Copy Protection Makes Dozens of Blu-Ray Titles Unplayable

Doug Jacobs wrote:
In alt.video.dvd John wrote:
I understand you don't like it, and I agree that some mfgs. have screwed
up. But much of the problem is the producers of disks.

And you don't indicate any figures that show that BD players haven't
achieved mass market acceptance- your non-acceptance to be sure, but not
the market's.

I really don't care who's at fault when I get a confused call from my
in-laws that they put a "blu-ray disc" into their "blu-ray player" and it
didn't work. If the purpose of a "blu-ray player" is to play "blu-ray
discs" and something calling itself a "blu-ray disc" doesn't work,...

Can they see the player's own announcement on their TV?

Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:32:43 -0600, Howard Brazee wrote:

On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:44:28 -0400, Kimba W Lion
wrote:

But if Blu-Ray wants to achieve mass market acceptance, the manufacturers will
have to reach the stage where the players are like appliances: plug it in and
it works. Even with tomorrow's Blu-Ray discs.

I plugged mine in and it worked. I also plugged it into the
Internet for future upgrades.

My car has better tires than the manufacturer supplied. I found
that the recommended detergent that came with my washer didn't get out
a stain, so I got some stain remover for that unanticipated dirt.

Lots of things have achieved mass market acceptance that nevertheless
get upgraded. Most of the upgrades are more difficult& more
expensive than Blu-Ray player upgrades.

I remember when some people had UHF tuners sitting on top of their VHF
TV sets. That was the old style upgrade.

Don't forget color...

But wait, there's mo I remember in the late 40's people having big
magnifying lenses to put in front of their 8" TV sets (which were
monochrome, of course).


You may still find those fresnel lenzes on ebay!

On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:17:07 -0400, RickMerrill wrote:

Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:32:43 -0600, Howard Brazee wrote:

On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:44:28 -0400, Kimba W Lion
wrote:

But if Blu-Ray wants to achieve mass market acceptance, the manufacturers will
have to reach the stage where the players are like appliances: plug it in and
it works. Even with tomorrow's Blu-Ray discs.

I plugged mine in and it worked. I also plugged it into the
Internet for future upgrades.

My car has better tires than the manufacturer supplied. I found
that the recommended detergent that came with my washer didn't get out
a stain, so I got some stain remover for that unanticipated dirt.

Lots of things have achieved mass market acceptance that nevertheless
get upgraded. Most of the upgrades are more difficult& more
expensive than Blu-Ray player upgrades.

I remember when some people had UHF tuners sitting on top of their VHF
TV sets. That was the old style upgrade.

Don't forget color...

But wait, there's mo I remember in the late 40's people having big
magnifying lenses to put in front of their 8" TV sets (which were
monochrome, of course).


You may still find those fresnel lenzes on ebay!

The ones I remember best were the big fat plano-convex plastic shells
filled with water. What a kluge!

I haven't looked for a long time, but Edmund Scientific used to have
fairly large Fresnel lenses, and IIRC I've also seen them in stationery
stores in sizes like 8.5"x11".

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:15:58 -0400, RickMerrill wrote:

Doug Jacobs wrote:
In alt.video.dvd John wrote:
I understand you don't like it, and I agree that some mfgs. have screwed
up. But much of the problem is the producers of disks.

And you don't indicate any figures that show that BD players haven't
achieved mass market acceptance- your non-acceptance to be sure, but not
the market's.

I really don't care who's at fault when I get a confused call from my
in-laws that they put a "blu-ray disc" into their "blu-ray player" and it
didn't work. If the purpose of a "blu-ray player" is to play "blu-ray
discs" and something calling itself a "blu-ray disc" doesn't work,...

Can they see the player's own announcement on their TV?

Excellent point!

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

In alt.video.dvd Les Cargill wrote:
I respectfully disagree. There are multiple strategies which
reduce the risk to effectively zero; if the product can
afford something like a distinct boot PROM, it is then
zero. The boot FLASH needs to mount the disc and burn the
other FLASH on power up.

That assumes that the manufacturer implements it that way.

They may instead opt to just save money and go with a simplier system.
Yeah, it's more risky, and yeah, it means a few units will die during
upgrade, but to the company it's cheaper than adding extra hardware to
solve a problem that they weren't thinking was going to be used very often.

After all, prior to blu-ray, how many times would you flash the firmware
of your AV devices? Maybe once during its lifetime, and even then only
because there was a specific problem you needed fixed?

Meanwhile, my PS3 had gotten at least 5 updates that had something related
to its blu-ray software in it. (actual updates have been much more
frequent, but not all of them involved the blu-ray player.) The next big
update is already being planned for later this year to add 3d support.

Flashing firmware is considered as last resort by tech support - not
something developers have everyone do on a regular basis. If that's
literally "the blu-ray way" then someone failed.



I agree. I'm not 100% sure I know why this cultural shift has
occurred, but I have a hunch.


--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Gene E. Bloch wrote:
This question come to mind: how do you update or upgrade a Blu-ray drive
or other similar consumer device without sending a firmware update to
the device? Do you require the user to take it to the dealer, as one
does with a car?

I am addressing the above to anyone who hates the idea of firmware
updates.

In the past, yes, you took the device into the dealer.

Nowadays, the consumer can do it themselves by either burning the update
image onto a CD and inserting it into their play. Network enabled devices
can go fetch the update from the internet and then install it itself.

However, until blu-ray came along, this was an extremely rare operation
and definitely not something you did on a regular basis.

My problem isn't with the ease of the process but with the assumption that
it's something that people should do on a regular basis.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

On 9/3/2010 6:47 PM, Doug Jacobs wrote:
In alt.video.dvd Les wrote:
I respectfully disagree. There are multiple strategies which
reduce the risk to effectively zero; if the product can
afford something like a distinct boot PROM, it is then
zero. The boot FLASH needs to mount the disc and burn the
other FLASH on power up.

That assumes that the manufacturer implements it that way.

They may instead opt to just save money and go with a simplier system.
Yeah, it's more risky, and yeah, it means a few units will die during
upgrade, but to the company it's cheaper than adding extra hardware to
solve a problem that they weren't thinking was going to be used very often.

No extra hardware is required. I implemented inplace, brick proof,
firmware upgrades for the first time in 1997. I've done this more than
once. It isn't that hard as long as you have enough ram to hold the
update software.

That's as many clues as I'm willing to give away for free:-)

Matthew

In alt.video.dvd Kimba W Lion wrote:

Because it can be.

So that means that it must be?

Each new step in the digital evolution of home electronics
is about giving more control to the companies. The update issue that started
this thread was not about fixing a bug in the firmware, it was about a 'new
and improved' copy protection scheme. One of the key aspects of blu-ray, and
the reason it will take over the marketplace, is that the companies want its
copy protection, and that is designed to be continually updated. This is
because all the movie companies are convinced that their customers are their
enemies, and as their enemies we have no right to expect the common decency of
having our players just plain work.

Consumers aren't going to care what the companies want.

Companies wanted Divx to succeed. Consumers said "No." and Divx died -
dealing what turned out to be a major blow to Circuit City in the process.

Consumer just want to watch movies. If some piece of technology makes it
too expensive or difficult to watch movies, then consumers aren't going to
buy it, no matter how good the copy protection is.

Blu-ray is already at a distinct disadvantage because it's still more
expensive than DVD, and doesn't deliver nearly the same jaw dropping
difference you got when going from VHS to DVD. The industry already shot
itself in the foot by not working out the whole blu-ray/HD-DVD
disagreement BEFORE going to market. Asking consumers to choose between 2
very expensive (at the time) formats just hurt the overall uptake of the
new technology.

Now on top of all that, consumers now have to worry about their latest
movie even being compatible with the firmware version in their player?
That's not consumer-friendly.

What happens when people start bringing home rental discs from RedBox or
some other kiosk service and it turns out they need an upgrade?
Regardless if they have internet and a CD burner, they're going to think
"I never had to deal with this with DVD..."

Another product that has regular updates is the Sony Playstation Portable
(PSP) which can play games or videos, etc. If you bought a game that
required a later version of firmware than what you had on your PSP, the
update was included on the disc. Much how a lot of PC games would come
with the version of DirectX it required. I know there are too many differnt
players and models out there to put firmware updates for all of them onto
movie discs but at least that would have been a more consumer-friendly
solution.

Regardless of any hiccups in the past you may want to bring up, DVD has
acheived the "appliance" stage. You can buy any DVD player from $10 on up and
rightfully expect it will play any DVD*, even home-recorded ones. This is what
the average consumer expects, even if the average geek does not. Blu-Ray has
not achived this status yet, and considering the design of the
continually-changing copy protection, it may never achieve it. The fact that
releasing a movie with Blu-Ray and DVD in the same package is considered a
viable workaround to the problem shows the immaturity of the Blu-Ray system.
("We don't know if the BD disc will work, but we're sure the DVD will.")

I would agree with you if blu-ray players were still only being sold
through AV boutiques, where only high-end users shop for cutting edge
products. However, once you start selling blu-ray players in Walmart,
you're saying "hey, this is a robust technology that's about as easy to
use as your toaster."

(yes, I realize that Walmart also sells computers - even computers with
Linux on them(w00t), and yes I agree that Windows nor Linux are anywhere close
to the "easy to use and robust like your toaster" level, and yes I think
that's a big problem...but a whole other topic.)

Actually I thought the purpose of the blu-ray/DVD dual packaging was that
while people may have a blu-ray player in their living room, their
bedroom, children's play room, laptop(s), portable players, and minivans
are still going to be DVD.

Anyways, not all releases are packing a DVD, nor do you get a DVD version
when you deal with a rental service - which right now, is how most folks
are watching blu-rays because they certainly aren't buying them.


That's what this argument boils down to: some people don't mind continually
updating their hardware, other people just want it to work as advertised. I
don't know that Blu-Ray was designed to ever achieve the latter.

If Blu-ray is intended to be a consumer product, the common functionality
(e.g. playing a movie) should always work. More advanced features may be
added through updates if that is desired, but you shouldn't drag the
average user through that mess unless it's absolutely necessary.

*Region coding is another matter, and one that mystifies many people,
just like the update issue, although the average consumer may never run up
against it.

Agreed, although I think it's affected more people than the companies
anticipated - and not just for the reasons that led them to implement
region coding either.

--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

In alt.video.dvd Howard Brazee wrote:
That YOU have chosen to fill your life with science experiments, doesn't
mean it's normal by any means.

That's not why it's normal. But look around you. The world is full
of stuff that get updated. That's normal.

Is it? My car doesn't require updates. My stove doesn't require
updates. My TV doesn't require updates. My DVR does its own
updates...and often kills itself in the process (bad QA there!)

Up until just a few years ago, about the only thing in the house that was
updated on a regular basis were my computers, and even THAT process was
so often hit-or-miss, that I turned off the auto-updater on all PCs I
administer (including the in-laws') because I'd rather be there when an
update go bad, rather than trying to explain to mom using my bad Mandarin
over the phone to find out what does it mean when she says "Facebook shi
bu hao!" (On the plus side, they like having us visit)

Just because you expect the world to stay still doesn't mean it's
normal by any means.

I'm not saying change can't happen but that it should be handled in a
better fashion.

Look at the perscription drug market right now. How many times do you see
this cycle repeated on TV?

Do you have (symptoms)? Then you need (new-drug). Ask your doctor
about (new-drug)! Note may cause (long list of scary sounding symptoms -
many worse than the symptoms you're trying to treat in the first place!)

Then, some months later

Did you take (new-drug) and develop (new symptom) or die? Then call
1-800-sue-them to join our class action suit!



--
It's not broken. It's...advanced.

Doug Jacobs wrote:
In alt.video.dvd Gene E. Bloch wrote:
This question come to mind: how do you update or upgrade a Blu-ray drive
or other similar consumer device without sending a firmware update to
the device? Do you require the user to take it to the dealer, as one
does with a car?

I am addressing the above to anyone who hates the idea of firmware
updates.

In the past, yes, you took the device into the dealer.

Nowadays, the consumer can do it themselves by either burning the update
image onto a CD and inserting it into their play. Network enabled devices
can go fetch the update from the internet and then install it itself.

However, until blu-ray came along, this was an extremely rare operation
and definitely not something you did on a regular basis.

My problem isn't with the ease of the process but with the assumption that
it's something that people should do on a regular basis.

This is of course something that's far easier said than done if:

A) the consumer is essentially computer-illiterate.
B) the consumer doesn't have a high-speed network connection.



--

Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66