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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."
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.
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.
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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."
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.
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!
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.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
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.
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...
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.
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