Blu-ray Disc Association: Buy The Playstation 3, No Other Blu-ray Player Before BD Live Release

It looks like Blu-ray may win the format war after all, but there's another war looming on the horizon and it's not coming from web video or video-on-demand services. It's coming from Blu-ray supporters themselves, though most of them don't know it yet.

BDA: PS3 Only Blu-ray Player You Should Currently Buy
BD Live or Profile 2.0, which was demonstrated by the Blu-ray Disc Association at CES, is set to be released this coming October. The update will bring internet connectivity to Blu-ray players, something the latest Profile 1.1 update doesn't include. The earliest adopters of Blu-ray with players that have Profile 1.0 support aren't able to update to Profile 1.1, with the exception of the Playstation 3, and once Profile 2.0 becomes available, current Profile 1.1 players will face similar problems. The question of utmost importance here is how many Blu-ray supporters actually know of the coming problems?

The Blu-ray Disc Association says nothing more of early Blu-ray supporters than "they knew what they were getting into" and they would still be able to watch movies in high-definition even though the continuing development of the BD-J interactive layer means that earlier players face buggy playback with some newer Blu-ray movies. The blue camp says they've remedied the situation by placing "Bonus View" stickers on discs that require Profile 1.1 players and soon "BD Live" stickers on discs requiring Profile 2.0. Yet, interestingly, Blu-ray reps apparently told BetaNews that the only Blu-ray player they would recommend purchasing at the moment is the Playstation 3.

Samsung's BD-UP5000 Dual-Format Player
A perfect example of some of the problems facing the Blu-ray format at the moment is the recently released Samsung BD-UP5000 dual-format player. Engadget HD went through some of the AVS Forum discussions on the player and found the majority of owners had the inability to playback "any multi-channel next-gen codecs, (have) problems playing the latest titles like Resident Evil: Extinction, 3:10 to Yuma and Sunshine, and miscellaneous problems with 4:3 material and DVDs". Sounds like a excessive amount of problems for a newly released player. Samsung has said that they intend to release a firmware update in the next few days that will address the compatibility problems with current Blu-ray discs and a second quarter update would include support for multi-channel Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

Things will get pretty interesting in the format flame wars when instead of battles between HD DVD supporters and those siding with Blu-ray, the flame wars start within the confines of the blue camp itself.

January 13, 2008

Blu-ray Disc Association: Buy The Playstation 3, No Other Blu-ray Player Before BD Live Release