"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers

secmartin writes "Shortly after the release of Iron Man on Blu-ray on October 1, people started complaining of defective discs; the problem turned out to be that all the Blu-ray players downloading additional content brought down Paramount's BD-Live servers, causing delays while loading the disc. Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years."

Comments

First Post.

[Vectronic]

"Which really makes you wonder what will happen..."

Infinite delay... or cracks.

Re:First Post.

[0111 1110]

Actually HiDef (not specifically bluray) is that much better when played full screen on a computer. Do the comparison sometime yourself and you will see that the difference is not subtle. However, I concede that the difference is not so great or obvious on many TVs. Also the degree of difference depends on the title. Some transfers are better than others and some of the older prints do not do so well on HiDef. On those titles there may be virtually no difference at all.

Re:First Post.

[Tacvek]

Quite true, but relatively few people regular people (as opposed to Slashdot readers) watch movies on their computer.

Re:First Post.

[mweather]

More likely it will be less delay. Rather than getting a slow connection, it'll just time out and continue.

Re:First Post.

[aliquis]

Why would you need to replace it to get something new?

And I hate people who speaks about picture quality from the size of the screen, how does that matter? In this case it's all about resolution. Color ranges, contrasts and such are other important factors, but the size of the screen?

As long as you sit close enough that you will notice the additional picture quality blu-ray or whatever will offer an improvement. If it's 4" 10 cm from your eyes or 60" 7 meters away doesn't matter.

PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS3 has an option to allow/disallow Blu-Ray discs to connect to the Internet. It might be for just this sort of thing?

Re:PS3

[AmigaMMC]

Then I'll pick a PS3 as BD player when the time comes for me to get one.

Re:PS3

[lysergic.acid]

how much live content is there usually? with the huge capacity of dual-layer BDs wouldn't it be more efficient to just put the live content on the disc itself in the first place?

i mean, unless they're having users download more than 4~5 GB of data, it should be possible to squeeze the live content onto the BD by compressing the movie by 1% or stripping out previews. and if they are having users download more than 5 GB of data then that seems really impractical anyway.

the only thing i see live content being good for is perhaps for downloading extra subtitle languages so studios don't have to print localized discs for smaller markets, or perhaps you're a Czech living in the U.S. and want to buy a BD at the local Best Buy but still want Czech subs, etc. and depending on how compressed the audio streams are, they could also do this with alternate language streams.

Re:PS3

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

how much live content is there usually? with the huge capacity of dual-layer BDs wouldn't it be more efficient to just put the live content on the disc itself in the first place?

Without time travel ability, no. "Live content" means "That movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for next summer's movie lineup."

Re:PS3

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't remember that, but you might very well be right. I don't go into those menus very often. What I do know is that the Iron Man disc itself asks if you want to download whatever extra content there might be. Just pick "no" and the menu loads and the movie plays perfectly, at least it did for me.

Re:PS3

[lysergic.acid]

i thought the BD live content was extra content only downloaded once when you first play the disc--things like bonus scenes, soundtracks, ringtones, and other promo material--rather than just video streamed live each time you play it. i mean, that's the impression this kotaku article gives.

so all this is just so that the BD you bought will show you the latest movie advertisements each time it's played? that hardly seems worthwhile. preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.

i wouldn't have thought that Sony or the movie studios would waste money and resources to provide each BD release with an ever-changing online video stream. just keeping the servers up would be expensive enough, but they'd also have to pay people to constantly update the live content for each disc they put out. and for 5 years? how much would it cost to produce or license 5 years worth of live content? that's like running a really unprofitable TV station that people only watch for 15-20 minutes once every few months.

Re:PS3

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.

Not if the studios have anything to say about it. Remember good old user operation prohibition? And remember how it was only ever used, pinkie swear, for those FBI warnings in the beginning, never for commercials?

I don't know whether they have done so yet; but the studios would love nothing more than to cram a new set of ads into your eyeballs before every showing.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

i wouldn't have thought that Sony or the movie studios would waste money and resources to provide each BD release with an ever-changing online video stream.

Oh hi! You must be new here.

Re:PS3

[maugle]

With "Live content", that movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for upcoming movies. Long, unskippable trailers. For movies you're not interested in. That use up your bandwidth and make you go over your bandwidth cap.

Re:PS3

[Fractal Dice]

Without time travel ability, no. "Live content" means "That movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for next summer's movie lineup."

What about putting live ads on the background billboards or changing the brand of burger the hero eats? I would expect updated product placements will be the next wave of live content.

Re:PS3

[SanityInAnarchy]

i thought the BD live content was extra content only downloaded once when you first play the disc--things like bonus scenes, soundtracks, ringtones, and other promo material--rather than just video streamed live each time you play it.

Neither, actually, unless they're being particularly stupid. More likely, downloaded once, whenever either you choose to download them, or the disc does -- and then saved, so you can watch them again. Live streaming would be reserved for places where it actually matters -- as in, content which is also being generated live.

preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.

Preview trailers are also the most trivial, and the most useless, of the things that are possible with this.

I worked on some client-side programming for HD-DVD, before it died. Basically, you've got a little bit of local storage, an Internet connection, and a script engine. You can download small videos and play them, or you can run a program overlaid on top of the movie -- this is how menus were done, but we were doing a lot more than just menus.

Now, from what I remember of Paramount's discs, they pretty much re-downloaded several megs (at least) worth of data on boot -- including every single file needed for said scripts. The only exception was actual media, as in audio and video.

So, they're basically replacing a bunch of data that was already there on the disc. Unlike some other discs, you have no choice -- you will update, before you watch the movie.

That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design. Subtle but very important difference.

It's possible none of this applies to the Blu-Ray, but I suspect it's very similar, and I very much doubt that any of it involves re-downloading the same trailer over and over.

Re:PS3

[DrXym]

The PS3 has an option to allow/disallow Blu-Ray discs to connect to the Internet. It might be for just this sort of thing?

It does which goes some way to a solution but IIRC even if you disable BD-Live it still asks you each time you play a disk if you want to enable it. The BD-Live enable setting should have three values - Ask, Always and Never. Setting Never should mean BD-Live is turned off.

On top of that it should be possible to hit triangle on an inserted disk icon and manually configure just that disk. For example to disable Iron Man even if the global settings allow BD-Live.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design.

Thanks. That clears it up.

Re:PS3

[Firehed]

Oh wonderful. Not only does my movie break because of some crashed server off in Paramountland, but it breaks because it can't show me an ad.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

My decision to eschew Blu-ray in favor of downloads/not supporting assholes seems better by the day.

Re:PS3

[frederec]

Actually, on all the Blu-Ray movies I've watched (Iron Man, Ratatouille, Baron Munchausen, The Thing, The Orphanage) I have yet to see previews AT ALL. They're probably there, but popping the discs in my PS3 just loads up the menu screen. I'd be surprised if this lasts for very long, but I'm really enjoying the lack of ads on Blu-Ray movies so far.

Re:PS3

[houghi]

They could even change who shot first.

Re:PS3

[Sark666]

But that would be logical and convenient.

Re:PS3

[TheLink]

Maybe if he bought his bluray disks from the pirate store he would not have this problem - they might have taken the trouble to exclude the "live content".

This way - no bandwidth cap problem.

Re:PS3

[Lars T.]

That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design. Subtle but very important difference.

But of course people also tagged the story DRM.

Re:PS3

[Dogtanian]

That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design.

Thanks. That clears it up.

It wasn't as stupid as you imply. What he was effectively saying was that this was just a poorly-thought out (i.e. defective) design, unlike DRM whose "flaws" are an intentional part (i.e. "by design") - or at least an obvious consequence- of what it was meant to do in the first place.

Re:PS3

[Albert Sandberg]

Watching old trailers on old dvd's is one of the highlights of the extra material which always comes along on those dvd's. You get to see a glimse of some movies you often didn't know existed, or which passed you because they didn't recieve the cult status.

Watching a movie with Steve MqQueen and seeing trailers for next years big-as-in-money movie doesn't really give me anything extra worth.

Disclamer: I do not own a blueray player and do not know how that thing works, but I just worked off your post (as everybody else does).

Re:PS3

[Lars T.]

Sony has already demoed that, in a scene of "The Departed" that had an empty counter in the theatrical release, they showed a can of "Red Bull" standing on it.

Re:PS3

[ciderVisor]

It's so that F.A.C.T. can send you their latest (unskippable) advert telling you to buy genuine discs (like the one you've just bought and are currently watching) rather than download them from The Pirate Bay or buy copies off Knock-Off Nigel at a car-boot sale.

Re:PS3

[urbanriot]

I have the same function on my standalone Blu-Ray player. It's called "Unplug Network Cable."

Re:PS3

[icsx]

Problem is that if you disallow connection, you cant play the disk.

Re:PS3

[forkazoo]

Without time travel ability, no. "Live content" means "That movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for next summer's movie lineup."

What about putting live ads on the background billboards or changing the brand of burger the hero eats? I would expect updated product placements will be the next wave of live content.

That's actually really disturbing, and shockingly plausible. Thankfully, AFAICT, Blu Ray doesn't really have the ability to do this right. But, I'm sure if there is a "3rd Generation DVD" format that follows BluRay for physical distribution, then we will surely see something much like that. They might even just include 3D tracking data and appropriate alpha channels right on the disc, so that the player just needs to keep a dozen texture maps of current sponsor logos to put on 3D objects in the scene in real time. I'm 99% sure that PS3 already has every bit of hardware it would need for doing this. It can render much more detailed 3D models than would be required, and I expect it has enough internal bandwidth to deal with HD + an alpha channel. The only real limitation is that the Blu Ray spec doesn't include an alpha channel in the video stream, so it would have to be in an additional file, which if it is on the optical disc means seeking back and forth between two files as you try to simultaneously stream the RGB and the Alpha from the same disc. That's the only part which really wouldn't work well.

Re:PS3

[eltaco]

..and a streaming client, a system that can run linux and do a whole bunch of other stuff too.
imho it's not a good financial decision to buy a standalone BD player.

Re:PS3

[Destoo]

It's never a good financial decision to be an early adopter of a new media technology. You always pay more and get screwed on features.
It all depends how much the "look how cool I am" factor is worth for you.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

with the huge capacity of dual-layer BDs wouldn't it be more efficient to just put the live content on the disc itself in the first place?

Stop thinking like an engineer (trying to add value) and start thinking like a movie executive (marketing).

If the discs are individually serialized, they get data like this: "50% of viewers watch it once (and never again), 25% watch it twice in the first month (and never again), 15% watch it once or twice (a few weeks after buying it, and then every year or two thereafter -- probably movie fans), and the 10% who watch the movie once or twice a week for the first 6 months probably have small kids and are using it as a babysitter.

Combine serialized discs that phone-home on viewing with geolocation services that cross-reference the IP address with geographical locations, and you've got a profitable data mine. ("The proportion of the population that watches the movie every weekend afternoon tends to be higher in bedroom communities than the baseline, so send out coupons for Iron Man Breakfast Cereal to everyone those neighborhoods.")

Even if the discs aren't serialized, you can learn a lot about demographics by using geolocation services. People on the coastal states don't watch the movie, but people in flyover country do, then you can target your next advertising campaign that much better.

"In Soviet Russia, TV watches you".

Re:PS3

[Dutch Gun]

The PS3 has an option to allow/disallow Blu-Ray discs to connect to the Internet.

No, it doesn't. What it has is an allow/confirm option. If you don't want it talking to someone on the internet every time you watch a movie, it still is going to bug you about it every damn time. I have to admit, it really pisses me off that they don't give you an option to shut it off completely and permanently, no questions asked. I'm stubborn enough that I'll likely continue choosing 'no' from here to eternity.

Re:PS3

[Hal_Porter]

They could update the theatrical release with obnoxious product placement to increase sales of the director's cut / special edition too.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

Annoyingly you have two options for this when you put in the disc:
Allow Internet Connection: Yes(default)/No

Then there is system option which lets you set it for every disc:
BD Internet Connection: Always Allow/Always Confirm

No 'Never Allow' option, and the default make it easy to accidentally allow. Also, this prompt happens for every disk wither it has BD-LIVE or not. So with every Blu-Ray I have to click right and then ok to select no.

Better than nothing I guess.

Re:PS3

[Squalish]

Do you honestly expect us to believe that somebody suddenly thought - "I know, I'll make an entirely new unnecessary distribution system for disk menus, we'll store them on a central server, and this will improve the user experience!"

You don't "overlook a design mistake" this elaborate, you design it deliberately with some other goal in mind. The only reasonable goal here would be to remove ownership of the menus from the consumer, in order to restrict them to DRM-approved disks. It was entirely intentional.

Re:PS3

[Khyber]

Without time travel ability, no. "Live content" means "That movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for next summer's movie lineup."

What about putting live ads on the background billboards or changing the brand of burger the hero eats? I would expect updated product placements will be the next wave of live content.

That's actually really disturbing, and shockingly plausible. Thankfully, AFAICT, Blu Ray doesn't really have the ability to do this right. But, I'm sure if there is a "3rd Generation DVD" format that follows BluRay for physical distribution, then we will surely see something much like that. They might even just include 3D tracking data and appropriate alpha channels right on the disc, so that the player just needs to keep a dozen texture maps of current sponsor logos to put on 3D objects in the scene in real time. I'm 99% sure that PS3 already has every bit of hardware it would need for doing this. It can render much more detailed 3D models than would be required, and I expect it has enough internal bandwidth to deal with HD + an alpha channel. The only real limitation is that the Blu Ray spec doesn't include an alpha channel in the video stream, so it would have to be in an additional file, which if it is on the optical disc means seeking back and forth between two files as you try to simultaneously stream the RGB and the Alpha from the same disc. That's the only part which really wouldn't work well.

Subchannels on the same disc track might be able to make it work.

Re:PS3

[SanityInAnarchy]

Do you honestly expect us to believe that somebody suddenly thought - "I know, I'll make an entirely new unnecessary distribution system for disk menus, we'll store them on a central server, and this will improve the user experience!"

Well, yes. I would have.

Consider: They aren't just menus. They're applications. Applications get patched, even on game consoles.

You don't "overlook a design mistake" this elaborate,

decision, and one not unique to DRM. If Ubuntu's servers are ever pwned, so are mine, because I fetch updates from Ubuntu.

The only reasonable goal here would be to remove ownership of the menus from the consumer, in order to restrict them to DRM-approved disks.

Unlikely. Again, speaking of my HD-DVD experience, but from what I remember, it was possible to DRM the menus, but not required. I suspect most of them were served unencrypted, over HTTP. It wouldn't be easy, but certainly possible, to hijack these and burn them to another disc.

It wouldn't even be particularly hard to intercept that traffic and serve up your own menus.

What's more, it would have been possible -- easier, in fact -- for them to include all that DRM, and not insist on checking for updates. Users wouldn't be able to MITM them and install custom menus, and you still wouldn't be able to rip the disc, through this system, anyway.

Menus do nothing to help DRM. DRM actually works better without menus. The only possible way this could be "defective by design" is if you count the fact that they're tracking when you play the movie.

Re:PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

Cars, boots and knockoff BDs on sale? Count me in!

Re:PS3

[morari]

Funny you should mention that. I've never seen an ad on any of my DVDs. That's what CloneDVD/AnyDVD is for. ;)

Re:PS3

[morari]

They should have updated that film in a way that made it not suck instead...

Re:PS3

[dangitman]

Never? I beg to differ. I was an early adopter of CD-R technology, and it was an excellent financial decision, because back then nobody had CD-Rs, but people wanted to produce their own Audio CDs and CD-ROMs. So, I could charge significant amounts of money for authoring and burning discs. A service that is now essentially worthless because anybody can do it. I also had a similar experience with DVD-R. I could sell clients their videos on DVD, rather than VHS. DVD players were becoming common, but the burners and authoring software were expensive and not common. So it worked as a competitive advantage, brining in more money and impressing clients.

If you have any financial stake in media production, it almost always works out better to be an early adopter than to be late to the game.

Re:PS3

[r0dzilla]

The PS3 has an option to allow/disallow Blu-Ray discs to connect to the Internet. It might be for just this sort of thing?

When I popped the Iron Man disc in my PS3, I was given a choice whether to download the BD-Live content or not...

Re:PS3

[Dogtanian]

Do you [my emphasis] honestly expect us to believe that [snip]

*I* don't expect you to believe that either way- whether the OP did is another matter. Please address that point to him/her.

What I did was to point out that the OP's statement

"That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design"

wasn't the incomprehensible and/or pointless statement that the AC made it out to be. Matter of fact, it was a perfectly sensible and comprehensible expression of the guy's position, whether you thought it believable or not.

Re:PS3

[Talrinys]

While it should be easy to disable your bandwidth cap is your ISP's fault and in that regards your fault for picking that ISP.

Re:PS3

[JosKarith]

i wouldn't have thought that Sony or the movie studios would waste money and resources to provide each BD release with an ever-changing online video stream

How's about as a way to provide updated adverts to _every_ BD title you play. Sony are always looking to new ways to cram their new releases down our throats...

Re:PS3

[frederec]

Sure, I've got AnyDVD on my computer too, and I love it. But I don't have a Blu-Ray drive on my computer. The only Blu-Ray drive I have is my PS3, and while most DVD's I pop in to it have automatic ads, I've yet to see it with Blu-Ray.

Re:PS3

[Gr8Apes]

and that is exactly why people wind up ripping even HD movies. So they aren't forced to watch whatever crap advertising the studios want to force down your throat.

Re:PS3

[lysergic.acid]

where the hell do you live that you actually get to "pick" your ISP? i live about 30 minutes east of L.A. and here we used to only get Adelphia (now Time Warner i think) cable internet. for about 2-3 years we regularly experienced 75% downtime on a daily basis. when Verizon DSL came to our area, we switched over immediately. we still lose connection about 4-5 times a day and sometimes for several hours at a time, and don't get anything close to the advertised speeds, but it's acceptable (we don't really have any choice but to accept it).

the point is, most people don't get to choose who their ISP is. if you're lucky you can choose between cable or DSL, but you're stuck with the provider that is in your area. unless of course you expect people to move to a different city in order to choose a decent ISP.

Re:PS3

[lysergic.acid]

they did, it's called "Infernal Affairs." there's actually a whole series of them that came out long before The Departed was made.

Re:PS3

[Gulthek]

But it was only ever used for the FBI warnings. Even Disney DVDs had skippable commercials and trailers.

Re:PS3

[gravis777]

It does.

BD-Live though is any internet-enabled content, from my understanding. So, they can use it to load new items in the future. Transformers just did this - they added a new game or something, they have another int eh works, and there is rumors that they will eventually have promos for Transformers 2 accessable here.

Now my understanding is that it was just delays in starting the disc, and did not keep you from watching the movie. I mean, if you did not have an internet connection, or the site went down, it should have just gave an error message to the disc, and the disc should have jumped straight to the main menu. Instead, the servers were overloaded, causing the disc to kind of time out. So, really long loads. But it should not have kept you from watching the movie all together, and, at least on the PS3, you turn off the ability of a BD to access the Internet.

Re:PS3

[Chyeld]

That's odd because several of my DVD's have unskipable startups that aren't FBI warnings and are trailers or those obnoxious minute long logo scenes.

Re:PS3

[Destoo]

Right. But CD-r wasn't the new technology format. It was the CD. You equipped yourself with means of creating more CDs after the medium itself was successful. Same with DVDs. I should have mentioned the 'consumer' part. 'DVD players were becoming common'.
(wow.. Bluray burners are less than 400$? I was about to write: let's say you buy a bluray burner for 4k$ now, could you justify the investment? Make it worth it? but at 350 for a decent burner..)

Re:PS3

[dangitman]

Ahhh, but the post I was replying to wasn't referring only to new formats. It said "a new media technology". CD-R and DVD-R were new media technologies, even if the underlying format was the same. Anyway, on to your points:

Yep. I've got a Blu-Ray burner. Adopting Blu-Ray is a competitive advantage, particularly in areas like wedding videography (not that I ever want to videotape a wedding again). The newly-weds usually get a massive HDTV as a wedding present. Being able to view their wedding in all its HD glory is worth it, even if they have to go and buy a PS3 or Blu-Ray player.

Anyway, the logic still works with new mediums. Digital video or digital photography for example. The earlier you start, the better a head-start you get.

Let's step back a bit, and think about the average consumer. It often makes sense in that realm, too. Sure, you may pay a bit more to buy something early - but you get years of extra use and enjoyment out of it. Let's take the topic of this thread - the PS3 has hardly dropped much in price over the last year. It hasn't even dropped that much from the original price. Plus, the early adopters got a superior machine in many respects, because the first models had full PS2 compatibility because they had the PS2 processor built-in to them. Later models omitted this hardware, so cannot play PS2 games. So, being a late adopter in this case, means you get an inferior machine, and don't get to enjoy it until a couple of years later.

For many people, the early adopter's tax divided by the number of years/months of extra use and enjoyment is well worth it.

Re:PS3

[aliquis]

Also true for sexbots.

What? I'm the only one looking forward for them?

Re:PS3

[Destoo]

Thanks, that made total sense.
(I still think BR is this generation's laserdisk, but that's another story)

Great Idea!

[Gazzonyx]

Now that they've got their servers back up and running, let's slashdot 'em!
Now I remember why I decided to go with software development over network administration!

Re:Great Idea!

[Joe U]

Now I remember why I decided to go with software development over network administration!

As a network administrator, let me be the first to say, I hate you.

Re:Great Idea!

[Gazzonyx]

The feeling is mutual. But, look on the bright side... at least we're not database administrators :)

Re:Great Idea!

[stoolpigeon]

And you know why we become DBAs - because we don't just hate you -- we hate everybody. Us Oracle DBAs even hate ourselves.

Re:Great Idea!

[drkich]

And what about those poor AS/400 (iSeries, System I, i5, whatever) DBAs? Whom do they hate?

Re:Great Idea!

[DeionXxX]

You're not dead yet? Damn modern medicine is keeping people alive forever... so much for quality over quantity... too bad euthanasia is not legal ;-)

Re:Great Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

You all better be glad we in Medicine love you all. If we were anything like you guys...

Re:Great Idea!

[GordonCopestake]

As a network administrator, let me be the first to say, I hate you

Re:Great Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I shudder at the thought...

- Hey, any idea whether this tissue does anything important?
- Can't remember... cut it out and we'll see where it breaks.

Re:Great Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going for the anti-slashdot, death by lack of interest. I will never buy into Sony's craptacular BR scheme and never will.

Re:Great Idea!

[WK2]

too bad euthanasia is not legal

I live in Oregon you insensitive clod!

Re:Great Idea!

[TheLink]

Yeah, good thing you Med people don't smirk and make snarky comments to us about "So, you didn't make any backups? Your fault then".

And it'll be nasty day when DRM and "Unauthorized Reproduction of IP" applies to human genes.

e.g. if you want this germline treatment, we own your children (and you pay us a fee to rent them back).

A penny for your thoughts? I think it'll cost a lot more in the future ;).

Re:Great Idea!

[hey!]

It seems funny that organizations haven't grasped Oracle's business model yet, which is to offer customers scalability in several dimensions but charge just enough so that it's just slightly better to pay Oracle than to do without.

The Oracle licensing programs are amazing; they're almost as elaborate in their features as Oracle's product. It's like a twist on the old MS marketing slogan: "Where do you want to go today? OK, now pay us."

Buyers choose Oracle -- and it's not a bad choice for many situations -- because they think, "we could scale our databases by orders of magnitude in transactions, data, reliability etc.," without considering that the next part is "for a price". I don't think that's unfair on Oracle's part, but unwary buyers can end up biting off more than they can chew.

One of the things they skimp on is administrators. I can't count how many Oracle installations I've seen where they've sent Oracle buckets of dough, but skimped on hiring the expertise or doing the training they need to make it work. I knew one installation where they had a major project to replace 32 bit Oracle with 64 bit Oracle, including a server with only 4GB of RAM. They didn't know the difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit servers, what you needed to take advantage of them, they didn't even know whether the 64 bit server would require an upgrade to 64 bit clients (which for their applications it didn't). Oh yes, and they went Oracle Enterprise rather than Standard, because Enterprise must be better, right?

Oracle is a platform on which ignorance can be very, very expensive.

Re:Great Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to." -- Buckaroo Banzai

Re:Great Idea!

[drew]

Us Oracle DBAs even hate ourselves.

It seems to me that one would have to in order to take that job.

Re:Great Idea!

[stoolpigeon]

I've only worked with Oracle a couple years. The people I've interacted with professionally all work in places where Oracle makes a ton of sense. Yes - it is a premium product but it does a lot of things that no one else can do - certainly not for less.
 
And I'd say any platform can be expensive to the ignorant. Even one that has no up front dollar costs - if the data is worth something. For example - we are an Oracle shop and so most people are used to using it in one way or another. One day a user comes to me - they were working with a new monitoring product that was being set up - it used MySQL as a repository. It was set up by a software vendor. They had accidentally just wiped out a couple weeks worth of work. They wanted me to fix it. I couldn't. If someone who knew what they were doing had set that database up right, it wouldn't have been a problem. But the attitude was, "It's MySQL. We don't need a DBA to take care of this." We take care of it now.

STEP2 REVEALED!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Take a distributed distribution system.
2. Centralize it create a single point of failure.
3. PROFIT!

Re:STEP2 REVEALED!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup that pretty much explains economics, monopoly(of point of failure) = profit.

Re:STEP2 REVEALED!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Take a distributed distribution system.

There's something horribly redundant about "distributed distribution," but I can't quite figure out what.

Easy test and solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Disconnect from network before playing.
God people are stupid.

Re:Easy test and solution...

[WK2]

That's easy to say when you know what the problem is. But when you don't, there are a million possibilities, from faulty discs to cosmic rays, and disconnecting the device's internet connection seems an unlikely solution, especially for a non-techie who connected it because their instruction manual told them to.

Re:Easy test and solution...

[Kohath]

You miss the point, I think. There are 200 posts here. People are "outraged" about it. The questions was "What if they turn off the servers?!!!!!". It's tagged with the DRM tags.

But it works fine if you unplug your Ethernet. So every single one of those posts, all the people outraged and concerned and just pissing and moaning, all of them don't understand that it's not an issue with this disc. They're upset over nothing as usual.

This is something in the PS3 firmware that needs to be fixed. The network access should timeout and fail instead of hanging. That's ALL that's going on. And once again, Slashdot doesn't get it.

Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[dhall]

TFA is a little sparse, and I don't feel like forking out the cash right now to test whether I can work around the call home feature via a simple loopback definition for the BD live servers in my local DNS cache.

At least Xbox Live has the ability to disable logging into Xbox live to play games. It's built on a system that includes maintenence and downtime. An expected consideration for any online service. Any service built to assume to 100% uptime is really bad architecture.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[SL Baur]

Any service built to assume to 100% uptime is really bad architecture.

True, but ... WGA, where the "A" stands for "Advantage" assumes 100% server uptime. Are you saying Microsoft should have learned from themselves?

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[Koiu Lpoi]

The games division and the OS division are distinct enough that they should be separate companies.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[mcrbids]

Any service built to assume to 100% uptime is really bad architecture.

If that's the case, then there are lots of really bad architectures in use.

For example, Airline reservation systems. Or Slashdot. Or anything web-based. Or your Visa card, Mastercard, ATM card. Strange how effective those electronic debit machines are, even though they assume 100% uptime of the Visa/MC/Debit back end systems? What about your phone? Doesn't it assume 100% uptime of the call routers and connection?

There are too many examples to mention.

Assuming 100% uptime is only bad architecture if you can't reliably assume near-100% uptime. The important factor is the relative cost of downtime, not the assumption of uptime.

For example, TCP provides a "guarantee of delivery". It overcomes many connection errors in the IP protocol, such as dropped packets, etc, intermittent connection errors, misrouted packets, out-of-order packet delivery, and so on. But no amount of algorithmic magic can change the fact that if somebody trips over a network cable, the destination server has been taken offline for a while.

So we see the real issue isn't whether or not you can count on 100% uptime, but whether or not having downtime in your "100% available" costs all that much.

Are you serving personal pictures on a home DSL line? If so, 99% uptime is probably for you. What's the real cost of a few days of unavailability per year?

Are you serving data commercially? If so, the cost of anything more than maybe 99.9% uptime may not be worth it. (That's about 8 hours of downtime per year) Think about the freebie web server on your local ISP. If it's down for a couple of afternoons per year, is anybody going to complain much?

Are you serving financial records for a state government? If so, the cost of anything more than maybe 99.99% uptime may not be worth it. (That's just under 1 hour of downtime per year)

Are you serving cash Visa for nations? If so, anything more than 99.999% uptime may not be worth it. (That's about 5 minutes of downtime per year)

Each of these "nines" costs exponentially more. A home computer running the latest consumer grade O/S can generally maintain 2 nines without too much difficulty. A basic server running a server O/S (EG: Linux) can generally sustain close to 3 nines without difficulty. When there's a problem, you can drive to the local colo to reboot the server. Keeping a spare server handy and reliable backups means you can recover in less than 8 hours or so. It gets pretty spendy at 4 nines: 99.99% gives you just under an hour. That means you are hosting a fully redundant cluster, with lots of realtime "auto-recover" options. And 99.999% uptime is insanely expensive. Not only are you fully redundant, but you are actually watching each individual process to ensure that it completes, even if the hardware/process dedicated to it fails.

5 nines, along with high performance, can be ridiculously expensive.

As a hosting provider, we're working hard on that "next nine" to do better than 99.9% uptime to achieve 99.99% uptime. When you have to deal with scale, and high performance, it's harder than you think.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[AdamInParadise]

For example, Airline reservation systems. Or Slashdot. Or anything web-based. Or your Visa card, Mastercard, ATM card. Strange how effective those electronic debit machines are, even though they assume 100% uptime of the Visa/MC/Debit back end systems? What about your phone? Doesn't it assume 100% uptime of the call routers and connection?

Actually, all those systems assume that the network will be down "sometimes" and have build-in mechanisms to deal with them. In some cases, there is no solution but to wait for the affected service to come back: my browser did not went dead during the Great Slashdot Blackout. In some other cases, they can continue to work in a degraded mode. For example, a merchant can accept credit and debit card "offline" and process them later. The risks are far greater than processing cards "online" but, hey, the merchant can still sell stuff even if the network is down. Same thing for ATMs: if the network is down, they will still accept cards but will only distribute small amounts of money.

The case for phones is more interesting. The introduction of VOIP actually degraded the reliability of fixed-lines phones, including the reliability of emergency calls. VOIP operators usually weasel out of this mess by stating that "everyone has a cell phone now."

Providing a 99.999% uptime is really expensive. Furthermore, in most cases you can't control every other point in the delivery chain (the network, the other participants' servers...), so a service must be able to deal with downtime. It seems possible to configure some BD players to prevent the disc to download new content. If the Ironman BD cannot run in this case, well that's just means that the application on the disc was not correctly tested.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

[sarcasm]
But, but, but if we don't have 100.000000000000% uptime, that will allow 0.5 people to pirate our movies, which would mean that we would lose $5 in potential profit which would mean that our (MD's) shareholders (music labels) would lose approximately $0.000005 stock prices! That could break the companies, and breaking companies with $0.000005 in lowered stock value is unamerican (TM).
[/sarcasm]

Agreed.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[asc99c]

Joel wrote a great article on these uptime measurements a while back. When you think of the 99.9% being 8 hours downtime per year, trying to add more nines doesn't make that much sense. Beyond that you're often looking at one off faults, where you're not too sure exactly what is going on. The faults are rare enough that the statistics stop making sense, and you can't be sure how long it will take to fix.

In those circumstances a fault can easily take a day to fix. A fully redundant cluster doesn't help if a software fault has put bad data into the system that has been copied all over the place. And completely eliminating software faults is close to impossible.

I think assuming 100% uptime is a major flaw. Most of your examples of 100% uptime are not 100% uptime. They are just reliably failsafe. This means they have assumed less than 100% uptime and put in place measures to avoid further problems from the downtime.

I've regularly been unable to pay by card due to network problems (Spain and Greece mainly - but once in the UK). The thing it must never do is complete just half the transaction. It needs to either do the whole thing or do nothing - and that's a lot more complicated than it sounds.

I've been unable to book holidays because the Sabre back-end was down for maintenance. Had to return the next day to try again. If it had thought it was working and given me a confirmation but not done the booking I'd have been much more annoyed!

As you say, the cost of downtime itself is often not really that great. But the cost of screwing things up as the system goes down can be horrifyingly immense.

PS: here's Joel's article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[mgblst]

You are a dickhead. There is no reason this video couldn't just play if it had a problem contacting base. Sure I can't read slashdot when it is down, but it doesn't freeze my whole computer. Sure, i can't go to the ATM when it is down, but it doesn't force me to stay there until it is back up.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[WK2]

The introduction of VOIP actually degraded the reliability of fixed-lines phones

Wahh??? Are you claiming that VOIP somehow managed to degrade POTS lines? Care to explain how they did that? And cite your source?

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[houghi]

For example, Airline reservation systems. Or Slashdot. Or anything web-based. Or your Visa card, Mastercard, ATM card. Strange how effective those electronic debit machines are, even though they assume 100% uptime of the Visa/MC/Debit back end systems? What about your phone? Doesn't it assume 100% uptime of the call routers and connection?

Each and every one of them have been down at some point in time, meaning they do NOT assume 100% uptime (anymore).

So I can only agree that asuming 100% uptime is realy bad architecture. Aiming for 100% is another thing.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "assume" is the key word here. I think the context was referring to the client side with no graceful way of handling things when the service isn't up.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[linuxpng]

No, it has a 30 day grace period.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[e4g4]

Read the surrounding context. He means that VOIP "landlines" are less reliable than their POTS counterparts, yet are sold to replace POTS installations. Thus, VOIP has downgraded the average reliability of landlines installed across the world, as it has replaced some percentage of POTS landlines.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[perlchild]

On the other hand, you could say that they increased the choice of consumers, as having say, two phone lines in one house, you'd need the higher reliability only on one, and would wish to pay for just one, not two.

Oddly enough, sounds like the higher reliability was not wanted, and people wanted not to have to pay for it, unless they felt it was warranted. When everyone had only one phone, it was unthinkable... Now with almost everyone with a cell, it's certainly more of an option.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[qopax]

Or that one department should have learned from the other.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[profplump]

He's just intentionally mis-using the term "fixed-line phones" to troll. Pay no attention.

Or note that it's now possible to have a phone connection using both my telco line and my cable line, providing protection against things like backhoe fade. And that the only reason VoIP doesn't work well with 911 is that the telecom industry designed 911 services without any thought to future competitors, VoIP or otherwise.

Re:Sony could have learned from Microsoft

[dizzydogg]

Actualy, so does the PS3 as several people in this thread have pointed out. It's not Sony's fault if some of the blueray device makers don't add the feature. But keep bashing Sony, it might make you feel better about not owning a PS3.

Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[kandresen]

I thought the only reason for Blue Ray was the enormous additional storage capacity it had.
If now the movie in fact require downloading content from servers, then I bet they don't really use the capacity the disc really have, and make me believe a lot of people will be dissatisfied with the disk as the server is taken off air sometime realizing that some of the content they accessed no longer is available from what they believed to be a disc...

Re:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[dhall]

I think part of the need for the extra capacity is the volume of the media in the place.

The size difference of the data files from 480p to 720p to 1080p shouldn't be discounted. Having seen the media + added downloadable content as "value add" model on Xbox, it's a good idea in theory, but it appears Sony once again has questionable execution.

Re:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the only reason for Blue Ray was the enormous additional storage capacity it had.
If now the movie in fact require downloading content from servers, then I bet they don't really use the capacity the disc really have, and make me believe a lot of people will be dissatisfied with the disk as the server is taken off air sometime realizing that some of the content they accessed no longer is available from what they believed to be a disc...

I'm sure the capacity is fine, but the paranoid media companies want to force you to use products that will phone home. "Online Content" sounds a hell of a lot nicer than than "DRM" doesn't it?

Re:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[DigitAl56K]

The size difference of the data files from 480p to 720p to 1080p shouldn't be discounted.

I really doubt the Blu-Ray player is going to be downloading additional high quality 1080p content. For that to work you would need every Blu-Ray owner to have a reliable high speed internet connection or the experience would be ass.

All of the "essential" video content should be on the disc, storage is not really an issue. Blu-Ray titles seem to be encoded at exorbitant data rates, which is great for quality, but there is headroom for plenty of extra features.

Maybe there are protected features on the disc that are unlocked by accessing a DRM key online? I could also see galleries, music, directors commentary, and additional 480 streaming content (e.g. trailers) working just fine in most cases.

The details of what's being downloaded must be out there somewhere..

Re:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[Hal_Porter]

Having seen the media + added downloadable content as "value add" model on Xbox, it's a good idea in theory, but it appears Sony once again has questionable execution.

Unlike Microsoft, who are very skilled at numerous forms of execution.

Re:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

[dizzydogg]

It's not that the video didn't fit ,BD-live is a feature that allows downloading of video that was not available when the disk was made, like special features that weren't finished, or more likely new previews for films that are coming out now and not when the disk was made.
          The disk gives you the option to download or not, and my PS3 allows me to disable the BD-live downloads entirely, so it's not exactly a problem with Sony, its the implementation of some of the Blueray players out there that have too long of a timeout before they give up on servers that don't answer.

WFM. Well, FGFM.

[fo0bar]

Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years.

People will get BD players that don't suck?

I bought Iron Man shortly after work on Tuesday, and put it in my media center (currently running a demo of Arcsoft Totalmedia Theater). The branded "loading" screen spun for about 10 seconds, it gave me a warning saying it couldn't connect to the BD-Live server, and threw me to the disc's main menu.

(Of course, there is a secondary WTF for the disc being mastered to try to download from BD-Live in the beginning, instead of when you go to the appropriate menu, but the primary WTF is the other players out there not failing gracefully to the disc.)

Today I put the disc in again, and this time it downloaded the content.

(Granted, there are real concerns about the key servers for authenticating BD/HD-DVD discs, but this discussion is just within the scope of downloading extra content via BD-Live.)

firmware update

[big whiffer]

actually, its quite simple. with readily available firmware updates, drives would most likely receive an update telling devices to check for content manually instead of at start up. problem solved.

Why is it downloading at all?

[Loie]

With all the storage capacity available on these blu-ray discs why should there be any downloading of additional content? Does the movie really fill up the whole disc? Forgive my ignorace, I still haven't made the blu-ray jump.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[theripper]

Here's a hint:

When picking on someone for their spelling, don't misspell words.

Ignorat twit.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't jumped to blu-ray either, but some content shouldn't be on the disc because it would take way too much space. For example, dubbed audio streams. You could probably download dubbings of 10 or so languages. You could see how that would be a waste of space.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[timeOday]

Probably so they know exactly when and how many times you watch each disc.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[sukotto]

They want to be sure the advertisements and trailers are up to date.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[ceoyoyo]

Why, so it can hit the server and tell it all about you, of course.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's not the lack of knowledge about Blu-Ray that makes you ignorant. It's the fact that you can't spell 'ignorance'.

You should look up the definition of ignorance. Then you should look up the definition of typo.

And I think this was more of a " updataeable content" bit anyway.

*sigh* Well maybe by the time you've mastered usage of those words your sphincter muscles will relax enough to pull your head out.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[mikael_j]

Compared to the video I'd say audio tracks are pretty much nothing, this seems to me to be the same reasoning as when release groups rip some movie, transcode the video to 720p high bitrate h.264 and the proceed to strip out all the subtitles and transcode the audio to 96 kbps mp3 to "save space". And yes, I hate it like hell, you can barely hear what people are saying.

/Mikael

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* Well maybe by the time you've mastered usage of those words your sphincter muscles will relax enough to pull your head out.

But not in time to prevent the effects of hypoxia.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[kamochan]

Is igno-rat some kind of newspeak, maybe for a particularly ignorant lower life form?

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint:

When picking on someone for their spelling, don't misspell words.

Ignorat twit.

You mispelled "twat".

Web isn't Really for National Media

[hhawk]

On interactive TV forums I've written extensively talking about how web infrastructure isn't really for national TV and large events with not 100 or 1000 but multiple millions of people try to access the same data within a few seconds of each other.

This is on a smaller scale but certainly proves the point; I do feel there are solutions for pre-caching to tiered servers through the network fabric; but some day when SuperBowl XXX runs and 200,000 TV sets try to access the same JavaTV Applets at the same time... that real fun begins.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[Zerth]

What, like the yearly Victoria Secret Server Meltdown?

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[hhawk]

A good example. Is it still melting down? They should of figurd that out, but that is still nothing compared to major network events..

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah or someday there'll be something like a world wide event where the entire world comes to compete for two weeks and when people all try to access the videos which would be available on demand the entire internet will melt! Melt I SAY!

They could even model this event after some sort of ancient event... perhaps a Grecian competition.

Yep. I'm sure NBC and Microsoft have no idea how they're going to plan for such an event. And I'm certain it'll be a complete disaster.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[jibjibjib]

Did you even read the post you're replying to?

Hint: It was about widespread use of Internet-based TV. Which is not what you're talking about.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[hhawk]

What you detail is different that interactive TV with TVs in 25 to 30 million homes trying to access the same files all within a few miliseconds of each other.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[ConanG]

Just an fyi. Superbowl xxx already happened.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[szo]

Porn superbowl? How I could missed it?

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[Mjec]

On interactive TV forums I've written extensively talking about how web infrastructure isn't really for national TV and large events with not 100 or 1000 but multiple millions of people try to access the same data within a few seconds of each other.

This is on a smaller scale but certainly proves the point; I do feel there are solutions for pre-caching to tiered servers through the network fabric; but some day when SuperBowl XXX runs and 200,000 TV sets try to access the same JavaTV Applets at the same time... that real fun begins.

The problem is that we're using unicast when we mean to broadcast. IP isn't really engineered for broadcast like TV is but that's what mass media needs. 200M people want the olympic opening ceremony? The main stream gets broadcast. Only things that are truly on demand, or only required by a few, is it reasonable to unicast -- be they Klingon subtitles or the names of the current members of the IOC.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[Anonymous Coward]

The proposed Brazilian digital TV standard has an interesting solution for this problem. Internet connection won't be required for applications that are local (called local interactivity); they will rather be sent along as a "data stream" piggybacked on to the signal. The files used by the current TV program are sent in an repetitive manner, in order to make up for lost packets.

In this fashion, most apps will push all their data before use, instead of some sort of on-demand loading. Internet connection will only be required for applications that actually require data going the other direction.

Does the American system work like this?

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[hhawk]

oops :( let's through a few more xx's in.. was thinking varibles not actuals..

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[TheLink]

That's not really a problem. They don't have to all fetch it from the same server.

They may THINK they are fetching the same files from the same server, but it doesn't have to be the same server.

You just need to make sure that you have the thousand or so servers ready for them at various parts of the world. Either you do it yourself or you pay people like akamai to do it for you.

This is just incompetence.

Whatever it is, it's just one more reason not to go for bluray. Sure I can probably figure out how to workaround the problem but I don't want to have to explain that sort of crap to my mom or dad or whoever.

If the "Unauthorized Distributors" aka Pirates have conveniently skipped that crap in their versions, then their stuff starts to look even more attractive to more people.

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't miss anything. I rented it. Turns out it's a movie with a bunch of cowboys and steelers tackling each other, and the girls just stay back, cheering. I was surprised; almost every guy in the U.S. openly admits to watching these "Superbowls".

Re:Web isn't Really for National Media

[Miseph]

Erm, that was "Superbawls XXX".

Strangely similar, but still *slightly* different.

Evil or incompetence?

[MojoRilla]

Here's a better story by the way.

So I'm trying to decide if this was evil or just total incompetence.

On the evil side, we have:

• Release a disk with mandatory downloads. They would have to know this will end up bricking the movie for fans. Perhaps they are thinking they can sell "upgraded" disks to the same fans again years later without the stupid download.
• Since no one could be so stupid as to not plan for heavy traffic and use a CDN for content (which they now are), perhaps they planned this failure to get some press about the release of their disk.
• Tell people that it shouldn't happen again, but you have provided a menu to skip the download as if that should make people happy. The fact that they could change the menu means it had to load the menu from their web site. So it still can have timeout issues.

And on the incompetence side.

• Stupidly release a movie which not only downloads mandatory content, but doesn't time out if the download fails. Internet 101 here. 10 minutes trying to connect to a server. Please.
• Don't scale your servers to anticipate traffic. Using a CDN to serve this content is absolutely a no brainer.

Hard to tell. Both are unbelieveable, yet this happened. Thankfully, there is a solution. Don't connect your Blue Ray player to the internet. That will work for now, until they start tying DRM into BD-Live. Idiots.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[timeOday]

Windows XP on my work laptop is just like this; booting will stall for several minutes as the anti-virus software tries to phone home if the network interface is enabled but not plugged in. It's horribly annoying.

Though to be fair, my linux computer can't shut down correctly, either, because it gets to "unmounting network filesystems" and just sits there forever.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[sukotto]

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
-- Hanlon's razor

I've worked with Marketing people before and can easily believe that they had no clue about the infrastructure requirements and possible fail points. Actually, even if they did, they wouldn't have asked a techie. They would have asked the techie's manager who probably told them "don't worry about it.

Business as usual in a big, dysfunctional, corporate environment.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[ceoyoyo]

You forgot one on the stupid side:

Release your movie in such a way that people who buy it can't play it. Frustrated customers return disc as broken and download movie from The Pirate Bay.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[SL Baur]

Though to be fair, my linux computer can't shut down correctly, either, because it gets to "unmounting network filesystems" and just sits there forever.

No, that's not fair. A network mounted disk is very much a horse of another feather, or something like that.

If you have any local state that has not been written back to the disk, it will be lost forever. In that instance you want to do a umount -f and kiss whatever data you most recently dealt with goodbye.

Definitely NOT the same thing.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that they already had? Or is it just that if and when you do hook up your player to the net it will download a list of revoked disc/player keys?

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[dugn]

+1 more reason to loathe Sony +1 more reason to stick with SD DVDs God I miss HD-DVD

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Boycott BMG]

Did you even read the summary? It was Paramount who did this. FYI, some of Paramount's HD DVDs (btw, the official name has no dash) did the same thing, phone home for an update.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[aplusjimages]

The downloads aren't mandatory. The BR players are just set to automatically download, which I'm sure most of them can turn this feature off. The content that the Iron Man movie downloaded was extra interactive features, like live chat. Not something required to view the movie. I am surprised that they didn't build their servers to handle such a popular movie. It's almost as if they didn't think Blu-Ray was that popular.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are the two mutually exclusive?

The intent was evil (mandatory downloads in order to play), and the implementation was incompetent (not gracefully handling lack of network, and, obviously, not testing with enough types of players).

Imagine the situation if blu-ray was as popular as DVD -- the servers would have caved even sooner. I guess we can add another positive feature of DVD over blu-ray: no buggy, slow, and unnecessary network entanglements in order to play content.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[MojoRilla]

Care to site any sources? I'm searching around, and can't find the technical docs or API's online. I did find posts on BD-J, and that xlets have to be signed to access the network. Given the fact that they were able to modify the download process without issuing new disks, it makes me think that they wrote the download code themselves. This seems to imply downloads are coded by developers.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Midnight Thunder]

I've worked with Marketing people before and can easily believe that they had no clue about the infrastructure requirements and possible fail points. Actually, even if they did, they wouldn't have asked a techie. They would have asked the techie's manager who probably told them "don't worry about

Reminds me of a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcQ7RkyBoBc

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[kilgor]

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
--Grey's Law

They're bastards nonetheless.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no mandatory content. Just stupid blu-ray players.

And mandatory slashdot fud.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

[Dread_ed]

I will cut Hanlon's throat with his stupid razor. A better saying would be:

Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be adequately explained by being a lazy halfass with no foresight.

Stupidity is a genetic heritage that most people are endowed with at birth (some of us get it from auto/pedestrian accidents later in life), and is therefore excusable. Being a lazy halfass is a trained skill smart people learn from decades of interaction with corporate PHB's and marketing reps. However, even though marketing droids and PHB's are ubiquitous and unavoidable, being a lazy haflass is inexcusable.

Poor planning...

[PhasmatisApparatus]

...from companies who have also bought into DRM. Go figure, right?

That optional, downloadable content would slow down the movie itself is just another extension of the two minutes of FBI warning I am forced to sit through when I play a DVD in a standard player.

How much further will this go before the majority of people begin to care?

Re:Poor planning...

[ceoyoyo]

Whenever someone mentions ads on a website someone (okay, lots of someones) pipe up and ask "ads? I haven't seen an ad in years!"

Well the ripping and DeCSS software takes care of the FBI warnings, trailers, commercials and mandatory calling home.

The movie studios are faithfully following recent examples and shooting themselves in the feet.

Re:Poor planning...

[Bombula]

That optional, downloadable content would slow down the movie itself is just another extension of the two minutes of FBI warning I am forced to sit through when I play a DVD in a standard player.

That's why I still have an old-school Apex player that I bought online 8 years ago. A few clicks in the remote out of the box, as per online instructions, and voila - plays all regions, breaks all locked controls for all content, etc. Have a European DVD? No problem. FF or skip the warnings and trailers? No problem.

Okay.

[E-Sabbath]

Dead serious question here. I don't have a Blu-Ray player yet. Under what circumstances do they need to be hooked to the internet? Do you have to hook them up when you're doing initial setup? Do you have to hook them up when you want to play any DVD? Do you have to hook them up when you want to play a disc with BD-Live content? What would happen if you just didn't have it hooked to the net and tried to play this?

Re:Okay.

[the eric conspiracy]

The answer is there are no circumstances under which a BD player truly needs to be hooked to the internet. In fact many BD players don't even have network connectivity. The only "advantage" to a player that does offer internet connectivity is that it offers a way for the studios to monitor what you are watching, and to deliver extra material to your player, and a way to obtain firmware updates for the player.

Re:Okay.

[Dhalka226]

My experience is with a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, but I'll answer the questions as best I can.

Do you have to hook them up when you're doing initial setup?

No.

Do you have to hook them up when you want to play any DVD?

No.

Do you have to hook them up when you want to play a disc with BD-Live content?

Not to view the movie, but the BD-Live content would require you to have an active Internet connection.

What would happen if you just didn't have it hooked to the net and tried to play this?

You would have all of the content of the disc available, but none of the extra features (whatever those may be) that come from the BD-Live segment.

Re:Okay.

[dreamchaser]

You make it sound like being able to update firmware easily over the Internet is a trival advantage. It's not, given the ever changing nature of the Blu Ray 'standard'.

The real problem is it's a moving target and if you don't buy a 'net connected player you might just be SOL in the near future with a new release. THAT is a problem.

Re:Okay.

[adolf]

Care to cite a reference?

Because while what you say is potentially true, I'm not aware of any instances of an old Blu-Ray player being unable to play a new Blu-Ray movie by virtue of oldness alone. Some features don't work if the hardware can't support the function, sure, but so far as I've seen the movies themselves always work fine.

In fact, I thought one of the purposes of having a Java virtual machines built into players was to allow discs to create their own operating (and DRM) environment in software, instead of relying on hardcoded firmware for everything.

So is there some basis in reality for what you're suggesting, or are you just espousing a theory?

Re:Okay.

[the eric conspiracy]

Well, depends what you mean by 'trivial'. The players that I am familiar with all offer the ability to update the firmware from an optical disk as an alternative. So all you have to do is download a disk image and burn it. In fact this is often a good idea anyway because interrupting a firmware update due to loss of network connectivity can leave a player inoperable.

Firmware updates are important, but not for the reason you state. The BluRay standard is evolving, but in the sense new 'profiles' are constantly being added. These profiles generally correspond to different types of players. For example BluRay profile 3.0 corresponds to an audio-only music oriented BluRay player. Most people would not want to update their player to this.

The real reason updates are important is that players are often released prematurely with significant bugs, and firmware updates are needed to fix these bugs.

Design Flaw...

[TavisJohn]

This sounds like a MASSIVE Design Flaw. It is either a flaw with the BluRay standard, or with the way paramount made the BluRay disk. It should ALWAYS default to an error if the online content can't be downloaded...

However DVD's and BluRay do not NEED downloadable content. Just but the G** **MN content on the DISKS!!! Most people keep their DVD's for years! I have a few that are over 10 years old! And NOBODY is going to keep servers up and running forever just because some movies they released have online content.

Re:Design Flaw...

[tsajeff]

It could be part of their long term business strategy to always keep previews and movie promotions current, as opposed to the way we currently watch a 5 year old movie and see previews for 5 year old movies.

Re:Design Flaw...

[TavisJohn]

If that is what the content really is... Than if the content is no longer available, or the internet is out, or if the server is down, the player should display an error message "Content not available". Instead loads of people thought they had bad disks.
And if they want to have current previews... Why make it something you have to have a disk to access? Why not just have the players themselves just connect to the content?

Sometimes it is amusing to see trailers from 5 years ago.

Personally if I want to see "Previews" I go to Apple's trailer site.

media conglomerates:

[circletimessquare]

pirated movies

it's not just about avoiding $20

it's about avoiding this kind of bullshit

when you weigh down your product with this kind of bullshit, pirate product is superior product

retards

Re:media conglomerates:

[Microlith]

pirated movies

it's not just about avoiding $20

I'd imagine that in the majority of cases... it is. Not that this wasn't a raging case of stupidity, but still.

Also: don't try to justify piracy. If you don't like how they do things, DON'T SUPPORT THEIR PRODUCT AT ALL. Anything else just gives them ammunition.

Re:media conglomerates:

[ceoyoyo]

It's pretty easy to rip a DVD now. I much prefer having them on a hard drive, ready to play, no mandatory previews and FBI warning.

It doesn't take much of a step to realize that it would be a lot easier to just download them already that way rather than buying the DVD and ripping it yourself.

Re:media conglomerates:

[schon]

DON'T SUPPORT THEIR PRODUCT AT ALL. Anything else just gives them ammunition.

That would be good advice, except not supporting their product at all gives them ammunition too.

If the stuff doesn't sell, they blame it on piracy. Regardless of the reason.

Re:media conglomerates:

[Anonymous Coward]

The only retards are here the people who buy this shit. Para pics will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:media conglomerates:

[Anonymous Coward]

I use to download, but it's too traceable. And slow. So I upgraded to a 'download by mail' service. For about the same cost per bite as my dsl line for DVDs (and significantly less for HD content) they send me DVDs, HDDVDs, and BlueRay disks of all the movies I want to watch! I just pop them in my ripper and next thing you know they show up on my media server just like I downloaded them! And when I'm done, I just mail them back. It's like downloading DVDs just the torrent client is your mail person!

Re:media conglomerates:

[BlackCreek]

I wouldn't call it "easy to rip".

When I insert a DVD on Windows XP, there is no "left button" menu option "Rip Media to disk".
Neither in Ubunt^H^H^H^H^H Linux.

Any motivated person with plausible computer skills can do it, but the vast and absolute majority of users cannot. Besides you would still have to hook up the computer (or some media streamer to the big TV).

I also (respectfully) disagree with the ease of downloading. It really depends about who you are thinking about. Due to media pressure a lot of intelligent people (who use computers everyday at work) think that P2P is some forum infested by child pornographers and are afraid of getting close to it.

Re:media conglomerates:

[X.25]

pirated movies

it's not just about avoiding $20

it's about avoiding this kind of bullshit

when you weigh down your product with this kind of bullshit, pirate product is superior product

retards

Few months ago, I wanted to watch a certain (older movie). I could buy it on DVD for 1 EUR (it's like 10 years old movie :).

However, I rented that same movie and made a copy, just kept the main movie.

Simply because original DVD has annoying ads and warnings and shit that I do NOT want to be forced to watch.

There you go RIAA/MPAA/FUCKYOUAA, I basically pirated a movie just because you're annoying as fuck with your warnings and ads. My brain hurts when I watch those retarded warnings and ads, and if there is any way I can skip them - I'll do it.

Re:media conglomerates:

[ceoyoyo]

1. Install Handbrake
2. Select DVD
3. Press rip button

1. Install GUI torrent client
2. download torrent file
3. double click torrent file

Yes, the average user can figure out how to install a program, if properly motivated. I've also never heard of anyone who thinks torrent sites are full of kiddy porn. Of course, I do not live in the US. Your mileage may vary.

Pure FUD

[FSWKU]

There is no requirement to actually utilize the BD-Live features to watch this title. I picked it up the other day, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. You know what happened? A screen came up ASKING wether or not I wanted to download the additional content. I chose not to, and it continued on its merry way to the main menu and I was able to watch the movie without any issues whatsoever.

No BD-Live just means I can't have the option to have random quiz questions pop up on my screen during the film like "What kind of plane is shooting at Iron Man?" (F-22, btw). So no, it won't cause the world to end if they shut down the servers. All you have to do is click "No" and continue on to watch the movie that you actually bought the disc for.

Re:Pure FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

"All you have to do is click "No" and continue on to watch the movie that you actually bought the disc for."

Why should I even have to do that?

Re:Pure FUD

[GFree678]

Stop bring logic and rational thought into a Slashdot rant you bastard!

Re:Pure FUD

[houghi]

Why must I select no if there is no network connection? Why must I opt-out?

Re:Pure FUD

[JohnFluxx]

Didn't someone else mention that that screen ASKING whether to download the additional content was added because people complained?

I tried the disk with and without internet access

[gearloos]

I bought the disk Tuesday also and watched it that evening on my PS3. As mentioned earlier, the PS3 gives you the option to dload or not. I first tried it with my wireless disabled for the PS3 and it seemed to play fine. I then reloaded the disk and selected yes, dload content. It took about 1 minute (I have 6mg DSL). I did'nt watch the traffic to see how much content was dloaded, or to see if anything was actually dloaded other than Sony's rootkit..err... "User Experience Enhancement". It seemed to play the same, Dolby Digital Audio, 1080p, stream. Menus looked the same so I'm thinking it was the latest DRM that was dloaded. Point is that as long as your player supports it, it doesn't matter if it connects or not (for now anyway). We will see how strict the Blueray 2.0 spec is enforced as to internet access in the future.

Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

All that rage and bitterness from the Xbox fanboys who spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on worthless HD-DVD products has to go somewhere. These periodic 'OMG!!! BluRay Rapes Kitten" stories on Slashdot are like therapy for Xbox/HD-DVD fanboys.

It's not about live content

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about tracking the consumer. Even if the "live content" was all of one kilobyte Paramount would host it on their own server. Having each disk "dial home" is in valuable for marketing and racketeering^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopyright enforcement.

Re:It's not about live content

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's about tracking the consumer. Even if the "live content" was all of one kilobyte Paramount would host it on their own server. Having each disk "dial home" is in valuable for marketing and racketeering^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopyright enforcement.

Does Blu-Ray have a remote kill-switch?

I just ask because some of the paranoid theories I hear on Slashdot are funny. I personally liked the +5 one where RFID in kid's clothing was going to lead to predators watching childrens' movements from his computer in his basement.

Re:It's not about live content

[Truekaiser]

both blue-ray and hd-dvd have the remote kill switch option of the drm standard. why do you think it requires a net connection?

Re:It's not about live content

[jandrese]

Actually, yes. If a player is discovered to be compromised, it can be added to a "bad guys" list and locked out. The list can be updated remotely or by trying to play a newer disc.

Re:It's not about live content

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

why do you think it requires a net connection?

To be honest, and no offense taken if you call me naieve or even ignorant here, but this is the first time I've heard of either standard requiring a net connection. What I have heard about is 'live content' and firmware updates. With all the ruckus kicked up about either of these formats, complaints that a player or disc could be remotely killed never crossed my path.

I just want to know if it actually exists or if it's something that sounds really really plausible because the players have upgradable firmware and possibly a net connection.

Re:It's not about live content

[TheLink]

Well with gigabytes of space per disc, it shouldn't be prohibitive to store a signed compressed blacklist of "bad" players.

If you ever need to blacklist 100 million "bad" players you have a bigger problem than not enough space to store the blacklist.

Whether they'd dare do such a thing, I don't know. Maybe they need to boil the frogs a bit longer first.

Does this only apply to the PS3?

[johnek]

I have a sony Blu-Ray Player and it's not connected to the internet. It would be very interesting if it could still connect to the servers through some kind of wireless gigabit network that I could tap into ;)

Software strikes again!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the primary function of a device is to play fucking disks, then how the hell can the absence of a response to a frivolous function bring the whole thing down? OK, fine, go to the net to get some trash, but for the love of fuck, can't you software ASSHOLES program a simple IF THEN ELSE for when there's no response and the just go on with the job of PLAYING THE FUCKING DISK? God you software assholes get away with murder. Try shit like that in the hardware world you'd get your engineering status revoked.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[friedmud]

I, for one, am one of the people that invested in HD-DVD and hoped it would win out (I thought it was superior technology).... but the same week that Toshiba gave up the ghost... I went out and bought a PS3 and have never looked back.

People need to get over it. Bluray + PS3 = Really Good Platform. The PS3 just does so much more than just playing movies or games... I don't see how anyone with an HDTV and sound system gets by without one...

Anyway... I agree with the GP. I popped in Iron Man last night (rented) and it asked me if I wanted to download the BD-Live stuff. I didn't care so I just clicked "No" and we were able to watch the movie without issue.

BTW - What is the BFD about this movie? I waited to see it from Netflix like usual... but I was really anticipating a great movie from all the hype it got when it was released. Both my wife and I agreed that it was a mediocre movie at best. It had a lot of ridiculous plot elements and quite a few instances of bad acting. The camera work felt cliche and the dialog was uninspired. I just don't get it. I had a friend of mine say that he liked Iron Man more than the Dark Knight... but I don't think they're even in the same league...

Friedmud

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[im_thatoneguy]

Oh yeah. I'm feeling the rage boiling up in me right now.

F*** YOU WORLD FOR MAKING ME BUY A $100 PLAYER WHICH PLAYS HD MOVIES FOR $10 EACH! I'M TOO ANGRY FOR WORDS THAT I'M GOING TO HAVE TO GO TO FRYS AND BUY ANOTHER 10 HD-DVDs for $10 OR LESS EACH!

Yep. Buying an uprezzing DVD player for $100 which also plays $10 HD movies has been the worst decision I've ever made. I wake up every day and after watching another cheap HD movie cruse the day I ever got duped into such a bargain.

Not sure what to make of it...

[cyberfunkr]

I think there was more to it than just the BD-Live issues.

Around 9:00pm we tried playing the disc on a first-gen PS3 80GB (just for reference) and it kept getting stuck at the loading screen (the ARC reactor and nothing else). Finally at 9:50pm we went back to the shop and exchanged it. Back home by 10:10pm, popped the disc in and it went through to the regular menu on the first try.

Did the server manage to come back to life in the 20 minutes it took to get a different disc? Or were there really a bad batch of discs?

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[narcberry]

Sony's Log:
1/1 11:38pm Fo0 watched Bikini Babes 14
...
1/2 08:45pm Fo0 loaded Ironman
1/2 08:45pm Sent ads for Bikini Babes 15 to Fo0
1/2 08:46pm Fo0 watched Ironman
...
6/6 06:66pm All viewing records subpoenaed and enter public record.

other methods of distribution?

[oedneil]

Maybe they could have avoided this if they used a method other than HTTP to download content. Maybe where they host the whole file first, and share it with other clients? Each client could pass along ("seed"?) pieces to each other until everyone peers had the entire file. It would be way less server intensive for Paramount. Any ideas?

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[FSWKU]

BTW - What is the BFD about this movie? I waited to see it from Netflix like usual... but I was really anticipating a great movie from all the hype it got when it was released. Both my wife and I agreed that it was a mediocre movie at best. It had a lot of ridiculous plot elements and quite a few instances of bad acting. The camera work felt cliche and the dialog was uninspired. I just don't get it. I had a friend of mine say that he liked Iron Man more than the Dark Knight... but I don't think they're even in the same league...

Not saying it's the greatest movie ever made, but I thought it was pretty damned good. I think part of the hype was how visually impressive it is. The other facet to that is the spot-on casting of Tony Stark. He's an alcoholic, womanizing, arrogant bastard. Robert Downey Jr. is quite similar. Downey even said himself that the HARD part was turning Stark into a likeable hero, not playing the part of the arrogant prick. Jeff Bridges also does an extremely nice job of portraying the backstabbing bastard what deals on the side. Never would have thought that possible from one of the heroes in Tron, but he pulled it off admirably.

Admittedly, some of the dialogue was cheesy, and the acting overdone. But remember that this IS a comic book movie. If you've read some of the earlier issues, you know just how horrifically cheesy the characters can be. My only REAL complaint is that they could have done more with the characters instead of spending literally half the movie setting everything else up. Fortunately, there will almost definitely be a sequel, and this gives a plausible (if highly improbable) backstory to frame the next film with. Overall, it's a solid A-.

Your friend who liked it better than Dark Knight is on some serious drugs, however. Iron Man was great, Dark Knight was epic.

I know, I know, tl;dr. PS3 is about the only non-retarded BR player out right now.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Kopiok]

The PS3 just does so much more than just playing movies or games... I don't see how anyone with an HDTV and sound system gets by without one...

Er, with a DVD player and a Wii?

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[nine-times]

BTW - What is the BFD about this movie?

I suspect that expectations were just really low. For one thing, it's Iron Man. I know Iron Man has some hardcore fans, but he's really not one of the major heroes. (I'm sure some Iron Man fan will flip out at hearing this and tell me all about how he has played a major role in some terribly important events in the Marvel universe.) Also, a big project of that sort, with a relatively unproven director, and I think people imagined all sorts of ways that this thing could turn bad. These sorts of movies generally turn into special effects suck-fests.

But the movie didn't fall down in any of the ways that people were expecting to. That, paired with some decent performances from actors who you would expect to give decent performances, lead to the whole project exceeding expectations. In movies, just as in politics, sometimes exceeding some seriously low expectations ends up getting counted as a major victory.

Still, I'd say it was a pretty solid movie.

DIVX !!

[GodWasAnAlien]

DIVX players that phoned home was a great idea that mysteriously failed.

Let's secretly try again with the new BD-drm players.

Then we can sell BD-disposables which only work in a phone-home player.

HD-DIVX-DRM+. The ultimate way to hide our data from those consumers!!

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched both movies and I gotta say that I prefer Dark Knight not only by the great story and acting, but by the fun I had seeing lots of people leaving the theater cursing and saying how 'horrible' the movie was.

(IMHO) Most people want movies that they can watch without thinking... Iron Man is one of those super hero movies that are easy to get and is predictable: someone does something bad against the main character and he becomes a hero, which obviously will have a nemesis and a damsel in distress. Dark Knight went beyond the cliches and more into a exploration of the what a hero/villain is and the reasons for each to exist. That requires more thinking to understand fully and that's why lots of people disliked it. They wanted a remake of the Jack Nicholson's Joker, not Joker that was so tormented and insane that one has to question how such person can exist (if only in the big screen, although history is full of examples of unexplainable crimes).

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[TheSpoom]

Oh man, do I remember what I was doing at 6:66 PM that day... it was glorious. A beautiful flock of pigs were flying toward the sunset, and the ground beneath me seemed to be a touch colder (I remembered hearing about hell freezing over a couple of minutes beforehand). Meanwhile, someone, somewhere had divided by zero, causing my calendar to indicate that it was the year 1900.

Good times, good times.

I bought Iron Man on Tuesday

[future assassin]

in DVD format. Put in into my $50 Toshiba player and wathced it with 0 problems. Long live the DVD format. BluRay what? $300 players LOL!

trying to kill first-sale

[Anonymous Coward]

This definitely breaks First-sale Doctrine. coming straight from Wikipedia:

"In 1997 in Novell v. Network Trade Center 25 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (C.D. Utah 1997)[2] purchaser is an "owner" by way of sale and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software with the same rights as exist in the purchase of any other good. Said software transactions do not merely constitute the sale of a license to use the software. The shrinkwrap license included with the software is therefore invalid as against such a purchaser insofar as it purports to maintain title to the software in the copyright owner. Under the first sale doctrine, NTC was able to redistribute the software to end-users without copyright infringement. Transfer of a copyrighted work that is subject to the first sale doctrine extinguishes all distribution rights of the copyright holder upon transfer of title."

and

"In 2008, in Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc.[2], a U.S. Federal District Judge in Washington rejected a software vendor's argument that it only licensed copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constituted copyright infringement. Judge Richard A. Jones cited first-sale doctrine when ruling that a reseller was entitled to sell used copies of the vendor's software regardless of any licensing agreement that might have bound the software's previous owners [3]."

Re:LOL! At The Moron Getting Modded Up!

[MrNaz]

Can I send you my CV? I've been trying to get a job with the RIAA as a shill for ages.

Sanity check!

[SanityInAnarchy]

While I haven't examined the disc itself, it seems incredibly unlikely that it's DRM.

I would lean towards something far simpler: A software update.

With HD-DVD, at least, there were rather huge differences between various players. National Geographic managed to put one out which wouldn't play on the Xbox 360.

And I don't really know of anyone, other than us (mostly me), who was trying to trim download sizes. For the most part, an update would mean downloading everything that wasn't audio or video -- so, all the menu graphics, all the scripts, and all the XML.

The smarter HD-DVDs pretty much just limited that damage to the "network" portion of the app, and left the menus used to actually view the movie untouched -- meaning, of course, that it'd be difficult or impossible to update those later, making it possible to have permanently broken discs (like that National Geographic one).

So, a very simple explanation would be: No, it didn't actually change the way anything looks. But maybe it fixed some critical bug.

Now, about the DRM...

I'm not even sure it's possible to change the DRM affecting a given (published) Blu-Ray disc -- after all, whatever they do, you still have the physical disc, which is still (as far as I know) entirely read-only.

No, the DRM is an entirely separate issue. Granted, it could lead to something like this -- but inferring that this update is only because of DRM, or that this failure is DRM-related, is a bit like confusing HDCP with HDMI.

(I intensely dislike HDCP, but it works on both DVI and HDMI. I am typing this on a monitor connected to my laptop through HDMI, which is, for me, just DVI without the thumbscrews. So there's no reason to use DVI over HDMI, unless you like thumbscrews.)

DRM is defective by design, and evil, and no amount of it is ever a good idea. But before you go off half-cocked, make sure what you're protesting is actually DRM-related, and not something completely orthogonal.

Re:Sanity check!

[Technician]

I'm not even sure it's possible to change the DRM affecting a given (published) Blu-Ray disc -- after all, whatever they do, you still have the physical disc, which is still (as far as I know) entirely read-only.

Search the forums.. In theory, the disk is read only. In truth, the disk and unique keys which can be disabled in the player simply by playing another movie that has a key update table which bans the movie. To play that movie again, you will need an older player that has never played a newer disk which would have updated the list of banned keys.

Re:Sanity check!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Fair point. It works the other way, too -- the banned list can contain a player, too, which means various ways of bricking the player and/or its drive.

However, I'm not sure there were any plans to do this over the Internet, certainly not with an update for a specific disc.

Re:Sanity check!

[Technician]

which means various ways of bricking the player and/or its drive.

Companies should focus on what people want, not retaining the ablilty to destroy someting I bouught simply because I used it in a mannor, or someone else used the same model in a mannor they didn't approve.

I avoid buying products with remote destruct devices embeded in them.

Re:Sanity check!

[SanityInAnarchy]

I agree with everything you just said.

And none of it has anything to do with this particular problem (of an update bringing down servers), other than that Blu-Ray also has restrictive DRM.

It's a bit like claiming that Windows Update exists because of DRM. Sure, Windows updates. And sure, there is DRM in Windows. You'd even have a stronger argument than with Blu-Ray -- Microsoft does deliver updated DRM (in the form of WGA) through Windows Update.

But that would be a foolish claim -- Windows update exists because there are bugs in Windows. And not all bugs in Windows are intentional.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Anonymous Coward]

Hollywood creates hype around lacklustre, big name movie? Oh noes, the end is near.

Bonus content?

[Waccoon]

You know, given that movie studios have been putting ads and trailers in the movies for which we pay money to buy, is anyone surprised that these kinds of problems are springing up?

I completely stopped buying anything from Disney for this reason, and waste no opportunity to complain about paying for ads. I see that strategy is paying off.

Re:Bonus content?

[ABasketOfPups]

I have no problem with trailers being on a disc. I like trailers. I want to see trailers.

When >I want to see them. When they're forced on you, and you can't even skip the damn things, that's when I get my 400' holster with one of the Guns of Navarone in it and (awkwardly) walk towards the studio head's office.

Paramount's own fault

[DrXym]

Paramount decided that every BD-Live player should automatically connect to their servers as soon as it was played. With every PS3 offering BD-Live it meant they were deluged with requests. On top of that, they never bothered to make the disks indicate progress or gracefully handle timeouts so lots of people thought their disks had frozen.

There is nothing in the spec that requires this. If they had wanted they could have tested if the player supported networking and added a new menu which allowed users to manually connect to their servers for extra content.

Frankly this is all Paramount's own fault. Aside from the technical fuckup, I have to question the whole ethic of a disk that automatically "phones home" just by inserting it. For starters it means Paramount are tracking usage of this title. It also means the experience could change every time its loaded. Could we see adverts or new trailers being inserted onto disk? Or studios prominently promoting their own online stores or other content? What happens in 10 years if the website bitrots? Will the disk even play any more or will it hang like it did here?

I think it's very telling that the first prominent user of BD-Live immediately abuses it. BD-Live is IMO a waste of time and will continue to be while it used in such superficial and intrusive ways. Every 2.0 player should have the option to disable internet on a global and per-disk basis. Maybe some day a disk will produce a compelling use for it but nothing comes close yet.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the BFD about this movie?

Mostly, it was just fun. Robert Downey Junior was hugely entertaining. (Stark cussing out the droids was just hilarious, and I'll bet that was something they worked up after seeing how Downey portrayed the character.)

But also, comic fans loved it because it was an excellent realization on the big screen. So many movies from comics suck... even the Ang Lee Hulk sucked, despite Ang Lee being a great director.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/01/review.ironman/index.html

no online access ever

[YesIAmAScript]

This is why every time I load a BluRay I ALWAYS select "NO" to the question do I want the disc to access the internet. I wish I could set it to permanently no (there is no such option on PS3).

Simply put, if the disc experience can be modified by what it loads from the internet, you never know what you are buying. You could end up with a disc that plays today and later, it won't load because they want to sell it to you again. It could even stop working by mistake (like this).

It's only going to get worse. Sony's new idea of cross-platform DRMed downloads includes internet access to verify you can play the content. Not me buddy. And I'm not just saying this because I've been in hotels for the last 10 days that want $9/hour or $25 a day to access the internet.

Re:no online access ever

[maxume]

The disc experience can be modified by some other, newer disc that you stick in the player. You don't know what you are buying (the second some keys on a popular player get disabled, Blu-ray will have its pitchforks and torches moment, but I wouldn't want to own that player in any event).

Re:no online access ever

[bdenton42]

I would hate to see the fallout of PS3's key being compromised. Or do they use a number of different keys so that they wouldn't end up disabling every PS3 on the planet?

Re:no online access ever

[maxume]

I have no idea. I expect much of the fallout would be Sony figuring out how to release a patch that removes the ability of the player to disable keys (for me, a screen big enough to make Blu-ray matter isn't in the financial picture, so it isn't something I am worrying a whole lot about; even if I owned a PS3, I don't think I would be spending any extra to make sure movies that I viewed were Blu-ray).

Re:no online access ever

[YesIAmAScript]

Yes, that's true. But it's economically impossible for them to modify all players out there to remove major functionality. It'd terminate the format.

Dead man walking

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue-ray is a dead man walking anyway.

The distribution is yesterday's technology. I'm holding out for downloads and video-on-demand (which my provider anyway now offers, just that it's still 1-2 months behind DVD releases). As such, BD is holding back the industry with it's heavy DRM and old-fashioned 'regionalisation'.

Luckily, farces like this should hasten its demise.

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[account_deleted]

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October 1?

[rrohbeck]

Interesting. The BD rips on the Net are from mid September.

What happens

[ABasketOfPups]

You put the Iron Man bluray disc in. It starts up and asks if you want to download the BD-Live content. But because there are only two selections, it's impossible to tell which one is selected by default: one's yellow. One's blue. Far as I can tell in my colorblindness.

If you tried to get the BD-Live content, it just sat there for a while. I hit stop, play, and skipped the BD-Live stuff and just played the disc. Sweet, sweet high res Iron Goodness ("...actually it's a gold-titanium alloy...")

Many bluray titles start up right into the film. Some without anything at all in front of it. Others with the FBI warning (but in high res, so you know you're on bluray). Some have trailers, but so far, all have been skipable. Certainly better than the occasional unstoppable DVD trailer I've had to deal with... as long as that remains true, it's definitely a better user experience.

Aside from the kick-ass resolution and sound, of course. Those are friggin' great on a big screen. Regular DVDs are starting to look blurry on my screen, as more of what I watch is HD, which I suspect will happen to everyone else over time. The folks that say "there's not enough difference" to go HD are going to look at an old DVD in ten years and say "what the hell was I thinking?"

Oh, and what you get...

[ABasketOfPups]

...is an Iron Man quiz, which is a little game that uses clips from the film. Actually, of course, it goes to the particular clip of the film and overlays some graphics.

No, there's no reason that couldn't have been on the original disc. Yes, that's a useless, trivial, not-at-all fun game. Yes, they apparently did this so they could say they put out Iron Man as their first BD-Live title.

Sigh. Disc is still great though, and the documentary on the second disc is HD too!

I can imagine good uses for BD-Live. Extra material for the film when a sequel comes out, to help build buzz. Maybe some of those sorts of games/quizes are fun for kids. Film commentary overlay from our favorite ex-MST3K alumni! That's too cool, never mind.

Confusion ensues

[C. Algernon]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/board/thread/119394610

There is no way this should be allowed...

[argent]

According to most sources, the content is downloaded as soon as a disc is first inserted into the player.

That shouldn't be possible. I mean, literally, technically, you should have to explicitly permit a disc to access to internet outside of the disc's content - something in the player software that the disc can't override or ignore. What else can blu-ray discs do on your player? Pull up a list of other discs you've watched, phone home about them, ...?

Re:There is no way this should be allowed...

[trdrstv]

According to most sources, the content is downloaded as soon as a disc is first inserted into the player.

That shouldn't be possible. I mean, literally, technically, you should have to explicitly permit a disc to access to internet outside of the disc's content - something in the player software that the disc can't override or ignore. What else can blu-ray discs do on your player? Pull up a list of other discs you've watched, phone home about them, ...?

You can always keep your BluRay player offline, and not have it connected to the Internet.

Re:There is no way this should be allowed...

[argent]

You can always keep your BluRay player offline, and not have it connected to the Internet.

You can always do the equivalent things that people who have a clue do to keep from getting phished, stalked, infected, or otherwise screwed up by badly designed security models in other spheres, from avoiding IE to turning off automatic image loading in email... but the people who most need protection won't.

How is incompetence better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still out of pocket.

Result: If incompetence, must replace Paramount staff. Fat chance.

Result: If Evil, sue them in court and get something that works.

So in this case, if it IS incompetence it is from my POV ***worse***.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[WK2]

Meanwhile, someone, somewhere had divided by zero, causing my calendar to indicate that it was the year 1900.

"D'oh!" -- God

Mod parent up, insightful.

[dpbsmith]

"The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in reality... But I've learnt differently since. The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy.... I will confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do that would pretty certainly go to jail. Now I know that any one who could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the House of Lords!"

--H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909)

Possible solution...

[rikkards]

Maybe they should use bittorrent to alleviate the load on their servers. :)

Let me get this straight

[Rastl]

Sony wants me to spend a whole lotta money on a new player and more money on each movie so they can pump new advertising content to me every time I watch it?

And they also want to dump a bunch of things I'll never use (screensavers, ringtones, etc.) on me at the same time?

In return I'll get a difference in picture quality I'll never see on my middle-of-the-road equipment and be at the mercy of their content download systems.

Um, I think I'm going to take a pass on this one. I won't put ANY movie into my computer except to make my mandatory back up copy. I might be missing out on 'all those cool extra features' but you know what? I only want to watch the movie! 98 times out of 100 I never even bother to see what else is on the disk. How many times do you really want to watch the 'making of' section, the trailers, or any of that other nonsense taking up space? To promote that as a reason to buy this overpriced crap just doesn't compute.

Then again I don't know that I'm the demographic they're going for here. If I had a couple of kids who were pestering me so they could get the [insert movie name here] ringtone and other goodies that only come with the BR copy then maybe I would have a different opinion. But I only want to watch the movie!

All of this should be disabled by default

[Kylere]

In light of the fact that I have Comcrap as my only higher than dialup provider, no one should be able to default enable anything that uses bandwidth.

Re:All of this should be disabled by default

[Kalriath]

Stop whining. At least Comcrap gives you more than 25GB/month bandwidth.

In light of the fact that over here, 5GB/month is COMMON, this stuff should absolutely be disabled in some manner.

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[Temkin]

You can also build a DB of "first views". If there's a unique serial number on the player, or even the disc, this could then be used for enforcement purposes at a later time. For example, say the disc plays on a player that they later discover is owned by a conference center or a school, etc... That might indicate a "public performance" for which the work is not licensed, therefore copyright infringement.

If the disc keeps popping up on different players, that might indicate a rental disc. If rental discs are issued with a different ID code, it might be used to nail mom & pop rental shops that are buying retail DVD's and renting them, or commercial outfits that are buying discs under restrictive contracts that forbid resale, etc...

All kinds of possibilities when discs phone home. Welcome to the brave new world.

Damn, whatever happened to...

[geekmux]

...just watching the movie?

I'm not trying to sound old-fashioned here, but unlike when I was a kid ONLY looking for the COOL toy inside the cereal box, I actually DO buy BR and DVD movies to watch (spoiler alert!) the movie. Shocking, I know.

Consumers tend to get pissed when you charge them $30 for a movie they can't really watch because the technology feeding me extra crap I didn't want in the first place broke. Go figure.

It's a trap!

[DragonTHC]

Think closely on this one.

When you put the movie in, it must contact a server before you can play it?

This is bullshit DRM. It's not even buying a movie, it's just a rental. This is a violation of every edict of consumerism.

And this is exactly why I refuse to buy blu-ray.

BD is hereby officially dead

[earlymon]

Every BD article has plenty of posts about early adopters and waiting. And posts about how BD isn't worth it.

This article, however, really clarifies the issues. I think in the backs of our minds we've all seen them - but I've recently learned by contemplating my navel that differences in computer marketing vs. all-other marketing is prolly making us all schizophrenic - or quadraphrenic - and burying obvious things we know or making us discuss them obtusely.

1. By the time BD could come down in price - volume shakeout in manufacturing, etc. - there should be new video codecs (normal (whatever that means) evolutionary time assumed) and faster processors. It seems more and more obvious that this adds up to better lossless compression. And that for me implies full HD content on normal DVD media. (Anecdotal proof - BD is so old, AFAIR, Apple was pre-Intel when first supporting it. Whack away if I'm mis-remembering. Not to say that we should use Apple calendars, just saying, most remember that, and can think of the many tech changes since then.)

2. By the time BD has its approach to consumers with respect to live content figured out (repeat - approach to consumers, not technical issues) - there will have been another revolution in internetworking and web designs and web threats.

BD is beyond a non-starter as of right now.

Compare DVD:
0. Develop
1. Only game in town (practically, um-k?, let's overlook laser discs from two generations earlier)
2. Format figured out by the time players hit
3. No change to format
4. Price comes down due to usual market and manufacturing processes
5. Early adopters may more for privilege (nothing wrong with that!!!!), overall, consumers win

Compare BD:
0. Develop
1. HD-DVD comes out as a fuck-you-me-too
2. BD rushed to market to combat HD-DVD, well before intended release
3. Design not finished
4. Format and delivery options vague or driven by too-soon-to-market
5. Some early adopters report already being fucked
6. BD providers scrambling to fix live content delivery problems, DRM woes - minimize fuck-you to early adopters and protect BD reputation
7. Rushed development to market - were live delivery or protection requirements really known???

There was no incentive for DVD changes other than price from day one. It just worked.

There is a lot of incentive for BD change from day one. It does not just work.

BD madness must end. Continued consumption of BD products is support for a format that either might not survive, or will cause BD to survive in a fit of corporate face-saving when better solutions could have existed, or are known to exist by some researchers, but become buried.

Summary:
The development and beta cycles for BD are out of whack because of the HD-DVD war. Money and time lost. More money and time will be - or should be - spent to recover. No proof that proper recover with newer technology won't achieve same results with DVD media, different DVD content layout. Feel free to substitute XXX for DVD in above argument, where XXX is better solution following DVD-to-market model.

Re:BD is hereby officially dead

[earlymon]

5. Early adopters may more for privilege

5. Early adopters PAY more for privilege

I even used Preview - honest.

Re:BD is hereby officially dead

[earlymon]

This is a pre-planned reply to my own post because it's a footnote.

To clarify what I mean by live delivery and DRM requirements being unknown:

My wife worked in the video (content) distribution industry before, during and after the DVD release to market. One of her girlfriends at a major manufacturer showed up with a before-market player and another one showed up with before-market porn (that one worked for a major studio, but the porn wasn't from her studio). In addition to great porn, and much better picture quality, it had all of the new features happenin' - especially view angles. For the first time, we saw the same fucking scene from 4 different points of view. We were sold. We didn't tell people how view angles would make all of the difference or how we knew, but we were sold.

First DVD I owned was Lost In Space.

But - I cannot remember seeing view angles since then. I remember looking, not finding it, eventually giving up.

That's how a lot of consumer products are marketed: 'We "think!" this is a feature, let's require it of the format so long as if the feature-gamble fails, it won't cost us in the long run.'

BD DRM and live and etc are already at this sorry state of affairs: 'We "magically know!" this is a requirement, let's work out feature delivery later.'

Totally ass fucking backwards.

You don't know what you're talking about

[TrekkieGod]

There is no requirement to actually utilize the BD-Live features to watch this title. I picked it up the other day, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. You know what happened? A screen came up ASKING wether or not I wanted to download the additional content. I chose not to, and it continued on its merry way to the main menu and I was able to watch the movie without any issues whatsoever.

Well, I picked it up on Tuesday, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. It didn't. A blue flashing circle showed up on the screen, and no message whatsoever about what was happening appeared. I took the disc out. I cleaned it and put it back on. I changed the input on the tv and WATCHED A 45 MINUTE TV EPISODE on my DVR, then went back to it to see if it had finished doing whatever it was that it was doing. It hadn't. Eventually I figured it out that it was due to BD-Live servers and changed the PS3 settings.

Here's what happened with you. Either you picked it up before their servers started messing up / after their servers were back up by which point they added the additional menu option that asks if you want to download the additional content or you had your PS3 set up to "ask" before connecting to BD-Live.

Under BD settings for the PS3 there's an option on whether or not to allow the Blu-Ray discs to connect to BD-Live servers. Here's the fucking catch. The two options are "allow" and "ask". You can't set it to I never want to fucking connect . So those of us who were tired of having the menu pop up every single time we put a blu-ray on the PS3 asking if we could allow it to connect to BD-Live had given up and set it to "allow." Then the servers were overloaded, the disc menu never said it was connecting to the net, so I didn't think to turn that feature off, and we had a horrible experience. So no, it's not fud.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[tao]

What's the point with an HDTV if the only things you have connected to it are a DVD-player and a Wii? Neither of them provides an HD-signal (and don't waste your breath on upscaling).

This is why...

[Shinra]

This is why I stick with DVDs: A Lot less bullshit involved.

NO. Absolutely NOT.

[Khyber]

I don't want a MOVIE eating up internet bandwidth. A movie is to be WATCHED, not waste my 250GB bandwidth cap on fucking ADVERTISEMENTS.

I'll bill Sony for that nonsense, and I'll charge a hefty price per KB, too. When i play a movie, thats all I expect it to do. I don't expect it to covertly download advertisements to stick in the middle of my movie - that's what SPONSORS are for, to already have the ad worked into the movie. Don't waste MY RESOURCES, it's that plain and simple.

Thankfully, I can turn all that off on my PS3, no Blu-Ray internet access. Just gimme the menu and let me hit play.

Re:NO. Absolutely NOT.

[ultranova]

I don't want a MOVIE eating up internet bandwidth. A movie is to be WATCHED, not waste my 250GB bandwidth cap on fucking ADVERTISEMENTS.

Only a pirate terrorist would deny a corporate citizen its inalienable right to profit. Why do you hate freedom so much ?

Re:NO. Absolutely NOT.

[badkarmadayaccount]

And the other contestant in the 'sadly insightfull' category is... badkarmadayaccount's loneliness, though he is a maverick jackass. And they start the fight... and he's down! Ultranova's post wins, what a match folks!

"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, I saw the headline in my RSS feed and thought we were discussing the precursors of Ada.

Showing my age, I guess.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Kopiok]

DVDs are half the cost and the Wii is twice as fun?

Flush All Toilets At Noon

[Nom du Keyboard]

Use to it was flush all your toilets at once. Now it looks like everyone insert your BluRay discs at once and make the studio pay for not just putting the content on the disc in the first place.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[Ant P.]

Is the dollar really that weak right now? I saw a new, boxed 360 HD-DVD drive in a shop for £40 yesterday.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[tao]

If you re-read my message, you'll note that I don't question that in any way. I question why you'd need an HDTV at all if you only use SD-material on it... (Oh, and you're either buying waaay to expensive DVD's, or are lucky to find very cheap BD's; at least here I can usually find DVD's for 5â if I wait a few months after the release, but the cheapest BD's, even a year after release, at 20â).

So how long...

[Snaller]

Apparently you can still view the disk if you don't connect the player to the net - but how long until you have to "authenticate" your DVD? We've seen they have started to do with it with computer games, and for games like Spore only 3 times.

"You've bought the right to see the Blueray disk 500, the company said. We believe 500 times is a very generous amount"

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[PFI_Optix]

An HDTV does a lot more than just show video disks and game consoles.

There's this thing called television. Look into it.

Re:Not FUD, More Like Therapy For Xbox/HD-DVD Fanb

[tao]

Yes, and most channels still broadcast SD, which brings us around full circle again to my original question (but if the remaining HD-material is what you're using your TV for, fine, I have got the answer I wanted). And most stuff on TV is crap anyway, except for BBC Food. Best... Channel... Ever!

Pirating Movies means your bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Pirated copies of movies are always shit, people that download movies are shit.

Get a non-ethernet connected player

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

one of the reasons I got a Panasonic DMP-BD30 is it does NOT have an ethernet connection. You download firmware updates and burn them to CD-ROM. That means I will have a library of all the firmware updates and can revert to a previous version. I leave it to you guys to figure out the advantages.

Its a great player, BTW. Freakin fast.

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[kesuki]

"All kinds of possibilities when discs phone home. Welcome to the brave new world."

which is why i love that there are tools to crack the BD+ and give full access to the video content, with none of the BS.

sigh, it's too bad that the pushers of DRM and other evil technologies have gone towards a 'there, but let's not talk about' approach to applying DRM to products. if you told your typical user that every movie they watch was being tracked, would they still want to have the fancy new blu=ray player? probably not.

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where'd Sony come into this? Did his Microsoft operating system call them, or his Paramount BD? Maybe his HTPC is a Sony Vaio?

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[Douglas Goodall]

The one thing that the PS3 does not do that an upscale player will do is upsample the old DVDs to provide near-HD quality. A $100 DVD player can do this in hardware, but the software of the PS3 does not do this. So even though your PS3 is hooked to an HD display, DVDs you play on it will not look as good as a DVD played on an upsampling player attached to the same display. If your entire collection was BD then that is one thing, but while your collection still contains DVDs, either a high end BD player, or a PS3 and an upsampling player together are a better solution. That is what I have. An HDMI enabled display, an HDMI switcher, a PS3, and an upsampling DVD player, so I can play games, watch BD movies, and watch my old DVDs (in near HD quality).

Lol Blu Ray HD was superior

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it where I work. Blu Ray titles constantly getting recalled due to defects.

DVD

[Friendly Pyro]

I've said it on many Blu-ray posts and I'll say it again, if Blu-ray sticks a few more years and gets more movies then I'll get the movies. worked with DVD's.

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[Retric]

I am sorry, but you probably just wasted money because the PS3 does upscale DVD's. http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/bdsettings.html

"This option can only be used when the video being played is in SD resolution and the video output setting of the PS3â system is set to 1080p or 1080i."

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[trdrstv]

The one thing that the PS3 does not do that an upscale player will do is upsample the old DVDs

Do you NOT have the PS3 connected to the internet or something? If you are using HDMI out, then the PS3 had this capability since Firmware Ver. 1.80 (May 24th, 2007)* Note: Upconversion only works for HDMI, not component.

Superbowl XXX

[trdrstv]

Just an fyi. Superbowl xxx already happened.

Yeah, and it DID involve the Dallas Cowboy's Cheerleaders... just not in the way I had hoped...

:-(

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[Douglas Goodall]

Thank you Steve for adjusting my erroneous belief in such a polite manner. I stand corrected and my face is slightly red. As a software engineer, technical accuracy is very important to me. You have my appreciation. My apologies to those I misinformed. I purchased the PS3s because I recognized the Cell made them a powerful computing engine, and I thought they would make a nice addition to my development network. Since then Sony has cheapened the product, and I consider my units to be valuable collector's items. I purchased Yellow Dog. My only sadness is the lack of ability to add substantial ram. I don't like violent games. I do like driving games, but don't like steering with my thumb. Is there a high quality human interface device currently for the PS3 that would make my driving games more enjoyable? Something from Logitech maybe? I would value your advice on this. :-) I also am waiting with anticipation for the release of the @home service as I am a nerd hermit who wants to participate in a 3D world, but doesn't really like 2L. Thanks again, Doug

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[trdrstv]

Honestly, I can't speak too much on either the PS3 racing wheels or even their games in general. My PS3 is primarily used for BluRay Movies from Netflix, and some PS2 titles that use the standard controller (Sly Cooper, God of War, Psychonaughts). Of the upcoming games, Little Big Planet looks like their best game this year (I'm neither a GTA or MGS fan).

If you enjoy music however I can't recommend Rock Band enough. I'm a big Karaoke person and have been playing the hell out of Rock Band. In fact, I play either that most or Tiger Woods Golf (on the Wii). I hope that helps.

Peace. ---S.

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[aliquis]

lol, yeah, for interpolation gives so much better picture quality! That's why I enlarge all my digital photos from 4 mpx to 120 mpx, just look at the quality! Stuning!

Sony could probably easily add it, or if it's that important for you why not get a TV which supports upscaling instead?

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[aliquis]

So maybe he has a 720p display, and maybe Sony didn't thought it improved the experience that much to interpolate the image into 1280x720.

Or something.

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[Retric]

It does work with 720p but if you want the full quote from the link:

Upscaler

Adjust settings for upscaled output when playing a DVD. Upscaling is a feature that can be used to enable content recorded at SD resolution (NTSC: 480p / 480i, PAL: 576p / 576i) to be displayed in HD resolution (1080p / 1080i / 720p). Because the video content of commercial DVDs is recorded in SD resolution, higher resolution video can be achieved by enabling upscaled output.

Off Set to disable upscaled output.
Double Scale*1 Set to upscale and display with double horizontal and vertical dimensions.>
Normal Set to upscale and display at a size that matches the screen size.
Full Screen*2 Set to upscale and display at full screen by stretching the image.

*1 This option can only be used when the video being played is in SD resolution and the video output setting of the PS3â system is set to 1080p or 1080i.

*2 The proportions of the video content may be changed for some content.

Re: Because it is not an upsampling DVD player

[aliquis]

Ok, so the person who said 1080p/i had abviously never understood that it was only true for 4x zoom or whatever to call it and not for "fit to screen."