Blu-ray Disc Specification Change Threatens Current Players – DailyTech.com: God, it really sucks to be an early adopter when something like this happens.
The most common piece of advice given to those unsure about which high-definition optical format to buy is to simply wait until a victor emerges. Early adopters, however, should be aware that being cutting edge could come with a price, such as the risk of bugs or complete hardware and software obsolescence.
The Blu-ray Disc Association has mandated that all players of the format released after October 31 must adhere to a specific feature set that is currently not standard for today’s hardware. All Blu-ray Disc players after the fall date must support BD Java, a programming language for Blu-ray Disc media used mainly to deliver picture-in-picture for in-movie commentary and special features.
Early adopters of Blu-ray players may find themselves with inadequate hardware to support media using BD Java software.
Unlike the HD DVD standard, Blu-ray players are not required to have Ethernet ports for firmware updates. Blu-ray machines with upgradable firmware likely will have a greater chance of conforming to the mandated format this fall.
Well, John has said in the past that HD-DVD players have technical capabilities that Blu-ray players don’t have. I guess they are trying to play catch-up in this area, screwing early adopters in the process.
Meh… That’s what you get for being an early adopter.
Adding to #1,
… Especially from a Sony product!
This is exactly why no one is buying high def players… everyone over 30 who can afford one can remember being caught in the VHS verses Beta format wars of yesteryear.
The industry expects us to throw out our DVD players and buy into the latest and greatest every time it releases a new format, yet they cannot agree on anything and ALWAYS end up screwing early adoptors, now they are wringing their hands and wondering why high def DVD players are not selling like they thought they would be.
I watch a two year old DVD player on a high def screen and the picture looks fantastic, I’ll buy a high def player when 1. they cost less than $150.00, 2. they play all my “old” DVDs and 3. they have finally setled on a format. By then they will be trying to sell us the “next big thing.”
#3 – I totally support your comments…
I was more than happy to beat my VCR with a hammer and buy a DVD player. It really offered something I didn’t have before. And, I’m typically excited about cool new tech and sometimes willing to be an early adopter.
But HD and Blu-Ray offer NOTHING of value to me because DVD looks great. And backward compatibility to my 100s and 100s of DVDs is not too much to ask for.
These new formats are solutions in search of a problem.
Buy a PS3, It’ll support it 😛
It still comes down to being wise and doing your homework when selecting your products.
A player that can’t do firmware updates? I thought this is 2007(06)?
#5 is right about one thing. The game consoles allow their firmwares to be upgraded over the ‘Net, thus an added value for compatibility.
However, it works both ways – adding DRM and removing MP3 playback if the MP3 wasn’t encoded in 256kps (Apple/EMI).
I don’t get it Dvorak, you have been saying Blu Ray was going to win out. But Blue Ray is waging a huge propaganda war to defeat the HD-DVD format. Well, I’m an early adopter and bought the Toshiba HD-A2 for a little under $399, compared to nearly a grand for the Blu Ray player. I discovered that the Toshiba has perhaps the best upconversion of all high end players and made a big difference with my old SD DVD’s Even if BD wins I’ll still have a great player. For all of you sitting on the side lines, you can thank your luck stars for us early adopters, who flush out the technology and help win the format war. Buy a player and vote dammit.
Like this is a surprise?
But then, a big who cares is probably in order…
Chicken little was running around complaining that early adopters of HDTV were being screwed because an HDCP input would be needed, and early HDTVs don’t support it.. How many movies need or are likely to need HDCP in the next 10 years? None.
How many Blue-Ray players will need Java running on them in order to play a movie? None. You might lose some useless yet highly vaunted ‘feature’, like being able to do PIP, but really… who cares.
Besides, people that are early adopters are never just happy with their stuff, and always fall for the next fad. They buy and buy and buy… iPod users are a great example…. many have 5 or 6 just because ‘the new one came out’. Schmucks!
Plastic coated disks in oddball formats instead of standard format computer files, how quaint. You can watch them in the drawing room in your smoking jacket!
you know what, the green double-underlined hyperlinks are getting really goddamn annoying.
And I imagine that most Blu-ray players, like HDDVD players, have upgradable firmware. Note that the article did not point to any BRD players that lacked flash memory, even though the number of models is so low that it would have been easy to find out.
No ethernet port? no problem. just put the firmware upgrade on the disks, eh? AFAIK, Sony does that with the PSP.
And I say all this with a HDDVD player sitting in my AV rack. Being an early adopter means running some risks, so long as you plunk down your cash knowing that. Don’t want to gamble? Buy yasself a good upscaling DVD player. You will be amazed.
This article, and your blog post is extremely inaccurate. All players support BD-J. It’s just the PiP support that will be new (plus some requirements about increased local storage). All current players will continue to be able to play new discs. They just may not be able to use the PiP feature. BD-J can tell if a player supports PiP or not, and so will be smart enough to not offer it when it won’t work.
This bit about people getting screwed is utter nonsense.
Try asking the HD DVD folks if they can support 24p output with PiP turned on.
And tell John to go sniffing around to see what he can scare up about HD DVD’s “performance levels” and have him report back to us.
If a player doesn’t have any ports, such as USB, to allow software upgrades, isn’t there still an other way to get upgrades?
Do the players allow upgrades off of disks? For example, will it recognize a special disk that has the software on it? Then the early adapters will only need to pop in the upgrade disk to get their player to update itself.
Yeah why not just put the firmware update on the disk with the movie which needs it, that way you never have to update it yourself as it would be an automatic process. Making it completely idiot proof if the players can be updated in this way.
I don’t get the line at the end — “Well, John says…….”. Who is writing this stuff? Does John Dvorak have an employee that writes his blog?
#10 you are right on about the dumb ass content link things. I hate them. Why are they here? No one is going to click on them. Dumb idea Dvorak.
14,
John has multiple editors. How can one person stay on top of all this stuff?
#10 – check out AdBlock Plus (if you use Firefox). It does wonders blocking these types of ads.
Comment by Jayson — 4/6/2007 @ 8:31 am
Precisely. Here’s the url. I haven’t seen any of that double underlined nonsense since installing. Love that Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
why not just put the firmware update on the disk with the movie which needs it
Comment by Adam — 4/5/2007 @ 11:29 pm
Great idea, but just think of the hacker and rootkit-type disasters this could lead to. Want to borrow one of my movies? 🙂 Just what I need — a disc player that phones home about everything I watch.