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Samsung Sued Over "Defective" Blu-ray Player

Posted by kdawson on from the rush-to-market dept.

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."

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung by Princess+Aurora · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.