Be aware of this if you're considering buying a Blu-ray player

[Avi]

This may be a consideration if you're planning to buy one of the current range of standalone US/UK Blu-ray players. Maybe this explains why certain BD products are now being heavily discounted.

Blu-Ray faking features.

AVI

[Rasczak]

Which begs the question - why isn't it working in some of their players? In this thread we mooted it was because of BD-J issues - now it seems it simply is poor authoring. To compound the issue international owners of the incompatible Sony BDP1 aren't going to have access to the firmware updates. If that's not giving the finger to early adopters I don't know what is

It is a bit of a shambles really - I am going to wait I think, I was tempted to buy this weekend, but the players available in the UK now are already obsolete it seems. Crazy in my opinion, in an attempt to steal a lead on HD DVD they appear to have put products to market that are far from ready. I hope the press picks up on this because to pay £1100+ for let's say a UK Panasonic player now would be a real mistake - Or am I really missing something?

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by jakal

Or am I really missing something?

Personally I don't think so - especially with CES happening next week there will probably be alot of new and exciting stuff coming from the BluRay camp.

[Avi]

Originally Posted by Rasczak

with CES happening next week there will probably be alot of new and exciting stuff coming from the BluRay camp.

The problem is what do we believe ? There appears to be so much "smoke and mirrors" around Blu-ray at the moment.

AVI

[mattym]

i think at the end of next week we should have a better idea of whats happening.

how can the feature work on one machine but not another, that i dont understand

[Avi]

Originally Posted by mattym

i think at the end of next week we should have a better idea of whats happening.

how can the feature work on one machine but not another, that i dont understand

That's the interesting thing. It's not really "PiP" at this stage because it appears that true "PiP" is a feature of enhanced BD-J and this does not appear to be supported by some if not all of the current standalone BD players. It appears that at this time support for enhanced BD-J is "optional" as with certain HD audio formats. Hence the lack of consistency between players. Not only that but it's not clear if the current standalone players have the necessary hardware to support some of the more advanced features.

The Decent disc fakes "PiP" by having two copies of the movie with one having the "PiP" type image overlaid during production. This appears to be a very low tech approach but it is still causing playback issues with certain players.

So what happens with the current players when true "PiP" and other enhanced BD-J features appear on titles ?

AVI

[Mr_Sukebe]

What, my player doesn't deal with PiP. Oh no, the end of the world....

Frankly, who gives a stuff, I just want to watch films, not get distracted.

[Avi]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sukebe

What, my player doesn't deal with PiP. Oh no, the end of the world....

Frankly, who gives a stuff, I just want to watch films, not get distracted.

That's fine and I'm not trying to dis your purchase. This functionality may be an important consideration for some and at least they can make an informed decision rather then getting an unpleasant suprise.

AVI

[Dave2]

I think the point to the thread is... In the future what is it to say you will not need the true support of bd-j to watch a film ? decent doesnt seem to like many players and in the future with newer title that may not work on current models ?

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Mr_Sukebe

What, my player doesn't deal with PiP. Oh no, the end of the world....

Frankly, who gives a stuff, I just want to watch films, not get distracted.

I never watch the extras, but I do care that they waste half the disc on one small feature. Will we ever see a Blu-Ray disc that makes good use of a BD50?

[Dave2]

Originally Posted by Jeff

I never watch the extras, but I do care that they waste half the disc on one small feature. Will we ever see a Blu-Ray disc that makes good use of a BD50?

Unless they start using avc or vc-1 probably not. If they used vc-1 for tv shows on bd50 there would be more eps to a disc and nice quality.

[Nic Rhodes]

It is not just extras though, it is PinP, BD J, BD Live, BD+....The Samsung is a fine player for BD only but with limited facilities at a great price, like all BD players, it is however a long way from the final BD product.

[Avi]

Spotted this summary on the "AVS insider thread" related the PIP and other potential problem areas with the current BD players. Some cannot be fixed with firmware.


http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...55#post9378355

#289

"Quote:
Originally Posted by BuGsArEtAsTy
Forgive me for being dense, but just to make this clear to me... Which specific features again do current standalone Blu-ray players not support?"


The specific list is as follows:

1. The amount of permanent storage in the player so things like bookmarks, interactivity state (e.g. your name, game score, etc.), downloaded subtitles and such can be stored. Needless to say, no firmware fix can add such hardware to your machine.

2. Hardware decode support for two streams of video: one for main movie, and another for the secondary video. Products using the decoder in the Samsung for example, can not handle an HD stream and SD stream decode. The Toshiba which uses the same decoder decodes the secondary stream using its powerful X86 CPU for this task. That CPU horsepower is missing from equiv. BD players. It is not possible to add such functionality via software unless the hardware is already there.

3. TrueHD and or DTS lossless support. BD doesn't mandate any so it is totally up to the player manufacturer to do so or not. If the computational horsepower is there (again, the Toshiba did with its multiple DSPs) then this can be a firmware update, assuming there is an optimized implementation is available for the underlying instruction set.

4. Networking. Most stand-alone players do not have the hardware connection so there is no way to add such a functionality via software. Even with the connection, this is a very complex subsystem and making it compliant with BD-Live may be beyond the means of some companies. The box may also lack sufficient memory to handle the extra code and buffering needed for networking.

__________________
Amir
Microsoft
HD DVD insider
VC-1 insider in BD/HD DVD
Ask me questions about HD DVD here "

[Oakleyspatz]

It's the beginning of DVD all over again!
When DVD began, there were movies coming out every week that players could not handle for one reason or another. New added extras, seamless branching, audio tracks and who can forget The Matrix DVD!!!
These first gen Blu-Ray players do not seem to have taken the ever evolving format's potential into consideration and seem grossly under spec'd. That would be acceptable on a £300 player, but not one retailing for over a £1000.

At least HD DVD seems to have been released with considerably more foresight and considerartion for the format's development by including network connectivity in all standalone players as well as memory for buffering and expanded interactivity. If the players cannot handle it, the discs will not have it!

For example, I understand some of the available interactive bonus features on the HD DVD of MI-3 are all but gone on the Blu-Ray version!!!.....

Whatever happened to being able to get so much more from BD than the so called 'inferior' HD DVD format?