CrunchGear's Nicholas Deleon points out one of Blu-ray's critical flaws: when you want to watch a movie, the system can force you to dick around for literally hours applying "necessary" firmware upgrades until it consents to play the disk.
Here's just part of his hellish experience with one of Samsung's players:
I decide to burn the firmware to a CD, thinking that would be easier. It was and it wasn’t. After finding the firmware on Samsung’s labyrinth of a Web site, I burned it to a disc. I place the disc in the player and wait some more. And wait and wait and wait. Fifteen minutes go by before the player pops up, “Are you sure you want to upgrade the firmware?”
Bear in mind that the poor guy's reward for all this was getting to watch The Happening. Deleon's final question – whether "Blu-ray will forever be hobbled by this type of nonsense." – is the most entertaining aspect of the whole story. It seems almost a rhetorical question, as if we all know, deep down, that this really is the entertainment culture our children will grow up with. I do hope The Happening's end-user license agreement came in under 57 pages.
Blu-ray player upgrade process is killing the movie watching experience [CrunchGear]
Speechless. DRM will be the death of legal, media fun.
Or you could just download it. Someone should have a race. Two people, one who has to install firmware and one who downloads the movie and see which is faster. I guess you would have to add going to the store to by the disc and burning the disc so the beginning and end are the same (having a copy on some sort of media), and you’d have to find a hd version of the movie for download… XD
This is nuts. I’m a semi-nerd and my Mom is a non-nerd who loves to watch movies and just bought a 46 inch 1080p LCD. I’m SORELY tempted by the bluray version of Planet Earth but she doesn’t do firmware.
If a Bluray player can’t play back every bluray movie w/o ever being attached to a network it’s a non-starter. She’s not going to download illegally either so she’ll just keep using DVDs.
Possibly a nice enough version of an apple TV might work for her. Sure it’ll have similar firmware issues so it’ll have to come with all sorts of sweeteners.
I still love my VCR and my VHS tapes… grab one at random, stuff it in, and instantly without 5 mins of farting with menus it plays from where it left off. And, this is cool, you can record by pressing -one- button.
I recently changed from a TV to using my SO’s gorgeous Mac with a tuner. Urrr. There was much annoyance as the Hauppage tuner asked what -frequency- channel 2 was… Why doesn’t it ask the TV, it knows!
I gave away my DVD player after I resolved to smash it into bits and mail it back to Sony after it wouldn’t play half the discs.
Blueray isn’t even on my radar for all of the previously mentioned reasons. I just don’t care enough about being able to see the beads of sweat on actors. If it’s a good movie you don’t care if it’s black and white and blurry. (think Seventh Seal).
All of these system designers and marketing types have a special hell reserved for them where they have to press buttons eternally and have “operation not permitted” tattooed into their corneas.
And yet people continue buying Bluray.
I won’t pay for downloads with DRM as they’re essentially renting the product. I won’t pay $15 to download a movie because it gives the studios essentially pure profit without having to manufacture, ship or stock actual palpable products and I end up having to deal with ever-complicated licenses and storage. I’m sure as hell not buying Bluray so long as they can require me to constantly upgrade firmware and agree to EULAs to watch MY movie. So what else is there but to be left behind in the world of DVDs (or piracy)?
My kids are going to grow up renting movies. It’ll save me a fortune.
This and other DRM-induced ass-aches are why I’ll likely be a movie pirate forever, unless they outgrow these schnenanigans and go back to the VHS era of “hi, here’s your movie, play nice now, b-bye” media access.
Don’t forget, people …..
‘Blu-ray’ is the format pushed by SONY …..
the wonderful people who brought you:
Rootkit infestations on your PC for playing a lawfully purchased music CD (rootkit software that calls back to the motherSONY to let them know which tracks you listened to, how many times, what websites you surf, etc., etc.)
And of course, they thoroughly enjoyed the class-action lawsuit filed (and WON!) against them.
This seems to be one of those rare (in the 2000s) occasions on which Sony got something right.
The most glaring problem I’ve ever had with Blu-Ray on the PlayStation 3 has been but a split second of audiovisual noise while the HDMI handshake took place before loading the disc menu. Perhaps the PS3 firmware updates have always had Blu-Ray updates well in advance of any pressings of discs that require them, but I’ve never had anything make a BD viewing more difficult than a DVD viewing.
Funny that an auto-updating, internet-connected game console might be the only hassle-free home for a technology this addicted to revision — is that the scent of anti-competitive conspiracy in the BD consortium, Sony?
ADRALIEN: And get off your lawn?
RICK: Was that a bit much? I must have poured milk on sourballs instead of cheerios this morning…
It would take forever, even with a fast connection, to download a movie at the same resolution and bitrate as a blu-ray movie.
However, given that the masses still don’t have 1080p tvs yet, and that dvds are now “good enough” in the same way mp3s are a “good enough” alternative to CDs, I don’t think the HD market for movies will go anywhere while crap like this keeps up.
The players need to drop below $100 for a good one, the TVs need to come down to reasonable prices, and the media itself needs to be cheaper, then the public will be all over it.
I don’t see that happening though. As soon as the infrastructure is there, we’ll be downloading everything anyway, albeit perhaps through more legitimate channels.
DeeJayQueue, I’m right there with you on the downloading true HD movies being ridiculous. Not just the bandwidth, but the storage! How many BluRay quality movies can you store when the BluRay Disc holds 50gb? (two layer, of course; I think a single layer disc is 25gb.) Even a 1tb drive starts to look small at that point. And the movies are already compressed as much as possible without going into lossy compression. So if the file’s less than 25gb, you’re losing quality.
Anyway, I agree with Clay that the PS3 is an absolutely stellar BluRay player. But I’ve also found myself stalled out on actually purchasing BluRay movies. After the first few, I realized I hated spending that much money on a movie, and that I don’t enjoy it THAT much more than a regular DVD.
Plus some movies (Fifth Element) look *worse* in BluRay because you can see every last flaw in their late-90’s special effects.
It’s obvious that the media firms want a jukebox and movie theater business model – you pay a buck every time you want to hear a song, you pay ten bucks every time you want to see a movie. I embrace it by going to the movie theater instead of buying their stupid disks.
Besides, I couldn’t possibly afford a screen that big, a sound system that loud, or popcorn that crappy.
I’m one of those unlucky bastards who backed the wrong horse. My Toshiba HD-DVD player now joins me in my daily AV sulk where it performs as a slow DVD player.
Soderberg supported HD-DVD. Michael Mann supported HD-DVD. Oscar winners supported HD-DVD. But no, millions of 18 year-olds around the world really *really* wanted to see “Blue Crush” on Blu-Ray, so Sony won yet another DRM fight and can now have their firmware way with everyone.
I think Sony never forgave us for Beta’s loss in the marketplace and now it sits in its Sony basement, putting on Sony lipstick and polishing its Sony gun collection.
Best thing ever, DVDs with no menu’s just drop them in and most DVD players don’t even need for yout o push play… its the only thing I burn of all those movies I download… a thing of beauty my friends a thing of beauty.