Copy protection strikes again?
There are reports that the James Bond movies recently released on Blu-Ray won't play on many players.
Presumably this is due to the Blu-Ray updatable "copy protection" scheme, as reportedly new firmware is becoming available to fix the affected players. Unfortunately this is just a symptom of a larger problem - that of what is essentially intentional player obsolescence.
What if the player manufacturers stop supporting older player models? What if a player manufacturer goes out of business? Sure, buying a newer player would fix this, but one is forced to wonder if some manufacturer will not eventually use this as a strategy for forcing its customers to buy newer players to play the latest titles... and what is stopping them from having the new players not play the old titles to force the re-purchase of teh software?
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I can play all of existing Blu-ray titles including all of Bond Movies with my PlayStation 3 Console. No problem at all. No problem, but I don't know about other Blu-ray players from different manufacturers!!!
Remember though, don't just go blaming Sony for this. They aren't the only company to develop this.....Though Sony DOES have a recent track record of not standardizing things....No standard requirement for custom music compatability, ditto for trophies, and yet again with the new Screenshots feature....
Really starting to piss me off....
Screenshots, while I want them standardized, at least they make SOME sense (games are intellectual property)....
I think most blu-ray players can be updated via internet, or at least by USB.....but a lot of people hate bothering going through that trouble.....
The forced obsolecence theory sounds good on paper, but would you want to buy another player from the same company that screwed you over with your expensive device? I don't think so....Not unless (aside from getting out of date), the player was great.
Only ones that benefit, are the ones that go wholesale on components (like the blu-ray laser producers),
They do earn blame, they help standardize the discs and yet they're not helping regulate standards for new disc development (why would they ponder introducing 4-8 layer BD-ROM discs without making sure it's compatible from the ground up?) Compatibility is a huge issue, it doesn't matter if you have 1200 ports to upgrade the firmware, not everyone is going to do it because they'll simply expect it to work, they don't care about communication issues within the Blu-Ray alliance, that is the problem of the group not the consumer.
Sony has hands in all layers of the format so they get to take a huge slap from it, plus they helped spearhead the adoption from the start, if you put yourself out there that much then they need to expect to be a focus of blame, they can't just promote the life out of something then back track and claim that when negative press comes up they're not the ones to speak to but when things are up they're the ones to contact.
Already said that sony has a problem standardizing things -_- Really dumb of them. MS knows how to do that part right >_>