Blu-ray 1.1: a lawsuit waiting to happen?

[teamerickson]

Blu-ray 1.1: a lawsuit waiting to happen? - News - Tech.co.uk

 

[JoeSp]

Wow, those guys in Europe are really kicking up some dust!

 

[vurbano]

They should sue the pants off of BD. Those people spent a fortune on 1st gen BD players that will be obsolete.

 

[diogen]

Must be an old article (written, not published).
It hasn't even mentioned the strategic "final" name of profile 1.1 - Bonus View.

"What your old player is not capable of displaying has nothing to do with the movie, it is Bonus material.
Wanna see that - get a new player" - or something like this...

On a more serious note - from the article:

...Persistent memory, for instance, mandates that you have flash memory inside the player...

This is wrong.
Bonus View players don't have to have flash memory built into the player.
Compact Flash card attached to the Multi Memory card interface (on the Samsung) will be good enough.
Unless there are other reasons, e.g. not being able to handle 2 streams at the same time.

Diogen.

 

[gadgtfreek]

:river

 

[IcEWoLF]

They should sue the pants off of BD. Those people spent a fortune on 1st gen BD players that will be obsolete.

I dubt that will ever happen.

 

[Paradox-SJ]

I dubt that will ever happen.

Tell Micro$oft that....

 

[IcEWoLF]

There is no way and no how that HD-DVD would ever be able to beat BD in sales.
Sorry to break it down to you people, but PS3(BD-Player) sells more than HD-DVD players combined. The only way they may have a chance to beat BD is to give away the HD-DVD players for free, because clearly they will never catch up with the #'s of BD players that are @ peoples homes all around the world.

 

[chicagofilms]

The idea of a lawsuit is ridiculous. A BD 1.0 player will not be obsolete, it will still play the movies.

It's like buying a shiny new 4 cylinder sports car, then the manufacturer comes out with an 8 cylinder version. The car you bought still gets you around.

 

[diogen]

The idea of a lawsuit is ridiculous.

...as long as the fancy new capabilities of Bonus View discs and players are kept in fine print on the back of the packaging.
If they appear in large print on the front, i.e. the consumer doesn't see it as Bonus material, it might not be such a stretch...

Never underestimate what a bunch of geeks can do to "stick it to the Man".

And HD will certainly do its best to help "educating" the BD consumers.

Diogen.

 

[ONUOsFan]

They'll probably just start printing "system requirements" on the back of the packages, like they do for PC games. I can't sue HP or Microsoft because my old PC won't play the newest game that just came out....

 

[IcEWoLF]

They'll probably just start printing "system requirements" on the back of the packages, like they do for PC games. I can't sue HP or Microsoft because my old PC won't play the newest game that just came out....

That made my day.

 

[Zookster]

Unless a first gen BD player explicitly advertised (published) that that particular model would be capable of a certain feature now or in the future and it never delivered, the suit is completely baseless.

 

[diogen]

They'll probably just start printing "system requirements" on the back of the packages....

Interesting comments about BonusView from Talkstr8t:

More likely "Bonus View support required". The studio execs I've spoken with have indicated
they'll be very conservative about how to advertise features which may not be supported on all players.
One even said they may leave those features off the box.

AVS Forum - View Single Post - Insiders Tracking Thread: post it here

The evidence suggests most consumers are far more interested in watching the primary movie

AVS Forum - View Single Post - Insiders Tracking Thread: post it here

In other words, when everybody believed PiP in BD will be in hidef, it was demonstrating BD's superiority.
When in turns out not mandatory in hidef and a year lete - it's just customers aren't interested.

I bet after BonusView is through its introduction phase, the rhetoric about its vital importance will return.

Diogen.

 

[chicagofilms]

Interesting comments about BonusView from Talkstr8t:

AVS Forum - View Single Post - Insiders Tracking Thread: post it here

AVS Forum - View Single Post - Insiders Tracking Thread: post it here

In other words, when everybody believed PiP in BD will be in hidef, it was demonstrating BD's superiority.
When in turns out not mandatory in hidef and a year lete - it's just customers aren't interested.

I bet after BonusView is through its introduction phase, the rhetoric about its vital importance will return.

Diogen.

Explain the point of HD PiP...

Your screen is 1920 x 1080
The biggest PiP you could possibly have is to split the screen in half. Assuming the source is HD, it would be widescreen, thus be letterboxed or an odd format of 960 x 1080 if they filled the two screens from top to bottom. If it was letterboxed, the actual picture would be more like 960 x 540 (a guess, I didn't do the math).

Why waste space on a HD image that can only possibly be displayed at half it's resolution?

I've heard a few people debating HD PiP and the idea doesn't seem to make sense.

As for the extras that may be incompatible, all they need to do is the good old fashioned *.

Bonus: Interactive Super Duper Geekdom That Looks Great On The Box But You'll NEVER Actually Use!*
*Requires Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 Compatible Player

 

[diogen]

Explain the point of HD PiP...

From what I recall, the main point Blu-ray supporters were making sounded something like this:
What if I want to watch the secondary stream full screen? HD will look like sh!t, BD will be perfect.

I'm not interested in PiP. At least not as much as in the dynamics of the Blu-view on it:
if BD has something HD doesn't - it is to die for (e.g. lossless audio, 40Mbps bandwidth). Otherwise - of no value whatsoever.

BTW, it is not mandatory on BD but can be in hidef. Wait till the first title with it is released. It will be to die for again.

*Requires Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 Compatible Player

...and that's what Talkstr8t said.

Diogen.

 

[diogen]

Talking about how far spinning in this format war discussions can take you...

Talkstr8t today on AVS:

Take a typical two hour movie @ 15Mbps average (a reasonably high rate), which requires 13.5GB.
Assume 1/4 of the commentary has useful video to go with it, that brings you to just under 17GB.

AVS Forum - View Single Post - Insiders Tracking Thread: post it here

So, once again, why do you guys need 50GB and 40Mbps+?

Diogen.

 

[harshness]

They should sue the pants off of BD. Those people spent a fortune on 1st gen BD players that will be obsolete.

The bigger issue is that the content providers will have to deal with making their movies play well under both systems. As evidence of this, I point to the differences in functionality between the HD-DVD versions of a movie and the BD version. The HD-DVD version can depend on Internet access and PIP capability while the BD version can hold more conventional content.

Now the content people are going to have to decide whether to split their BD efforts and create point of sale confusion or continue to produce to the 1.0 spec.

 

[diogen]

The transition to BonusView (and releasing titles using it) will be interesting to watch.

According to Talkstr8t estimates, the worst case scenario means pissing off 10-15K early adopters (owners of players that won't be upgradeable to 1.1 and willing to take a stand). If true, that isn't such a big number. And even if it comes to a lawsuit, settling it at the 11th hour (replacing all those players) might end up costing just a few million bucks. Considering Sony experience in such lawsuits (rootkit) and in product recall (batteries), all this might end up being a rounding error on Sony's financial sheet.

I think HD DVD org is watching this development very closely: they might have to go through the same with TL51...

Diogen.