Jan
Blu-Ray Says “Screw You”
Shortly after the huge news that Warner is going to produce their movies exclusively in Blu-Ray and abandon the HD-DVD format, the news comes out with trouble for Blu-Ray player owners.
Unlike HD DVD, which mandated features such as local storage, a second video and audio decoder for picture-in-picture, and a network connection from the very beginning, the companies behind Blu-ray took a different approach. Initial hardware players lacked these capabilities in order to keep costs down.
None of the Profile 1.0 players can be upgraded to Profile 1.1, which was finalized recently, with the exception of the PlayStation 3 — whose update arrived in mid-December. Likewise, Profile 2.0 is expected to arrive in October bringing Internet connectivity that Profile 1.1 players lack.
This continues to baffle me why Blu-Ray is winning this war at this point. HD-DVD has always had its standards set, and it also has a network port for EASY firmware updates. Sony continues their arrogance:
When BetaNews asked developers of BD Live whether they were concerned about a backlash from early adopters who supported the format from the beginning, we were told: “They knew what they were getting into.” [emphasis mine]
So not only does Sony let customers know their players won’t work completely in the future, they essential say, You knew what you were getting into; tough luck. If this arrogance continues, Sony may not win this format war. If they continue to screw over customers, the customers (rather than just the movie studios) are going to speak out against Blu-Ray. They may turn to HD-DVD or they may just turn against both formats completely.
H/T Instapundit
Look at CT with the new Blu-Ray news! Good on ya Craig, maybe our HD-DVD players weren’t bought in vain after all.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm