1.1 and higher standard ports "2.0" but with different "Features" like "Hi Speed" and "Full Speed" etc. They muddied the waters intentionally. Not all 2.0 devices get the 480 theoretical megabits per second that you will never get because of how CPU driven USB is.

Re:There's a reason...

[HumanEmulator]

People should buy products (hardware, software, whatever) based on the CURRENT feature set. Not based on promised upgrades, that is a nice extra but not relevant.

In this case you're saying people should buy a player and assume they can only play movies that have already been released. THAT I'm going to have to totally disagree with. The players were not sold to early adopters as "able to play the 50 movies currently on the market." They were sold as being able to play Blu-Ray discs.

Your post seems to miss the point of the lawsuit: These players aren't choking on the special features, they can't play entire discs. Wired seems to think this is because the DRM was not finalized when these players were produced and now it can't be updated. (http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/02/samsung-sued-ov.html)

Re:There's a reason...

[samkass]

When 2.0 comes out on disks, those will not play on any current player

This is false, according to all the information I've read. The movies will play. But the "extra" features will lack capability.

As for Blu-ray's reputed "more" space, show me a dual layer disk.

Half of all current Blu-Ray movies are dual-layer. The first was "Click" a year and a half ago. Hitachi has a 4-layer Blu-ray disc they claim play in current players, and TDK has prototyped an 8-layer Blu-ray disc.

As to the codecs, HD DVD supports more advanced codecs.

It's true that some of the sound codecs are optional on Blu-ray players but mandatory on HD DVD players. That being said, on Blu-ray they are required to have substantially higher throughput if supported. For video, they both support exactly the same codecs (MPEG2, MPEG4/AAC, and VC-1). In addition, Blu-Ray requires the player support almost 50% more throughput-- that, combined with the higher capacity, means that Blu-ray discs can be compressed less and therefore have much higher quality audio and video. That's why a side-by-side comparison of the two almost universally favors Blu-ray on all the AV sites.

Blu-ray is largely old technology with a new specification that makes them incompatible with everything else out there.

To be fair, that more accurately describes HD DVD. That's why HD DVD players are easier to produce.

Re:There's a reason...

[joeboe]

I agree completely. There is a high price to pay for early adoption. Generally the hardware is more expensive, and does not have all of the bugs worked out. We've seen this time and time again with major consumer device releases, including the XBox and the iPhone. I think it would be nice if manufacturers would offer some kind of upgrade incentive to early adopters, like a trade value on the original hardware for consumers that are interested in upgrading to a more recent revision of the hardware after it has become more established.

Re:There's a reason...

[bhtooefr]

The HD war will definitely end up with all customers on the losing side, no matter when they jumped on the wagon and which side they picked. I picked DVD, and never jumped on the wagon.

Re:There's a reason...

[ultranova]

For a start: my laptop has a 10Mbit Ethernet port. Now 100 Mb is standard, and 1 Gb available. Is there any reason why I should expect my laptop to get a free upgrade? I don't think so.

That depends, actually. Did the laptop's specification state it has an "Ethernet port" or a "10MBit Ethernet port" ? Because if it is the former, it seems like willfull lie by omission to me.

That's what this lawsuit also comes down to: did the advertizement state that this is a "Blu-Ray 1.0" player, or did it simply call it a "Blu-Ray" player ? Joe Average can't be reasonably expected to know that there are more than one version of Blu-Ray - after all, neither VHS nor DVD have those.

You buy a VHS player and it plays all VHS tapes. You buy a DVD player and it plays all DVD's, with all extra features. If this isn't true for Blu-Ray players, and you omit this little fact when making the sale, you're a fraudster and deserve to be bitchslapped hard for it.

"Buyer beware" belongs in the garbage bin of history with the rest of the disgusting customs of the Roman Empire.

Re:There's a reason...

[lsatenstein]

Re bleeding edge.... I will wait for the patch, and then add 10 working days. If there are no complaints, only then do I implement.

Works well for linux gurus and for MS stuff too.

Re:There's a reason...

[Gr8Apes]

When 2.0 comes out on disks, those will not play on any current player

This is false, according to all the information I've read. The movies will play. But the "extra" features will lack capability. I can't find anything that will confirm or deny, other than reports in the media that all current BD players will need to be replaced except for the PS3. I did find that "home" recorded BD disks will not play in any commercial player, hence negating any reason for buying a commercial player when you can buy a burner for less than a player anyways.

... In addition, Blu-Ray requires the player support almost 50% more throughput-- that, combined with the higher capacity, means that Blu-ray discs can be compressed less and therefore have much higher quality audio and video. That's why a side-by-side comparison of the two almost universally favors Blu-ray on all the AV sites. And the (lack of) differences between the two formats show that on almost every double blind test that there's no difference in formats, but it is the transfer that makes the difference. You can be a whatever-phile, but format makes no difference to even the above average viewer. Arguing about which format delivers a better picture is like arguing which receiver/amp combination delivers the ultimate in sound. Above a certain level it becomes completely subjective. Both HD formats are in that region, at least until the next iteration comes along.

Re:There's a reason...

[Gr8Apes]

After reading through more items, I think the only course I'd take on BD is a PC based BD solution. Burner's are selling for less than the PS3, and I have no desire for a PS3 for gaming anyways. Also, PS3s will not play home movies recorded on BD disks, one of the things I wanted to be able to do with my HD player.

Re:There's a reason...

[berashith]

funny. This is the exact reason I won't buy an "HD" television. The simple looking sticker actually has a lot of different resolutions, and until the final one is reached and settled upon, I'm not touching it.

No need for a class action or making a lawyer rich.

Re:There's a reason...

[tepples]

Just for once I'd like to see people stop lambasting Sony in this thread when its a Samsung product. Sony is the leader of the Blu-ray Disc Association, which maintains the Blu-ray Disc (BD) spec. It is also, to my knowledge, the only BDA member that both manufactures players and publishes films in the format. So what's wrong with bashing Sony for the problems with BD profiles?

Re:There's a reason...

[wvmarle]

For a start: my laptop has a 10Mbit Ethernet port. Now 100 Mb is standard, and 1 Gb available. Is there any reason why I should expect my laptop to get a free upgrade? I don't think so.

That depends, actually. Did the laptop's specification state it has an "Ethernet port" or a "10MBit Ethernet port" ? Because if it is the former, it seems like willfull lie by omission to me.

This of course I don't remember as it is now like three, four years old.

That's what this lawsuit also comes down to: did the advertizement state that this is a "Blu-Ray 1.0" player, or did it simply call it a "Blu-Ray" player ? Joe Average can't be reasonably expected to know that there are more than one version of Blu-Ray - after all, neither VHS nor DVD have those.

At the time, Blu-Ray 1.0 was the ONLY spec available. No reason to write it down that it is "v.1.0" or so. It was state-of-the-art. Just like older computers with the first version of USB ports, came with "2 USB ports", not with "2 USB 1.0 ports" or so. At the time there was simply only one USB version, and of course everyone could know that there would be a next version some time in the future. That is simply how things go in the tech world. But you can not complain that the first USB equipment did not indicate "v.1.0" for the simple reason that there was only one version.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument would be valid if the player itself was functional, but from what I've read it isn't. The issue with this player is not limited to "extra functionality". Not only will it not play the special features, it won't play many new Blu Ray movies. Google BD P1200 Firmware or just check out the CNET review. The CNET review, which was originally very good, has a disclaimer on it stating that the player has a problem playing new movies.

I was very interested in this player because of the HQV upsampling, but I researched it on the web and found that people have been waiting for MONTHS for a firmware update that will allow the player to play current movies. They finally got the firmware update, but it only made the player able to play a few more movies. Apparently, this has been a pattern with this machine. They release firmware to make it able to play the last batch of movies it couldn't play, and a new batch of movies it can't play comes out in the meantime. Worse yet, they reported that it ruined the upscaling functionality, and caused so many other problems with playability that they wished they had never installed it. Now they are left to wait and see if the manufacturer puts out another firmware update to correct the problems they created with the last one, and maybe make a few more movies playable. To make matters worse, I've read the manufacturer is hinting that they may stop supporting the player with firmware updates.

So the bottom line is a lot of people payed 600 bucks for a machine that is supposed to play Blue Ray disks but doesn't, and used to be a great upsampling DVD player but isn't any more. If I had purchased one of these, I'd be on board with a lawsuit in a second. I wouldn't sue based on the 1.0, 2.0 issue though. I'd sue because the darned thing won't do the one thing everyone with any common sense can agree it should do.

It's a Blu Ray player that can't play Blu Ray movies, so it's defective.

Seems very simple to me.

Re:There's a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn I'm pissed. I liked hd dvd. I had a player and it worked great. Also the format just seems much better technically. I want to kick some as and anyone else who wants to should also pick up some http://www.martialartfinder.com/martialartstyles skills

Defective CD Players

[Doc Ruby]

If this guy wins, gets a court to punish a player manufacturer because it's not forward compatible with media all carrying the same media logo, then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CD" players that won't play CDs that I copied from the ones I bought as backup. And then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CDs" that won't play in some CD players because the Sony CDs have DRM that's not part of the "CD" spec.

Re:Defective CD Players

[MWoody]

1) Recordable compact discs have their own logo and are considered a different, but analogous, media format. A player that will play compact discs, with no mention of recordable or rewritable versions in the packaging, doesn't have to play anything.

2) A DRM-crippled "CD" will not bear the Compact Disc logo, as it doesn't conform to the standard. It is a separate format that just happens to sometimes sort-of work in CD players.

Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. You can't create a so-called standard and then say "whoops, need to change a few things here, sucks to be you if you were an early adopter!" I understand that the bleeding edge sometimes cuts, but that's usually a result of bugs in the players or the manufacturing process, not because some idiot changed the specs of the format!

Re:Defective CD Players

[Khyber]

"And then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CDs" that won't play in some CD players because the Sony CDs have DRM that's not part of the "CD" spec."

Do you see any of these logos on the front or back paper inserts, on the OUTSIDE of the case (not inside, as in after opening the case,) SPECIFICALLY the one that says Compact Disc Digital Audio?

If you don't see the CDDA, then it's safe to assume that the CD does not follow the CDDA format, and therefore has DRM. CDDA does not have provisions for DRM, and any disc carrying DRM, or is 'enhanced' (extra data track after audio tracks included) may not display that logo on the case. The actual part that holds the disc in the case will just have the plain Compact Disc logo most often.

If you have any discs that display the CDDA logo and they have DRM or any 'enhancements' for our computer, the maker of that disc is in violation of the rules that Phillips set forth in specifying the format. You should immediately notify them of the breach of contract between the music company that made the discs and Phillips. And you should probably go ahead and lawyer up, because once you stir up the snake nest they're gonna come crawling and biting at your ankles.

Re:Defective CD Players

[droopycom]

The format was extended not completely changed.
Discs with the logo will still play. There is backward compatibility.

Are they also going to sue all the manufacturer of older HDMI devices ? Because you know, you might not be able to enjoy some of the newest feature that HDMI 1.3 brings if one of your device is only HDMI 1.2

This is just a plain stupid lawsuit....

Re:Defective CD Players

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for Sony, you wouldn't even have compact discs.

Re:Defective CD Players

[Anonymous Coward]

Or betamax. Or UMD.

Re:Defective CD Players

[LearnToSpell]

If you have any discs that display the CDDA logo and they have DRM or any 'enhancements' for our computer, the maker of that disc is in violation of the rules that Phillips set forth in specifying the format. You should immediately notify them of the breach of contract between the music company that made the discs and Phillips. And you should probably go ahead and lawyer up, because once you stir up the snake nest they're gonna come crawling and biting at your ankles.

You may not have to, since Philips, to their credit, has been quite adamant that they'd be very aggressive about logo violations.

Re:Defective CD Players

[guywcole]

This gets into tricky questions.

What if there is a simple but not backwards-compatible way to improve the format? What if that improvement is DRM? In the first case, a lot of people would say, "you must update my player so I can read the new discs! I bought the player, now give me the support!" In the second case, a lot of people would say, "don't you dare update my player or put out official discs with that 'improvement'!"

This all comes down to how we are going to use standards: a concrete backbone which both solidifies and limits technological development, or a fluid platform that leads to some failures but a rapidly growing body of highly-technically-advanced media? The 1.0 vs. 1.1 vs. 2.0 thing is the creation of a fluid standard. I hope my paragraph above explains how this bleeding edge is a double-edged sword (three cheers for abused metaphors).

I think that content-distributors are only going to accept a fluid standard because DRM is wobbly and never stays on its feet for too long. I think the consumers are going to have to accept this but, through lawsuits like this one, insist that the version of the standard used be MUCH more prominent. The "1.1" needs to be right at the end of and just as a big as the " BLU-RAY " on the packaging of both the player and the media, even if it needs to say " BLU-RAY 1.1-2.0 " or " BLU-RAY 1.1 w/ 2.0 EXTRAS "

Just my two cents, no refunds.

Off topic: why is the parser throwing a space between my italic and bold tags?

Re:Defective CD Players

[VGPowerlord]

That's true. Of course, we're lucky that Philips owns the CDDA logo trademark rather than Sony. Seeing as how CDs were jointly developed by both companies, it could have easily gone the other way.

Re:Defective CD Players

[novakyu]

Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. Except, of course, he's suing the wrong company. He should be suing Sony for their false advertising (i.e. promotion of the same Blu-ray logo for Profile 1.0 and 2.0), not Samsung for producing a hardware player that is not forward-compatible.

Re:Defective CD Players

[Klaus_1250]

They (and others) already were! Philips stated that it was willing to sue anyone using the CD-logo for trademark infringement, if they did not conform to the Red Book standard (mandatory if you want to use the logo,). There also was a class action lawsuit brought by consumers to various companies using the logo without adhering to the specs.

Re:Defective CD Players

[Doc Ruby]

The reason my copied DRM discs won't play isn't because they're CD-R. And, in fact, my CD player does have a "CD-R" logo on it, even though it won't play the copied "CD". Because that DRM "CD" isn't really a "CD": it violates the spec.

So I don't know why you're claiming that these different formats have different logos, when that's just false. The failure of DRM CDs to meet the CD format spec, and therefore fail in CD players, is well known on Slashdot.

Re:Defective CD Players

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, of course they all have that logo. That's the entire point with these "CDs": they claim to be compatible, but they're not. This has been well established on Slashdot for years, to say nothing of its happening in the general market.

DRM CDs say they're "CDs", but they're not.

Re:Defective CD Players

[Doc Ruby]

No, Phillips would have done it alone. Or someone else would be doing it, and probably not as abusively as Sony, whose unique market position lets them get away with it.

Though I expect there will always be Anonymous fanboy Cowards out there begging for abuse from whoever was the last hand on their gift toy - that they paid way too much for.

Re:Defective CD Players

[sexconker]

CDs with DRM meet the CD specification (which is a physical spec!).
They do not meet the the CD-DA (compact disc digital audio) specification.

If you have an original disc that can be played in a normal CD player, you can copy it perfectly using a computer.
if you have an original disc that can NOT be played in a normal CD player, then you might have trouble copying it using a computer (though it can still be copied, you may have to deal with other protections).

You can then recreate the disc as a standard-compliant CD-DA disc (except on a CD-R).

If your cd player isn't playing your CD-Rs, buy better quality CD-Rs, clean your cd player, or buy a better cd player.

I bet it gets thrown out

[Iphtashu Fitz]

No way a judge will allow this lawsuit, much less grant it class-action status. Imagine the precedent this would set. I could sue Motorola because my older cell phone doesn't have all the features that their latest ones have. I could sue Toyota because a newer year/model of my car has more features. Etc. etc.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Draknor]

Just to clarify, according to TFA some movies won't play:

At issue are some significant title-compatibility problems with the player. In his complaint, plaintiff Bob McGovern says that a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play on the device.
...
As one of our readers pointed out via e-mail, the P1200 has a checkered reputation when it comes to hardware reliability.

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[mikael]

That depends. Could the firmware be upgraded so that the player could work with the latest data format? If so, then the guy should be able to get the upgrade. If the player doesn't have a second decoder, could caching with a lower framebuffer size combined with a pixel zoom be used to emulate this functionality?

A lot of the times, the limitations of hardware are down to the way the firmware compiler is implemented. You can work around a lot of these compiler limitations by rearranging your code (loop unrolling if for-next loops aren't permitted, using the modulus operator if Boolean operations aren't permitted).

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[El Cubano]

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

Except that means that this is a case of "I want to be an early adopter but I don't want to pay the price." Sorry buddy (to the litigant, not the parent), but that comes with being an early adopter.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it." And to make things worse, this product was released less than a year ago (April 2007) at $800 ($500 today)... and Samsung won't provide enough support for it to simply play Profile 1.1 discs like it's supposed to.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Major League Gamer]

It can't possibly win.

After reading the court papers, paragraph 5 states that the nature of the case is that Samsung was aware the player was defective, however if you look at the conditions provided by SONY, the system met ALL profile 1.0 standards and is not defective. Due to this wording alone the claim is damaged.

Paragraph 7 says that selling thie Blu-Ray player cause injury(not physical) to the plaintiff. What injury, the world knowing how much of an ass-hat he is? Obviously this is completely trumped up and any self respecting judge would not even consider ruling in favor of the plaintiff.

In the factual allegations, it is never stated that Samsung claimed that all Blu-Ray disc profiles would work on this system. Most of the 'factual' allegations are merely ripped from the Blu-Ray advertising that is put out by Sony, in regards to storage capacity and picture quality. I didn't see anything at all about picture in picture claims made by Samsung. If no claim was made by Samsung then I don't see a case.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[AP2k]

Sure, there is no problem updating firmware. Firmware gets upgraded all the time on loads of products. The problem is that the hardware for the newer BD players might not be in the older ones. I'm no expert on BD, but I do know that you cant upgrade a 4-cylinder engine into an 8-cylinder engine by just plugging in a new ECU (the firmware).

I would hope that Samsung has a valid reason that they cannot possibly upgrade. At least they arent sending its customers up a creek from sheer apathy.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[themacks]

...but that comes with being an early adopter.

Why should it? If he bought something marked that it plays Blu-Ray it should play any media that is also marked Blu-Ray, regardless of when either was bought. Just because it was the first player to market doesn't make it exempt. If they change the spec they should change the marking to at least show that the two aren't compatible.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to add new features but if I buy a bluray player to play bluray discs I darn well expect it to play the discs even if I don't get all the new bells and whistles. I think this has more to do with the content owners changing the encryption keys thereby requiring all bluray players firmware to be updated. I had to do this to my father's bluray player to get it to play the new titles. Why a company would sell a bluray player without the ability to update firmware is beyond me. I think they owe this guy the cost of in my opinion useless player. Knowing the nature of bluray discs and it's encryption key technology I feel Samsung should of known better.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[tepples]

If he bought something marked that it plays Blu-Ray it should play any media that is also marked Blu-Ray, regardless of when either was bought. And any BD title authored against BD 1.1 should gracefully degrade in BD 1.0 players.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Sethb]

I have one of these players, and we're not upset about Profile 1.1 vs 1.0, we're upset that it's a total crapshoot whether or not a given movie will play on your player. I got mine in September, this isn't a device that's three years old, either, but it has been plagued with bugs. I rented Weeds from Netflix, and the disc would play fine ONCE, but not a second time (confirmed with others on AVSForum). Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't work for a month or two after release. Deja Vu would constantly hang during playback. Pirates of the Carribean 3 didn't work until last week, nor did Little Miss Sunshine. 3:10 to Yuma still doesn't work, and last week I sat down to watch Across the Universe to find that you're left at the menu screen, but with no cursor to start the movie, and you can't even skip to a chapter or work-around the issue.

Samsung needs to figure out what the hell is wrong with their firmware and correct it so that it'll actually play movies, and they need to be more transparent about what's going on. They rarely acknowledge issues, and never document what fixes are in new firmware revisions as they're released. Perhaps they could give some test units to the shops that are authoring Blu-Ray discs, or, you know, get an advance copy of the disc so that firmware can be ready on the day the movie hits the streets. Follow this thread at AVSForum for more info.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[bhatji]

Samsung does seem to have such a history, I had bought a cell phone that broke down within a short time (it was a bleeding edge then - some 5+ years ago) ... I wasn't able to get them to do anything about it. Needless to say, I haven't purchased a single Samsung device since then.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Major League Gamer]

First, you have no idea what I do for a living. Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. Second, if you were capable of reading you'd see a fundamental flaw in the wording of the suit. Third, you clearly are the "ignorant asshat" cuz.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[sl3xd]

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

More accurately, Samsung put a player out onto the market that met the demands of the (currently unfinished) Blu-ray disc standard.

Blu-ray was rushed to market before it was ready - HD DVD's release ensured the BDA couldn't wait until the standard was completed.

The Blu-ray trade assosciation admitted as much at CES 2008, and then noted that only Sony's PS3 had any hope of being upgradeable to Profile 2.0, due in October. (I'm sure Sony was more than happy to hear that... and I'm betting it really annoys the other manufacturers in the BDA).

In contrast, HD DVD was a polished, complete standard at the time of release, and the first HD DVD players can handle every feature of every disc made - including features that Blu-ray does not currently have.

I'm officially format-neutral - I have both (Samsung's BD/HD DVD player).

I think it's funny to hear various fanbois pitting it as a Microsoft vs. Sony thing - it's more Toshiba/NEC vs. Sony/Panasonic/Philips, which is more or less what almost happened with "regular" DVD, except this time, Sony & co. decided to push its product, instead of suffering the "disgrace" of following someone else's lead. Rivalries among Japanese companies are a lot like college sports - sometimes I have difficulty telling the difference between rivalry and a full-on holy war. And HD DVD vs Blu-ray is very similar - the battle was faught in the DVD forum for years, with Sony, Panasonic, and Philips doing everything possible to prevent HD DVD from happening.

Many of the ignorant thing that the menu system used by HD DVD is Microsoft's - which is completely false. HD DVD uses "Advanced Content" - an open standard defined by Disney & Warner Brothers. The most popular implementation is Microsoft's HDi. In other words, HDi is to Advanced Content as Internet Explorer is to HTML. HDi is one implementation, and is from Microsoft; Advanced Content is the standard, and is from Disney and Warner. HDi is the most popular, much like how IE is the dominant web browser for HTML.

In the end, HD DVD's release forced the BDA's hand - the BDA had to either give up entirely (no format war and only HD DVD) or release a product based on an incomplete standard. Not wanting to give up royalties, the BDA released a half-baked product.

The part that's not forgivable is that the BD player makers had a very good idea what the final standard would be - things like internet connectivity, two decoders for picture-in-picture, built-in storage - you know, stuff that its HD DVD competitor does.

All things told, I like that HD DVD is a "finished" standard - HD DVD owners are unlikely to get "burned" - even if the format fails, the discs will still play, after all. Blu-ray can't say that - early adopters are getting burned, and will continue to be burned until Profile 2.0 players are common, if not longer.

As far as being "burned" by "losing" the format war - I remind readers that iTunes sold more movies than either HD DVD or Blu-ray in 2007. It's quite likely that both HD DVD and Blu-ray will "lose" in the end - though the discs will still play, and both discs are already rippable.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[gstoddart]

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

No,I'm more inclined to agree that the 1.0 spec was incomplete and a lot got added in 1.1 because they (the creators of the spec) wanted to get the devices to market.

My now 8+ year old Toshiba DVD player is completely incapable of reading burned DVDs or playing MP3s -- something to do with laser wavelength I think. Heck, back in the day, a menu item of the original Aliens DVD borked the machine so badly, it was locked and required a firmware update. Basically killed the machine. (I won't bother finding a link, it's probably impossible at this point.) Required being sent to a service depot to be fixed.

The problem with consumer electronics (especialy nowadays with roving standards) is if you buy an early version of "the new hotness", it doesn't take long to discover it's the "old and busted" very quickly. Something gets defined, pushed out to market, and then someone comes along and adds features you didn't know were coming.

We seem to release a half-assed version of the spec, and then the first generation devices get left behind. What we need is finalized specs in the first place. I've lost faith in any format which isn't at least 3 years old -- standards holders are in a hurry to get manufacturers to release product and then change the rules.

I believe Samsung likely released a good product, and then the wing nuts at Sony decided to add some feature creep. It's not a bug if you never knew it was gonna be a requirement. For the same reason that HDMI suddenly became important to HD-TV (and screwed people with older sets), modern "specs" start out as a best guess and then gets refined.

Let's face it, new standards/tech represents a huge gamble -- in this case, the house changed the rules of the game, and some people lost.

Cheers

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[m.ducharme]

No, you're wrong (though you bring up points that Samsung's lawyers will probably bring up).

A judge or a jury (especially a jury) doesn't have to accept your definition of a defective Blu-Ray disc. If the judge or jury decides that the whole standards issue wasn't made sufficiently clear to the purchaser, or decides that it's a red herring (which many posters suggest is the case, i.e. the player doesn't even meet 1.0 standards), then paragraph 5 of the pleadings covers that. If I were the plaintiff I'd bring in a stack of discs and a handful of players and just keep trying different discs in different players, and demonstrate that the discs don't play. The Defence will look like dissembling liars when they try to explain the subtleties of different versions, standards, etc.

The injury that the Plaintiff has suffered is that he has spent money on a Player and disc that allegedly don't work as advertised. If you don't like the term Injury, read Damages instead, it's basically the same thing. He may be claiming other emotional or mental injuries, and as ridiculous as that seems, he'll probably get some money if he can find a psychiatrist to say he's scarred mentally for life because he couldn't watch his favourite movie.

I would also note that many, many pleadings in a Statement of Claim are of course boilerplate, in other words, you throw in every possible argument you can think of, and every damage you could possibly suffer, even if you haven't yet gotten evidence for these, in case such evidence shows up in the future.

And lastly, Samsung, by putting out a Blu Ray player, is warranting that it will work with Blu-Ray discs. The issue for the Plaintiff isn't that he's not getting his picture-in-picture feature, he's alleging that there are several discs that don't work at all, and Samsung isn't fixing this problem. Samsung doesn't even have to make an explicit claim, just building a player and throwing the BluRay logo on it is sufficient to open themselves up to liability.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[aXis100]

Off topic -

I've probably got the same Toshiba DVD player as you, and have found a fix for burned disks. Basically you need to change the "BitSetting" feild in your DVD burner so that the disks get marked as "DVD-ROM" instead of "DVD-R" or "DVD-R/W". This has fixed nearly all of my issues.

There's several different bitsetting programs around depending upon the drive manufactuerer - try google.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[DrXym]

The issue is Samsung released a busted Blu Ray player that doesn't even play current Blu Ray discs properly. This has nothing to do with the standard, as much as it has to do with Samsung's own shoddy QA testing and development.

Anyway, Samsung didn't just screw up with Blu Ray, their BD / HD DVD player also has problems with disks in both formats.

Meanwhile virtually every other manufacturer of Blu Ray kit appears to be doing fine. So I think we can blame Samsung for the screw-up, rather than the standard.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[ajs318]

But surely if this player was released to market less than a year ago, then that means any example of this player is less than a year old -- which means by law it must still be covered under the manufacturer's guarantee.

Treat the player as faulty, and take it back to the store where it was purchased. Take the disc that it won't play, and show that it works on another player (which is bound to be a different model). Make very sure that you know your rights under the law (print them out if necessary), because sales assistants are generally full of s#!t despite the fact that it is us poor sods who pay their wages.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[DDLKermit007]

My first HD-TV was also component only. I was a bit pissed off when I found out that the only thing willing to output an actual HD signal to the component connection was only videogame systems. Movies were only outputting via HDMI which makes zero sense given upscaled DVDs are done via lossy hardware when DVDs only contains a 480i image. Who the hell honestly is going to pirate an upscaled signal?

But I digress, no lawsuits were ever brought over that completely stupid spec over anything over 480p must go over a secured signal connection outside of the rouge players that would do it, and thusly landed themselves in court with the DVD consortium.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, man buys broken BD player, but wants to sue Samsung instead of taking it back to the store?

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Lisandro]

No way a judge will allow this lawsuit, much less grant it class-action status. Imagine the precedent this would set. I could sue Motorola because my older cell phone doesn't have all the features that their latest ones have. I could sue Toyota because a newer year/model of my car has more features. Etc. etc.

Your older cellphone is still able to make phone calls. This guy bought a $400 Blu-ray player and found out that some newer Blu-ray titles won't play on it, so, understandably, he's pissed. The nerve!

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[toiletsalmon]

"In contrast, HD DVD was a polished, complete standard at the time of release, and the first HD DVD players can handle every feature of every disc made - including features that Blu-ray does not currently have."

A-Men to that! I'm format neutral as well, but when I heard about the full feature set that HD-DVD had when compared with Blu-Ray 1.0's cobbled together mess...Well, I wouldn't say I jumped on the HD-DVD ship as much as their is the only boat I'd really be willing to get on.

Of course, now with the supposed death of HD-DVD, who's to say that the Blu-Ray Spec NEEDS to be updated. They'll probably just use it as an excuse to milk even more hardware upgrades out of the public.

Great post!

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Lost Engineer]

To be fair, video game consoles do play movies over the component ports. Yes HDCP is stupid. Every other day my cable box politely informs me (via a huge, static picture that could burn in my lovely TV) that I have to switch to component because my TV doesn't support HDCP. Then I "reboot" my TV and everything is fine.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[LionMage]

More accurately, Samsung put a player out onto the market that met the demands of the (currently unfinished) Blu-ray disc standard.

Um, no, because the specification demands that all movies play on hardware that complies with version 1.0 of the spec, even if the advanced features of version 1.1 and 2.0 aren't supported by the hardware. Since the plaintiff in this case is complaining about movies that refuse to play at all, it seems clear (to me, anyway) that Samsung's player did not satisfy the demands of even version 1.0 of the Blu Ray spec.

Many of the ignorant thing that the menu system used by HD DVD is Microsoft's - which is completely false. HD DVD uses "Advanced Content" - an open standard defined by Disney & Warner Brothers. The most popular implementation is Microsoft's HDi. In other words, HDi is to Advanced Content as Internet Explorer is to HTML. HDi is one implementation, and is from Microsoft; Advanced Content is the standard, and is from Disney and Warner. HDi is the most popular, much like how IE is the dominant web browser for HTML.

And like IE did for the web, HDi is doing for HD DVD implementations -- that is to say, HDi has pretty much killed off competing implementations of Advanced Content. Case in point, both Toshiba's stand-alone HD DVD players as well as Microsoft's Xbox 360 add-on use HDi.

Personally, I think the development model required by Advanced Content is absurd -- it's basically the web development model (XML + ECMAscript, analogous to HTML + JavaScript), with lots of AJAX-y things to simulate a rich UI. That's one of the reasons I threw my support behind Blu Ray early on -- BD-J just seemed like a better idea in the long run. However, there are probably way more developers out there with a skill set adequate to do Advanced Content development vs. BD-J development, and they probably cost less to hire too.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[Danga]

So what you're saying is, man buys broken BD player, but wants to sue Samsung instead of taking it back to the store?

If the problem was something like the player could not read any discs or some other defect that getting an exchange for the same model would fix then just taking it back to the store would be the correct option. However, in this case ALL Samsung players of this particular model have problems playing some REGULAR blu-ray discs. It is not even a problem of just not being able to use the new features in the new profiles, some discs just WILL NOT PLAY.

All of this fault is on Samsung who released a shoddy product to the market and because of that Samsung deserves to be sued. Companies need to realize that customers will not take being beta-testers any longer. It is one thing to get a product that has a few bugs that can be fixed via firmware updates but this is clearly an example where the product DOESN'T WORK and never should have been released to the public.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

[DDLKermit007]

I never said they didn't. They will not however output those movies over 480p with DVD. It's part of an agreement manufacturers sign to be allowed to decode the video.

And the problem is?

[_merlin]

I don't see the problem. It's a Profile 1.0 player, and it gives the user all Profile 1.0 features. It does what it says on the box. It will play Profile 1.1 discs - you can still see the video and hear the audio. Since Profile 1.1 requires additional hardware (like the 256MB local storage), it isn't possible to update a Profile 1.0 player with new firmware.

Think of this another way: I have a MacBook with a Core Duo CPU. It's a 32-bit x86 processor with SSE3. It will run OSX 10.5 Leopard in 32-bit mode, but 64-bit features won't work, and 64-bit only applications won't run. Should I go and sue Apple for selling me a defective product? Should I demand they give me an update? It's not like a new EFI ROM will turn a 32-bit chip into a 64-bit one, either.

Re:And the problem is?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will play Profile 1.1 discs - you can still see the video and hear the audio. Except it doesn't, and Samsung refuses to provide an update to fix this - which is why the guy is suing.

He isn't expecting the extra features - he just wanted to have the discs play in the first place. According to the lawsuit, the player refuses to even read them.

The problem has nothing to do with Profile 1.1 - it's a flaw with BD+.

He got screwed over by DRM. I would have thought Slashdot would be more sympathetic to someone screwed over by DRM than to instead blame him for buying "too early" whereby "too early" is apparently six months ago.

Re:And the problem is?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will play Profile 1.1 discs

Except that it doesn't, at least for one title according to the article, though I'm having a hard time getting amazon to tell me what "Weeds" disc they were talking about or what profile it's supposed to require.

Re:And the problem is?

[Trogre]

Think of this another way: I have a MacBook with a Core Duo CPU. It's a 32-bit x86 processor with SSE3. It will run OSX 10.5 Leopard in 32-bit mode, but 64-bit features won't work, and 64-bit only applications won't run. Should I go and sue Apple for selling me a defective product?

Yes.

Re:And the problem is?

[Nyall]

Well since you mentioned apple:
http://www.macworld.com/article/3272/2002/01/g3osx.html

OS X for the G3 did not support DVD playback or openGL hardware acceleration that was available with OS9.

Re:And the problem is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I go and sue Apple for selling me a defective product? Yes! Sue that rotten Apple for every penny!

Confirms my belief...

[Major League Gamer]

Far too many people from Connecticut think they are entitled to far more than they deserve. Before you slag me, I am from Connecticut. I see it every day.

Anyone who jumps into a new technology should expect things to change. This goes double for competitive technologies. People like this guy would probably be suing Sony if HD-DVD won out in the end. Stupid.

Re:Confirms my belief...

[Anonymous Coward]

Far too many people from Connecticut think they are entitled to far more than they deserve.

Of course they do. They're Americans.

How I love the american legal system.

[Kazrath]

How is this a fault of a manufacturer? Especially one that is not the creator of the Blue-Ray disk. Samsung made a hardware platform with a current drive and the technology improved and the old system cannot be upgraded. Why not sue every HDD manufacturer then? My old IDE drive won't work with my new motherboard. I cannot get firmware updates and the connectors are all wrong!

These frivolous lawsuits need to stop. They really need to start tossing these people out on there asses or pressing some criminal negligence charges against them.

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[oldhack]

American legal system is similar to British one, I think - based on "common laws" and precendents, deliberately vague.

Pro: Flexible (not autistic like computer codes) and provides safety valve for the prevalent sentiment of the time.
Con: Fashion of the time dictates what it means.

Can't determine what is "frivolous" until it goes to the trial. Precedent is a precedent only if the judge/jury agrees.

It cracks me up when a Westerner lectures to developing countries that they have no "rule of laws" - it's almost "the shits here ain't like the shits I'm used to, and that's bullshit!!"

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they mislead people into believing it would play blu-ray discs(without telling them there would be different kinds), then it makes sense.

Just because stupid people are suing all the time for stupid reasons, does not mean there are no valid reasons to sue.

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[Jugalator]

I agree, if Samsung followed the back then Blu-ray specs when making their drive, what more can they do... *shrug*

Does it play Profile 1.0 discs? Yes? Fine. It is a Profile 1.0 player.

As for Profile 1.1, they key here would be: was it a requirement of the Profile 1.0 spec to support a Blu-ray profile upgrade path? If not, I don't see what this man can expect. And if not, if he's pissed about that, he should rather direct his complaints at the full Blu-ray Disc Association instead, who collectively took that decision.

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[Mordaximus]

How is this a fault of a manufacturer? Especially one that is not the creator of the Blue-Ray disk.

Good grief. Samsung has sat on the Blu-Ray board of directors since 2002, when it was called the Blu-Ray Founders. How exactly are they only a manufacturer?

Just a subtle reminder, Blu-Ray is not a Sony format

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the friggin' article. He's not crying about lack of new features, he's saying that the device ***won't read the discs at all***. That would, to me, indicate a defective device that Samsung should be obligated to fix. It seems like Samsung is saying "it's too hard to fix the bugs in that early device, so you should just buy one of our newer ones that doesn't have the bugs in it" which I do not agree with.

Re:How I love the american legal system.

[zippthorne]

But is there an indication on the disks that they won't play on a profile 1.0 player, a vague, "some features may not be available on all players" warning, or nothing at all?

It certainly does require an upgrade path implicitly if there exist blu-ray disks which it will not play, and for which no indication is given.

perfect

[rastoboy29]

Apparently Samsung went to the Microsoft school of enraging their early adopters.

BTW if you are one of the early buyers of my game, I will not shit on your face.  In fact, I will do my best to be friendly, supportive, and civil!

Re:perfect

[laejoh]

I will not shit on your face.

Du liebst mich nicht mehr?

BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

[Wizarth]

I understand the point of people saying "It's Profile 1.0, not Profile 1.1, it does what it says on the box". But most customers won't look at that. They just see the BluRay logo, see the adverts for BluRay (which no doubt show off the features included in Profile 1.1) then want to know why their BluRay player can't do what the advertisement told them.

At the least, it's misleading advertising. The Profile 1.0 player being defective is a bit of a stretch, but it's not unfounded.

Re:BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

[stratjakt]

PS2 games carry the DVD logo and they wont work on just any DVD player!

This lawsuit is so silly it's not really newsworthy. Probably some amateur lawyer who looks at the legal system as his own personal, free lottery ticket.

Re:BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

[Trogre]

The sad thing is, he's probably right.

Re:BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

[Dragonslicer]

I understand the point of people saying "It's Profile 1.0, not Profile 1.1, it does what it says on the box". But most customers won't look at that. They just see the BluRay logo, see the adverts for BluRay (which no doubt show off the features included in Profile 1.1) then want to know why their BluRay player can't do what the advertisement told them.

At the least, it's misleading advertising. The Profile 1.0 player being defective is a bit of a stretch, but it's not unfounded. Then the question is which company had the misleading advertising, the manufacturer of the player or the manufacturer of the disc? Is the player responsible for handling all discs, or is the disc responsible for working in all players? I don't know the answers to either of these questions, but they seem likely to come up in any court proceedings.

Re:BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

[Wizarth]

I'd personally lay it at the people owning the Blu-Ray (some Consortium?). They are the ones responsible for the Profiles, and should have specified a different logo to be used between the versions. At least an overlaid 1.0 and 1.1 over the corner of it, or some such.

Similar to the DVD-Video / DVD-ROM, and the CD Digital Audio logos. And USB logos, don't they include 1.1 and 2.0? Or at least "High Speed" and something else (which I never could keep straight).

Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[iamacat]

The only market segment decided so far are people who are willing and able to pay $600 for a high-def player or a game console. Apparently HD-DVD captured an even smaller mind share, but $150 players are only a recent phenomenon and it's effect on the market remains to be see. If and when Blu Ray players are available for under a hundred bucks and titles are around $25 we can talk about having a winner.

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[jmorris42]

> ..but $150 players are only a recent phenomenon and it's effect on the market remains to be seen.

I suspect the $150 players were the result of the retail channel seeing what was happening and deciding that the Xmas season was their last chance to unload inventory that was about to be worthless. Add in a little inside info paranoia and deliberate postponing of the studio shifting, etc to allow retails time to dump and things make a lot more sense.

Everyone knew that only one would survive and at the first hint that the market was picking a winner the desire not to be left holding a big stack of dead inventory created a huge bandwagon effect. If I had to guess it was the PS3 finally starting to sell as the price dropped. It became obvious there was soon going to be far more BD players just on the strength of the PS3, one studio flips camps (actually just stopped doing both) and it snowballed. At this point I doubt even Sony can manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Me, I haven't even bought a HD set yet and haven't owned a console since the 2600. Waiting for the pricing to plateau out, no sense getting in a hurry to go HD just to be able to pick from a few dozen crap/blockbuster titles. :)

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[ediron2]

Me, I haven't even bought a HD set yet and haven't owned a console since the 2600.

And don't we all look to someone so enthusiastic about the gadget industry that they haven't bought a game system since the Atari 2600 .
(/snark)

My best recall on what 'everybody knew' would happen in the high-def format wars wasn't any sureness that only one could win. Like with the early days of DVD+ and DVD-, there was a lot of shrugging and guessing that we'd probably soon enough see dual-format players, some specialists saying there were insurmountable technical barriers. Lots of fanboy scribbling and uncertainty and speculation. Someone can correct me if they remember hordes of techies saying otherwise with blu vs. HD.

Sorry for mocking you... your comment did make me chuckle at one bit of market irony I might of otherwise overlooked -- when you mentioned Samsung was dumping doomed-format players, it hit me that selling out desperately is a big factor in how Sony snatched a format victory here.

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[Eskarel]

The Blu-Ray victory was decided before the battle even started.

Sony owns the rights to movies, and continues to make movies. So long as they were willing to suck up some potential losses there were always going to be movies you couldn't get on HD-DVD.

Toshiba doesn't own movies, and so in order to hold out they would have had to bribe/coerce a media company that had no vested interest in which technology would win out to hold out, or generate sufficient momentum via superior quality/price/features that Sony couldn't afford to hold out anymore.

HD-DVD isn't sufficiently better(if it's better at all) than Blu-Ray to make it the overall market winner. Sony doesn't want to give up blu-ray the way they did with Mini-Disc. Everyone else just wants to sell product(ideally a whole new copy of everyone's dvd library the way they did with CD) and doesn't really give a rats which format wins.

Studios and Publishers seem to be fleeing the battle a lot quicker than I might have guessed, but without a massive difference in quality or penetration HD-DVD was doomed eventually.

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-ray players are not $600, they come "free", when bundled with a new HDTV.

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

[jyjjy]

If I had to guess it was the PS3 finally starting to sell as the price dropped. It became obvious there was soon going to be far more BD players just on the strength of the PS3 Wasn't this always obvious? It was only the initial poor sales of the PS3 that let the "war" drag on. This thing was decided when MS left HD-DVD out if the 360. I never understood why other people didn't seem to get that.

Devil's Advocate

[Tuor]

One important thing to remember is Joe Consumer doesn't know or care about 1.0, 1.1, etc.

Unless they're changing the name, ol' Joe is going to get upset when it doesn't work like it says on the box. Joe is used to auto recalls and static products, and I think BluRay forgot that in their little war to win the format.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[oldhack]

I have to go with Joe on this one.

Profile 2.0

[JungleBoy]

My favorite part about this "profile" stuff is that the PS3 is the ONLY hardware capable of meeting the profile 2.0 requirements (with a software update). Sony must love that, "Awe gee whiz, looks like our PS3 is the only REAL Blue-Ray player." I wonder if we'll ever see Blue-Ray profile 2.0 players get as cheap as DVD players? Not if Sony can help it.

Re:Profile 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the PS3 is only a Profile 1.1 player right now.

Sony announced at the last CES that they were working on updating the PS3's firmware to support profile 2.0.

This announcement came alongside the unveiling of two profile 2.0 players from other manufacturers that were scheduled to be released this year.

As an added bonus, the low end PS3 is currently ~$400, and will probably see another round or two of price cuts during 2008 (due to shrunk BluRay drives, smaller cell die, or at the very least, Holiday Season '09), so the price of a BluRay player seems to keep coming down (although not as fast as obsolete HD-DVD players).

Sure Sony wants the PS4 to be cost effective as a BluRay player also, you noticed they tied the fate of the console (in large measure) to the fate of the format? Guess what? It might pay off.

Re:Profile 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

At the point they get cheap enough there will just be a Profile 3 spec with yet another update to the PS3 software.

I think ...

[SlashDev]

... he owns Sansung stock. Buy after lawsuit annoucement, sell after lawsuit is rejected in court.

Read before you complain

[MBCook]

Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing these companies getting a slap on the wrist for a changing definition of what Blu-Ray is by changing the profile but not making the differences obvious (it's a little tiny box on the back of a case).

That said, sounds like the guy has a case to me. Read this part:

At issue are some significant title-compatibility problems with the player. In his complaint, plaintiff Bob McGovern says that a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play on the device. He also accuses Samsung of failing to offer firmware updates to remedy the problem, saying that the consumer electronics giant "does not intend to provide future firmware updates or otherwise repair" the problematic player.

As one of our readers pointed out via e-mail, the P1200 has a checkered reputation when it comes to hardware reliability. A massive thread in the AV Science forum is filled with numerous complaints about the player. "I have had the BDP 1200 for 7 weeks. Not a finished product," reads one post. "Should not have been brought to the market until it was fully beta tested. Would not play Blu-ray Weeds. Was told needed updated software."

It was defective. It sounds like the bought a DVD player (let's pretend) that wouldn't play a good percentage of DVDs. Not "doesn't play every neat feature". Not "doesn't support 12.16 theatrical sound". Just plain "won't play". They could fix it with a software update, but they don't seem to want to.

That part is bait-and-switch. He bought a player that should play any good Blu-Ray movie (possibly san-extras). It won't play many of them. Either all those movies are defective, or the player is. If it is the player, he was ripped off. At the very least, they should have replaced his player with something that would play movies.

Re:Read before you complain

[Major League Gamer]

Actually, if you google, you'll find several articles state that Samsung HAS offered a firmware update for this 'issue' and it has worked. Although if you believe the claims of Mr. McGovern, he says they didn't even try to fix it.

Re:Read before you complain

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Samsung Blu-Ray players are crap, probably the worst of the lot. What I see are complaints of problems that are greater than the rest of them combined. And Samsung was the slowest of the lot to make a patch. Their BRP should not be sold in my opinion.

Re:Read before you complain

[Doctor_Jest]

I see where you're coming from, but oh, around 1996 or 1997 or so we (some of us) were having this very same conversation about DVD players.

Anyone remember the early days of DVD? Certain manufacturer's players wouldn't handle certain style manufactured dual-layer discs (among other things). I remember the fiasco with nearly all high-end Sony players and the movie "The Matrix" causing a lock-up at the menu.... and guess what? Some of those players didn't have the ability to update their firmware either. It was a configuration nightmare, so to speak. Now, I'm not saying this Samsung player is top-notch and the world truly has a gem of a player on their hands... but as for problematic DVD players in the past, we've seen this before.... just thought I'd remind everyone. :) (I'm probably the 24th person to do so in the last 3 minutes... sorry for the redundancy.)

But it truly begs the question.. why be an early adopter _again_? My Sony DVD I got with 5 "free DVD" movies (from a list of crap that wouldn't sell) had troubles early on with quite a few WB DVDs... but eventually it began working on more movies, before it crapped the bed. (Sony.. heh.)

Re:Read before you complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Pah, I get that with normal DVDs. So I have two players hooked up to the TV. Usually a DVD that does not work on one player works on the other. There is a certain publisher that is particularly bad on one of the players - all their stuff has problems. I guess they use the same person to master all their discs.

Re:Read before you complain

[elrous0]

I had an early-model Toshiba clone (the Philips DVD-400AT from 1997). The early-model Toshiba DVD players were notorious for their compatibility problems with discs that didn't rigidly follow the DVD specs (such as "Kalifornia" and many other Polygram titles). A lot of other early players had similar glitches with certain titles.

Hardware-wise, they were a lot more well-built than later model DVD players, though. Being as those first generation players STARTED at $450, they could afford to. My parents still have my Philips. It still works just fine after 11 years of constant use.

Re:Read before you complain

[Doctor_Jest]

The funny thing was... the high end Sony players (which had hackable region coding via a simply trace snip or something) were more problematic than my POS cheap-o Sony player that got me the 5 'feature' films. ;) I probably wouldn't have gotten the player otherwise, but it was on sale to boot... (and I wrongly anticipated the Star Wars DVD box set to be released "any day now").

My Sony crapped out well before it should have, but well after most of my friends' $900 players...

If he had stock...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

he'd be trying to nail them with Sarbaney-Oxley for leading investors to think they have better products and a better market position than they do.

That's a problem with BD+

[_merlin]

If he has problems with BD+ discs, why doesn't he sue the people selling and distributing these defective discs? If the discs are being sold as BluRay discs, they should play in a BluRay Profile 1.0 player. It isn't the manufacturers fault that some crappy new copy protection doesn't work with their player. Would you sue the manufacturer of a CD player because some copy protected discs won't play, or would you go for the people selling the dodgy copy-protected discs but still calling them CDs? I know I'd go after the people purveying the misrepresented discs.

Re:That's a problem with BD+

[toleraen]

Bad analogy. Not that this one is much better, but this would be like buying a TV that claims it plays digital broadcasts, but then doesn't play ATSC broadcasts. If the manufacturer didn't implement the BD+ properly in their player, it's not the content providers fault that the player doesn't process the BD+. Just like it's not your local NBC broadcaster's fault that your TV doesn't properly display ATSC, even though it might work with DVB/T just fine.

Re:That's a problem with BD+

[_merlin]

BD+ is bullshit copy protection that was devised after the BluRay standard was published. It's supposed to work with existing BluRay players, but it doesn't. BD+ discs violate the BluRay standard, in the same way that copy-protected CDs violate the relevant standard. Samsung hasn't failed to implement BD+ properly, and were in no position to since it hadn't been "invented" at the time this player went on sale. I think people should just avoid these defective BD+ discs, and if they're going to sue anyone, make it the people selling the defective discs with the BluRay logo on them.

Extra features ? Bah !

[The Sith Lord]

Who really gives a damn about "bonus features" anyway ?

I mean, if you fork out for some serious hi-def gear, you'd want to see the whole image anyway, without some PiP cluttering up the screen.
It's a gimmick at best, and probably something you'd use once, if at all.

Re:Extra features ? Bah !

[Boogaroo]

I understand what you're saying, remember the TV's with picture in picture? I used it once and never again.

However, what if things like interviews and commentaries started using the picture in picture feature to work? What then?
(Of course I'm making things up, but I dont' think its too far out of the realm of possibility.)

Re:Extra features ? Bah !

[TrancePhreak]

This already has examples in HD-DVD. The behind the scenes plays in PiP for 300.

Didn't do his homework

[mcmaddog]

This guy decided to make a major expense purchase and didn't do proper research to see if it was adequate for his needs. I've been looking forward to a Blu-Ray player, but waiting until prices come down more and maybe profile 2.0 players to become available.

Re:Didn't do his homework

[Overzeetop]

You spend too much time with computers. This is a consumer electronics item. The thing about CE stuff is that the accepted version of usage involves (1) turning the machine on and (2) having it do it's stuff. If it's a toaster, it makes toast. If its a refrigerator, it makes things cold. If it's a media player it plays media (CD players play CDs, DVD players play DVDs). In this case, he has a BluRay(R) branded player which will not play a BluRay(R) branded discs. End of story.

Quite honestly, I'd want to list Sony on the suit for changing the format and not requiring player manufacturers to ensure that their existing, branded devices could play the discs. If I were Panasonic, I'd sue Sony for changing the God damned specification after hardware had been designed, built, and shipped. This whole DRM/BD+ shit has royally fucked over the entire home entertainment sector, and personally I hope they all end up with ebola, with their almost-dead bodies left out on the street to suffer, and maggots set up camp in their skulls while the rest of their bodies decay into unrecognizable, repulsive, fetid masses. And I don't even own a BluRay player.

For what its worth, everyone involved with the ever-changing HDMI spec can suffer the same fate.

It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

[Princess Aurora]

This lawsuit is not over that Profile 1.1 content will not play on this Profile 1.0 player. The Samsung in question has much worse compatibility problems--some discs don't play at all. Before the first Profile 1.1 discs came out, the Samsung refused to play BD+ discs such as Fantastic Four 2 and The Day After Tomorrow. It took Samsung something like a month to issue a firmware update to fix this issue (other manufacturers who had issues had updates out in a week or so). Furthermore, even after that update, new discs continue not to play. The problem mostly is limited to Java-enabled discs, which are in the Profile 1.0 specification.

We're not even talking about Profile 1.1 discs either. Some standard releases refuse to play, and Samsung's support has been sluggish. Problems with the PS3 and Panasonic players have been addressed within a week or two of problems occurring. There are a number of discs that have been out for months that still don't play, even with the latest firmware:
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (12/3/07)
Blade Runner (12/18/07)
Pixar Shorts (11/6/07)

That's over a month and a half with no fix! The profile 1.1 discs (3:10 to Yuma and Sunshine) don't play the movie successfully. They sputter and freeze. This problem isn't observed on other Profile 1.0 players from Panasonic, Sony, and Pioneer. The Samsung player really is defective.

Re:It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

[jank1887]

and seriously, since when should I have to worry about firmware updates when buying a piece of A/V equipment? Utterly Redonculous.

Re:It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

[barzok]

Before the first Profile 1.1 discs came out, the Samsung refused to play BD+ discs such as Fantastic Four 2

You say that like it's a bad thing.

The player was protecting people from that steaming pile of crap.

Re:It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung is a *terrible* company when it comes to customer support. I am not surprised one bit :)

You can see the "quality" of Samsung's service simply by searching for experiences on the net. This seems to be a problem across all product lines from TVs and electronics to Fridges.

I, unfortunately, got burned (for a while on anyway) with a TV purchase. It died within 5 days, and 6 weeks later still no fix-- the retailer was kind enough to take it back. Now I have a Sharp :P

Samsung products are good, very very good for the price when they work. But, in the event they issue a buggy product (like this DVD player)-- or you get one of the inevitable breakers (like my TV) you are screwed. Their after sale support is *the* absolute worst I've encountered (I've worked with Sony, JBL, Sanwa, and a few others in the past for warranty and after warrant repair). I don't think I will buy another Samsung product. If my experience didn't seem to be the standard, I'd brush this off-- but it seems the norm.

Re:It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

[Lost Engineer]

I had to update the firmware on my TV. Now that was a trip.

Hooray Format wars

[Khyber]

Ensuring good lawsuitarity since VHS vs BetaMax.

Is it just me?

[Colourspace]

Or are we nearing the day when Sony finally 'wins' a format war?

Re:Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it matters. Unless a new format comes out that is just as cheap and powerful we all lose due to DRM.

Re:Is it just me?

[EmagGeek]

Yeah, it sucked that they lost the format war over the original audio CD and the cassette tape...

Oh wait... Sony/Philips WON those..

Re:Is it just me?

[Lehk228]

the war'd not won till they beat the incumbent DVD

Re:Is it just me?

[toddestan]

Obviously you've never seen a 3.5" floppy disk, to name a successful Sony format.

HDMI

[Mr. Underbridge]

Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. You can't create a so-called standard and then say "whoops, need to change a few things here, sucks to be you if you were an early adopter!" I understand that the bleeding edge sometimes cuts, but that's usually a result of bugs in the players or the manufacturing process, not because some idiot changed the specs of the format!

If that's the case, then I await with glee for whenever they try to close the "analog hole" in HDMI-equipped TVs with DRM-crippled signals, as has been reported.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's got to be hard losing them all? :-)

That and, if you prefer, you could say that Microsoft lost this one.

Movie menu crap sucks

[catmistake]

I've never seen a BluRay title... but I imagine the menuing system is like DVDs' on crack. When I put a movie in my player, I want to watch a movie, not wait 2 minutes through menu animation and 8 min through previews... I'd pay more for no-nonsense "movie-only" titles. You know how when you go to get milk at the supermarket you have to walk past miles of stuff you don't want? Marketing is a profound waste of the consumer's time, and all that extra stuff on movie discs is just like the maze at your local grocery. You fools! You are letting them charge us for showing us stuff they want us to buy.

Re:Movie menu crap sucks

[xtracto]

I've never seen a BluRay title... but I imagine the menuing system is like DVDs' on crack. When I put a movie in my player, I want to watch a movie, not wait 2 minutes through menu animation and 8 min through previews... I'd pay more for no-nonsense "movie-only" titles

That reminded me of a picture I saw somewhere on Internet that was a parody of an anti-pirating ad. It said something like "Do not buy original disks, if you do it you will have to wait until they tell you you are a pirate, wait more for the stupid trailers and then wait more for the annoying menu". That is so true, when I download a movie from a torrent, I just have to burn it in a CD or DVD and put it in my Phillips DivX compatible player, after just pressing the play button in the controller the movie just *starts*. No annoyances.

Re:Movie menu crap sucks

[MrMacman2u]

Marketing is a profound waste of the consumer's time

And it works really, REALLY well or they wouldn't DO it! I worked in marketing for 3 years and the thousands of tiny little nearly inperceptible tricks that are used might just blow your mind if you tried to understand them all at once. End caps hock products that are profitable or moving slowly, adding a colored sign in front of a product, bold print, the HIEGHT of product placement, the music played over the PA, the lighting, arrangements, shiney paper flyers and more and you're only 3 feet in the door.

They WORK. No, not in any big way, but those dozens/hundred of tiny psychological pushes add up in the minds(?) of consumers. Even I am not totally immune and I know exactly how 95-99% of the normal (and not-so-normal) "tricks" work!!

You fools! You are letting them charge us for showing us stuff they want us to buy.

Yes and most of them are doing it with a smile on their face too.

Re:Movie menu crap sucks

[elrous0]

Actually, they're no worse than most DVD titles. HD-DVD titles (particularly Universal ones) are the best, though. Right to the menu, no trailers or hassle.

Re:Movie menu crap sucks

[catmistake]

I didn't intend to imply that marketing doesn't work. Nuclear bombs work like gangbusters too, great for those tough incineration jobs, but that doesn't make them a good thing. Poking an infant in the face works great at getting them to turn their heads... again, not necessarily a good thing.

Here's a much better summary

[tkrotchko]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080211-samsung-sued-over-defective-first-gen-blu-ray-players.html

If you Google for BD-P1200 Lawsuit, you'll see the profile 1.0 vs 1.1 is not the issue. I'm guessing Samsung released this thing, and now the software patches are eating them alive keeping up with the changing spec (and probably a bad design to begin with). Based on the scant information, I'm guessing Samsung realized at some point they couldn't patch their player to fix all the incompatibilities. Perhaps it was at end of life, so they figured they'd just ignore the complaints.

I don't think this is a "first adopter you have to expect this" situation. It sounds like a bad design. If Samsung had any corporate integrity, they'd replace these players with ones that actually work. I'm not a fan of lawsuits, but Samsung basically said "screw you" to their customers, so it's natural somebody would screw them right back.

Dont early adopters

[Private.Tucker]

Don't early adopters always get burned? That's the price you pay to be first.

Re:Dont early adopters

[Lumpy]

And the poor late adopters that buy Used HDTV's from 3-4 years ago.

m tv dont have HDCP, it's a 1080i set. Bluray and HDDVD is useless as nither will output anything but 480p out the Component output. In fact this is mentioned in EVERY HDDDVD and BluRay players manual.

"720p and 1080i output is disabled on component out on discs that have the copy protection flag set." EVERY SINGLE DISK HAS THIS FLAG SET!

I'm not buying it. If I ever buy one it will be whatever is easiest to rip with anydvd.

Re:Dont early adopters

[Gizzmonic]

And the poor late adopters that buy Used HDTV's from 3-4 years ago.

m tv dont have HDCP, it's a 1080i set. Bluray and HDDVD is useless as nither will output anything but 480p out the Component output. In fact this is mentioned in EVERY HDDDVD and BluRay players manual.

"720p and 1080i output is disabled on component out on discs that have the copy protection flag set." EVERY SINGLE DISK HAS THIS FLAG SET!

I'm sorry, but there's enough FUD in this article. You are talking out of your ass-my PS3 plays Bluray discs in 1080i over the component out, and my cousin's Toshiba HD-DVD player will play HD-DVDs in 1080i and 720p over component. Neither will upscale regular DVDs over component.

DRM, pointless format wars, and needlessly complex standards are frustrating, but there's no need to mislead anyone.

Re:Dont early adopters

[MikeBabcock]

No actually, every single disc does not have the flag set. I've seen lists, you can find them if you want. Unrestricted output is available for quite a few movies -- and you still get 540p, not just 480p, its still lower than you'd like but its not as bad as DVD.

loved the tag

[peektwice]

I loved the defectivebyaccident tag.
Funny, but I think you give them (the Blu-Ray camp) too much credit. It was not accidental.

DVD-Video != DVD-ROM

[tepples]

PS2 games carry the DVD logo and they wont work on just any DVD player! That's because PlayStation 2 games use the "ROM" profile, not the "VIDEO" profile. Look below the DVD logo on the packaging of a DVD-Video or DVD-ROM disc to see which profile it uses.

Fact Check

[dank zappingly]

You've gotta be kidding. Who modded this guy up? I know that anti-Sony opinions are popular here, but this is just insane. The PS3 has not cost $600 since June of 2007. Welcome to 2008. PS3 is currently selling for $400 or $500 depending on the model. You can buy a regular Blu Ray player for $350. Blu Rays are available for less than $25. Take a look at Amazon.com. HD-DVD players are selling for $150 because no one wants to buy a player that is already obsolete.

Re:Fact Check

[Jugalator]

Yes, I agree. And if you're ready to use a Blu-ray player as part of a HTPC system, it will cost you even less. The upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray would go for $209 here in Sweden for a freaking 5x Blu-ray Pioneer player, even less if you go for cheap brands like Lite-On.

Unless they promised firmware upgrades...

[daggre]

There's simply no case here. Hardware advances, flash memory becomes cheaper, there's just nothing here unless they promised they would have 1.1 compliance in the 1.0 players. I feel for the early adopters, and I think that the BluRay 1.0 spec was too easy on manufacturers (one of the few areas HD-DVD had it right from the beginning) but the electronics market has always been prone to "early retirement". I can guarantee this guy would have sued Samsung if HD-DVD had won the format war because Samsung had not accurately predicted the future. In the interest of customer service though, Samsung should offer a trade-up program to their early adopters with little or even no cost to upgrade to a 1.1 player, simply because these guys can go from Samsung resenters to Samsung evangelists, and a lot of the hardware should be recoverable (especially the diode which is hugely expensive). They could even make an in-house upgrade kit and just retrofit the old players. Hell they only sold like 5,000 of them just take the hit and play the good guy Samsung. It's just good business. It's NOT legally liable though.

In other news...

[rhizome]

Slashdot was sued for "duplicating" Ars Technica posting titles.

He shoulda read the owner's manual

[Cytlid]

My neighbor had both players and I put my bets on HDDVD (only because I picked up a normally advertised $300 player for $150 -- floor model). For Christmas, him and his wife actually bought the wife and I a Samsung BD-P1400. I read the entire owner's manual front to back (does anyone do that anymore). Comes out they have a big huge fat disclaimer in there on how the format can change and they won't guarantee it will play future revisions.

The only thing I don't like, even though the Samsung upscales normal DVD's to close to it's 1080p output, it "stops" randomly while playing them. My Toshiba HDDVD's output is only 1080i (and even tho the upscale for standard DVDs is only close to that). At least it doesn't stop randomly.

I realize too this may be a firmware issue, but still an annoyance. Some cat5 to the ethernet jack in the back should allow internet firmware updates.

Re:He shoulda read the owner's manual

[AK Marc]

Comes out they have a big huge fat disclaimer in there on how the format can change and they won't guarantee it will play future revisions.

If they don't have the disclaimer in large letters on the outside of the box, it isn't legal. They hide it in fine print that you can't read until after you've paid for it. That doesn't work.

Yet another reason

[willbry]

to NOT be an early adopter of new technology. No Blu-Ray or HD DVD here, just a sweet 1080p with a quality DVD upconvert player (http://dvdupconvert.wordpress.com/) so I can enjoy my existing DVD collection.

Return it to Samsung, through their window

[tekrat]

Early adopters always get screwed, but it seems to me that the High-Def thing has been particularly bad. The first Audio CD players didn't refuse to play later CDs. Here we have HD-ready TVs that aren't HD ready, Blue Ray players that don't play Blue Ray discs, and HD-DVD players that now are only good as boat anchors.

Not that I'm promoting violence against the consumer electronics industry, but I'd return the Samsung player to Samsung, by finding one of their buildings in the nearest corporate park, and chucking the player through one of their plate-glass windows.

If enough people did that, sooner or later they'd get the hint that you do not screw your customer base.

Re:Return it to Samsung, through their window

[RuBLed]

...and HD-DVD players that now are only good as boat anchors.

What, you mean this cutting-edge HD technological wonder is only as good as boat anchors? What's the point of dragging these cutting-edge technologies under your boat... Oh wait.. Ohhhh my...

Re:Return it to Samsung, through their window

[Polkyb]

Blue Ray players that don't play Blue Ray discs, and HD-DVD players that now are only good as boat anchors. At least the HD-DVD players will play HD-DVD disks. That's what you get for having a ratified standard before you start production. While Blu-Ray still doesn't have a standard, this will continue to happen.

Not Bait and Switch

[Belial6]

Bait and switch is when one product is advertised, and when you go to buy the product, the seller of said product refuses to sell you the product advertised and and instead tries to sell you a product that cost more, or has a higher profit margin.

Insanity

[CopaceticOpus]

Blu-Ray Lawyer: "Your honor, I move that this case be dismissed by reason of insanity."

Judge: "Please explain."

Blu-Ray Lawyer: "The plaintiff purchased the product in question when it was untested, unproven, excessively priced, and played a format that was at risk of going the way of the Dodo. Clearly he is insane."

Judge: "That is insane. Case dismissed!"

Plaintiff: "I'm Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!"

The PS3

[Nazmun]

I'm still surprised to see people not buy the cheaper $399 ps3 over these players. It has far better hardware then these standalone players (hard drive, etc.). Everyone for the love of god don't make this mistake. I've been telling people to get the ps3 for the last 6 months if they want a blu-ray player, until standalone 2.0 players that come out at half the cost of a ps3 (doubtful it will happen anytime soon) there is no reason to get a standalone.

Re:The PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they might hate $ony I never have any product with $ony plastered on it. I would gladly see the company dead.

Re:The PS3

[pisto_grih]

You can upgrade a PS3 too... for all those fancy new features.

Re:The PS3

[Mikachu]

Then why would they buy technology designed for a format that was largely funded and designed by Sony, especially when there's an alternative (HD-DVD)?

Re:The PS3

[iainl]

As an internet nerd I know better than to get the Samsung player. But I am seriously considering getting a Sony BDP-S300 instead of a PS3 for BluRay playback, because the former has 5.1 analogue audio outputs for lossless surround tracks; my amp doesn't have the HDMI 1.3 input you need to get those tracks out of a PS3.

A whole new amp makes the effective cost of a PS3-based solution rather more than double the price of the dedicated player.

Lets not

[EEPROMS]

mention the HDMI - DRM fluster fsk were you have to have a router with a internet connection to play media you have legally purchased if you dont have the right version of the DRM firmware on your player.

Re:A software update can't add missing hardware

[Technician]

And I don't mind it, but why are vital things like a second decoder not in the spec to make it at least upgradeable. Or even just disabled until a special disc is put in to flash the firmware to activate it ?

The article mentions that there isn't enough RAM for a paticular decoder to operate. There isn't a single software upgrade that can get past the lack of the physical memory. The boards in most of the players isn't laid out where memory can be just plugged in. A small run to produce new boards and the labor cost of a recall for a board swap is cost prohibitive. The early production run did not have the 2nd decoder built-in because the spec was probably still being finalized. There were no discs out at that time to even verify the decoder would work if it was installed at that time.

This is much like the early days of UHF TV (I'm old enough to remember) when the FCC mandated 82 channel reception. Many sets shipped with UHF tuners that didn't function. Several years later, the failure was noticed when the first UHF sets went live.

This is why I didn't buy a flatscreen with a tuner before the local broadcasters were on the air. I waited until after the signal was established.

If the company was ethical, they should have a trade-in program instead of expecting the end user to bite the entire cost of replacement.

Re:A software update can't add missing hardware

[BosstonesOwn]

That is an ethical response and I think it's a good idea. Maybe that will be the end result of this lawsuit.

Not Helping the Industry

[DavidD_CA]

It's articles (and lawsuits) like this, plus the war still raging between HD and Blu that are stopping consumers like myself from investing in EITHER technology.

My DVD (one of the first-generation Sony) and TV are both about 10 years old, and despite usually being on the "cutting edge" of technology I've held off buying replacements for quite some time.

I'm very hesitant to buy either HD or Blu, or even a new TV, with all the new standards and versions that seem to be coming out left and right. And I won't be buying anything any time soon until the market stabilizes, or I'm forced to replace what I already have.

Re:Not Helping the Industry

[EmagGeek]

Heh, you're not investing in either of them, whereas I just said "fuck it" and bought BOTH of them.

I DESPISE the blu-ray player. It takes forever to boot, forever to respond to controls, forever to do anything. It locks up constantly during certain movies, but performs well for others. Power-on to start of movie is generally 5-7 minutes, depending on how long it decides to take to boot up and read the disc, and then another 10-15 minutes for the usually non-skippable previews.

The HD-DVD player responds INSTANTLY to commands, including power-on, power-off, door open and close, and to remote keys, and I have not found a movie yet where I couldn't just skip to the damn movie instead of being forced to sit through 15 minutes of previews for movies I saw 3 years ago.

Some have argued that HD-DVD isn't truly a native 1080 format, but I don't buy that. All of the HD-DVD discs I have state plainly that they are 1080 native format. My TV is only 768 pixels anyway, so it doesn't matter all that much. Some have argued that the HD-DVD hardware downsamples to 720 before upsampling back to 1080, but I have yet to see proof of that.

I still think HD-DVD is the technically superior platform (note I did not say format), but Sony just has a bigger marketing machine, and more willingness to cut back-door deals with studio execs to get them to dump the HD-DVD format.

Hardware wise, HD-DVD wins hands down until I can get to the beginning of a BluRay movie in under 1 minute from the power button.

Re:There's a reason... Why Windows?

[Ux64]

I also found out that every program that I use is Open Source except OS. Then it was quite natural to start using Linux instead of Windows. Now I got everything for free!

Blu-Ray promised features, failed to deliver

[mikeinwa]

I normally hate class actions... but this one makes a lot of sense. Blu-Ray came out.. the marketing hype stepped up.. and the technology didn't. Samsung and many others touted how wonderful Blu-Ray was, how the technology had all these awesome features - and of course they didn't bother to educate the many salespeople at the many retailers selling their products that all the technology they spouted off will NOT work with their 1st gen players.

Unlike HDDVD

[tripppy]

Every HDDVD player HAS to have Ethernet connectivity. So It can access all the online content which is trickling out now. I'm a little worried that the consumers will choose the inferior technology. Only time will tell.

Re:Unlike HDDVD

[fistynuts]

It can't help if Joe Public are seeing stories about HD-DVD's "death" almost daily. From a neutral point of view, it looks like the formats are still neck-and-neck, at least in the UK. HD-DVD has far cheaper players, but Blu-Ray has more software. However I doubt that the companies in charge of film production are going to let the customer decide.

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I will file suit as well. My Commodore 64 isn't able to process Microsoft Word files. It's defective by design! I will get millions from Microsoft...

Not.

cb

ALL Blu-ray players are defective

[Wiseman1024]

Not only this one, but all Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are defective. They are Defective By Design. If you buy products spiked with digital AIDS such as Blu-ray players, you're asking for getting screwed. Why would they compensate the guy for this, if they aren't compensating anyone for robbing them of their legal, constitutional, human and moral rights, screw them with forced advertisements and similar "features", price-discriminate against them with the nazi regional system, and often allow the mafia corporations to watch them (and not just in Soviet Russia)?

Is it Bluray 1.0 Compatible?

[EmagGeek]

Whether it is defective will be determined by whether they stated that the player would be compatible with "this and all future versions of the Bluray format"

If they sold it as a "BluRay 1.0 Compatible Player," then as long as it remains so, it is not defective. The fact that it does not support features the customer wants is irrelevant to whether the device fails to perform to its stated specifications.

Because Windows has drivers for HW I happen to own

[tepples]

I also found out that every program that I use is Open Source except OS. And your hardware drivers, I take it.

Then it was quite natural to start using Linux instead of Windows. How often do you reboot back to your Windows partition to use, say, a flatbed scanner that SANE still doesn't support and whose manufacturer hasn't replied to e-mails?

Grrr!

[neowolf]

If Sony/Blu-ray hadn't been throwing money at studios, Blu-ray wouldn't have had a chance. They introduced a player with no Internet connectivity and no good way to upgrade the firmware, and then they decide to change the "standard" after players were already out there. Of course, this was mostly because Sony is literally orgasmic over DRM, and they had just forgotten that maybe Internet connectivity would be a good idea.

I agree with what at least one other has said- I hope Sony gets their asses sued too. I'll admit- as an "bleeding edge" "early adopter" the lawsuit in this article probably doesn't have a lot of merit, but hopefully it will bring to light Sony's tactics and Blu-ray's flaws.

The really bad thing is we've come to an age where now you have to worry about what "version" your home entertainment system is too. At least CD and DVD were standards. There was no DVD v1.1! I have to get that movie I loved on standard DVD, because my Blu-ray player isn't the right version. What a load of...

Re:Grrr!

[LionMage]

If Sony/Blu-ray hadn't been throwing money at studios, Blu-ray wouldn't have had a chance.

And if Toshiba / HD DVD hadn't been throwing money at studios to back HD DVD exclusively (e.g., the Paramount / Dreamworks Animation deal), that format would have died already. So please stop pretending that this is a tactic only Sony and the Blu Ray camp have engaged in.

They introduced a player with no Internet connectivity and no good way to upgrade the firmware, and then they decide to change the "standard" after players were already out there.

Although it should be noted that the "they" you're referring to are Samsung, not Sony; your comment was kind of misleading that way, perhaps deliberately so.

Also, the "they" who changed the standard was the Blu Ray Association, and they had announced their intention to do so even when the 1.0 spec was published. So the "they" who built the player in question, and the "they" who changed the spec, are different entities, which you're conflating -- I simply can't tell if you're doing it deliberately or not. Neither of these "theys" was Sony.

Of course, this was mostly because Sony is literally orgasmic over DRM, and they had just forgotten that maybe Internet connectivity would be a good idea.

Except that, as pointed out, it was Samsung who "forgot" to include Internet connectivity on their product. The 1.0 spec made that optional, so Samsung didn't include the feature. What this may or may not have to do with DRM or Sony is pure speculation on your part, but it should be pointed out that BD+ was known to be scheduled for inclusion in the final spec from the get-go; if Samsung borked their product such that the firmware could never be updated to support BD+, then that's Samsung's fault, since BD+ is mandatory for full 1.0 compliance. But it's not as though Sony suddenly realized "hey, we want better DRM" and forced it into the spec at the last minute; the details were carefully negotiated with all the major movie studios.

Purpose

[phorm]

Both still serve to a very strong extent their primary purpose: to provide transportation or to serve as a phone. Chances are that, if well maintained, both the car and phone will continue to serve that primary function as any other.

A blue-ray player that does not play discs labelled as "blue-ray" does not seem to serve the primary function.

Re:Purpose

[Eivind]

But this player still plays any and all discs labeled "blue-ray" (unless the disc or player is broken)

What happens is that if the disc contains v2.0 features, you won't see -those-, you will still be able to play the disc and see the movie, but you may miss out on some of the advanced features, such as the possibility of PiP (let's say the director commenting upon the film from a separate video-track in a corner of the picture)

I don't see the problem. You bought a blue-ray player, it plays blue-ray discs. This is the primary function.

There are some bells and whistles that it don't have, on account of being a v1 player and thus not implementing the additional stuff that came in v2, all of which is, however, optional.

Re:Purpose

[phorm]

No, it doesn't. I plays some disks. Others, it needed to be patched for. Some, it still doesn't play properly at all (skips, hangs, etc).

Re:Purpose

[Eivind]

If so, then that's simply a result of the player being -buggy- not of it being -v1-

My point was that -not- being v2 is not imho legitimate grounds for complaint.

Being buggy is a completely different kettle of fish. I have no opinion on the bugginess or lack thereof of this particular player.

Re:Because Windows has drivers for HW I happen to

[Anne Honime]

I also found out that every program that I use is Open Source except OS. And your hardware drivers, I take it.

Then it was quite natural to start using Linux instead of Windows. How often do you reboot back to your Windows partition to use, say, a flatbed scanner that SANE still doesn't support and whose manufacturer hasn't replied to e-mails?

All in all, linux has far more support for HW than windows to boot (don't forget the huge amount of non-i386 HW like sbus cards for Sun and such), plus you have to factor in the equation that a lot of so called "legacy" HW lose support with new windows release (perhaps because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay the MS tax for a certified driver on an eol'ed product ; even for a last year product, like Canon does routinely with printers). Linux really seldom lose HW support even for extremely outdated cards. So if you have the decent taste to carefully pick your HW from a reputable source (as in 'has provided specs to the FOSS people free of anal NDA'), your investment will be much better protected by linux than by windows. First point.

Second point, when you're carefull (as everybody should be, caveat empteor) to pick only linux supported hardware, you've no need to reboot into windows for a hardware issue ; from scanners to dvb-t usb 'sticks', I've never run into an area of comptuer expansion totaly forgotten by linux.

how defective is 'defective'?

[poot_rootbeer]

The central question here is: does the Samsung player conform to the Blu-Ray Profile 1.0 spec as it claims to?

If the answer is no, the device is by definition defective and the manufacturer is obligated to provide restitution.

If the answer is yes, the device cannot be considered defective; it works exactly as it was represented to work. I think it was pretty foolish of the Blu-Ray consortium to allow different tiers of compatibility within a single consumer standard, but they're hardly alone in that.

Gift shopping?

[tepples]

All in all, linux has far more support for HW than windows to boot Hardware that I happen not to own, unfortunately. Should I bite the proverbial bullet and repurchase?

So if you have the decent taste to carefully pick your HW from a reputable source (as in 'has provided specs to the FOSS people free of anal NDA') [...] when you're carefull (as everybody should be, caveat empteor) to pick only linux supported hardware Even if I am careful, I live and/or work with people who are not. Is there a short list of good manufacturers that I can provide to people who plan to buy hardware as a gift? Which online retailer or brick-and-mortar retail chain in the United States is good at letting buyers know whether or not products work with free operating systems? Somebody else asked this question on Ubuntu Forums but got no response.

Re:Gift shopping?

[Anne Honime]

Even if I am careful, I live and/or work with people who are not. Is there a short list of good manufacturers that I can provide to people who plan to buy hardware as a gift? Which online retailer or brick-and-mortar retail chain in the United States is good at letting buyers know whether or not products work with free operating systems? Somebody else asked this question on Ubuntu Forums but got no response.

There are many well known manufacturers who are at least agnostics about linux, opposed to a quite short list of really bad players in the game. Your best bet is to ask the retailer to let you slip a ubuntu live CD in the demo computer. Otherwise, googling <name of product> + <linux distribution name> gives a good hint as what to be expected from the device. Another option is to setup a gift whishlist for your friends and family ; you have the burden to check compatibility by yourself with your favorite distribution list. Ultimately, many retailers will have an exchange program to let you pick what you want instead of what you were given.

In my experience, the only brands you really need to steer clear of are Sony and Canon. On the opposite, most korean makers are extremely linux friendly (Brother comes from the top of my mind). Most of the time, for the vast majority of HW vendors, you just need to wait a couple of months before the support comes in a new kernel version. It may be a bit frustrating, but that's not life threatening either.

Re:Gift shopping?

[Grishnakh]

Even if I am careful, I live and/or work with people who are not. Is there a short list of good manufacturers that I can provide to people who plan to buy hardware as a gift?

People give you computer hardware as gifts?

My family has known since I was about 10 not to ever buy technical things for me as a gift, unless I have specifically asked for it. Even then, because it's too easy to buy the wrong model or whatever, I ended up almost always getting cash, in addition to other gifts which didn't have the danger of not being exactly what I wanted (clothes, etc.). Besides, if you don't like it, you can always return it after Christmas, as most Americans do with all their gifts.

Now that I'm grown up and married, my family doesn't really buy much for me at all, and my wife knows better than to try to buy me something electronic or technical in nature.

So, in summary, the best advice is: Don't buy computer hardware as a gift! Ever! It's just stupid to do so. And if some idiot family member of yours tries it, simply return it to Best Buy on the day after Xmas, since stores are usually pretty lenient about returns without receipts then.

This whole gift-giving thing is a stupid idea, anyway. It's nice to give small gifts to your very close relatives (especially spouses), but this idiotic American obsession with buying thousands of dollars worth of crap every Christmas season, most of which is immediately returned, has just gone too far. Computer hardware is never a worthy gift.

questionable.

[zippthorne]

Market penetration even for the winner is quite low at the moment. With movies-over-internet coming "Real Soon Now" (TM), it's possible that although they defeat HD-DVD, they will never overtake DVD itself.

Restocking fee

[tepples]

There are many well known manufacturers who are at least agnostics about linux I take it you are referring to each distribution's hardware compatibility list, such as Ubuntu's, correct?

Your best bet is to ask the retailer to let you slip a ubuntu live CD in the demo computer. That might work for buying complete computers, but not as well for buying peripherals. None of the demo computers at any Best Buy, Circuit City, or Staples store I've been to have a scanner connected to them. And do you have any tips for negotiating with salespeople to permit me to stick my own CD into the demo computers and restart them?

Otherwise, googling <name of product> + <linux distribution name> gives a good hint as what to be expected from the device. That works for people who are purchasing online for themselves, but not as well for people who are purchasing gifts for others or people in a brick-and-mortar store. How do I teach those buying gifts for others to do such searching, especially from inside a brick-and-mortar store?

Another option is to setup a gift whishlist for your friends and family ; you have the burden to check compatibility by yourself with your favorite distribution list. During the holiday season of 2007, I put a Cowon audio player that plays Vorbis on my wish list. But it turned out that nobody found any brick-and-mortar chain in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that carries Cowon or iRiver products. How should I avoid this situation in the future?

Ultimately, many retailers will have an exchange program to let you pick what you want instead of what you were given. Many of these retailers, including the one where my gift was purchased, charge a 15 percent restocking fee for merchandise that is not defective. Should people who want to use GNU/Linux just eat this fee as the cost of freedom?

In my experience, the only brands you really need to steer clear of are Sony and Canon. And, in my case, Microtek.

On the opposite, most korean makers are extremely linux friendly I wouldn't have expected that, especially given that so many Korean banks use ActiveX instead of SSL because the United States government denied the export of SSL bigger than 40 bits to Korea for so many years.

Re:Restocking fee

[yuna49]

During the holiday season of 2007, I put a Cowon audio player that plays Vorbis on my wish list. But it turned out that nobody found any brick-and-mortar chain in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that carries Cowon or iRiver products. How should I avoid this situation in the future?

So, what's wrong with buying online? Amazon sells COWONs at a decent price; we bought our A2 there.

BTW, the A3 is a pretty remarkable piece of hardware with support for H.264 and Matroska and automatic rescaling of 720p videos to fit the small screen.

I fail to see what relevance this has to the discussion of hardware support for Linux, though, not to mention its relevance to the question of Samsung's Blu-Ray player.

This kind of hardware is _so_ 20th Century

[Sloppy]

I pity the fool who buys an unmaintainable player. Buy a drive. xine, mplayer, etc. are your players. Want the latest features? That's what apt-get, emerge, etc. are for.

Parent is incorrect - movies don't play at all

[AySz88]

Nope, these players fail to play *new features* on new discs....This only means that some extras are unavailable.... From TFA, the *correct* thing should be that only the new features are broken, but in reality, the entire thing is broken - some movies won't play, period. TFA quotes:

a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play

Re:Because Windows has drivers for HW I happen to

[ultranova]

Second point, when you're carefull (as everybody should be, caveat empteor) to pick only linux supported hardware, you've no need to reboot into windows for a hardware issue ; from scanners to dvb-t usb 'sticks', I've never run into an area of comptuer expansion totaly forgotten by linux.

Can you recommend a Linux-supported 3D card - and by that I mean one with in-kernel OSS drivers ? I'm really starting to get tired trying to patch NVIDIA's wrapper for the last driver version to support my GeForce 2 MX to work with new kernels.

That is the real reason keeping Linux from desktop: the graphic subsystem is a horrible kludge. Not only does it need a binary driver, but the driver also runs partially in userspace, causing X to need root privileges. What a mess.

The bleeding edge

[tepples]

So, what's wrong with buying online? Shipping, return shipping, and the fact that a lot of my family still aren't big fans of online shopping after a few item-not-exactly-as-described experiences on eBay. To them, online shopping is bleeding-edge compared to millennia-old brick-and-mortar model.

I fail to see what relevance this has to the discussion of hardware support for Linux, though It's easier to find hardware compatible with free PC operating systems if you both 1. shop online and 2. cross-reference each purchase to some HCL. Unfortunately, too many people with whom I must associate are not motivated to learn to do both.

not to mention its relevance to the question of Samsung's Blu-Ray player. This article is about the limitations of Samsung's patches to its early-adopter Blu-ray Disc player. Discussion leapt to avoidance of bleeding-edge hardware and a comparison of such hardware to the failure of some free software projects to provide a stable version, which means that the bleeding edge is all there is. This lack of ABI stability discourages manufacturers of computer peripherals for home use from providing installable drivers for free operating systems because they have to keep up with the bleeding edge of development of underlying frameworks in the operating system.

The car analogy fails

[tepples]

OS 10.5 won't suddenly stop working when OS 10.6 comes out. Your Honda hybrid car you buy this year won't stop running when Honda releases their new model. There is a difference. Once Mac OS X 10.6 comes out, developers of applications will likely stop targeting, say, Mac OS X 10.4. The car analogy fails: new roads generally do not instantly make older cars obsolete. What happens when Blu-ray Disc titles start relying on features available only in profile 1.1 and later, in order to shut out older players with less restrictive copy prevention features?

Defective is in the eye of the beholder

[WindShadow]

To sue because the player doesn't have 1.1 features is like suing because your b/w TV doesn't show color. But to sue because you can't see a 1.1 video using 1.0 features is more like not being able to view color shows on TV as b/w. The question becomes one of "who said you could display 1.1 videos?"

If the vendor promised that capability, the customer is right. If the 1.0 standard requires such capability, the customer is right. Bit if the 1.1 videos in question require features not in 1.0, or require hardware support not required for 1.0, it becomes a quality of implementation issue. I would suspect that optional 1.0 features were legally optional and lack of them does not qualify as a defect. If the units were sold with a stated or implied that the optional parts were present then the customer is right.

For the videos which don't work at all, it would be necessary to know why they fail, from a 1.1 feature not being ignored or a 1.0 feature not provided correctly. If this goes to trial the jury would have to be educated and charged very carefully, it sounds as if the legal issue is really splitting hairs. As customer relations, of course, just having the lawsuit huts, even if you win.