Rich Fiscus
5 Oct 2007 6:52
People taking home copies of the new Blu-ray release from Fox, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, may be disappointed, depending on what model of player they have. That's because of reports that are coming in, particularly on AVSForum, that neither Samsung's BD-P1200 and LG's BH100 (dual format) player can play the disc.
It's not surprising that this would happen as the BD+ protection used on the disc is very new. Players that have problems give the viewer a message suggesting a Firmware update. This isn't exactly a surprising development with adoption of the additional DRM measures. However, it may highlight an inherent weakness in the strategy of protection that can be upgraded, therefore requiring mass player updates.
Right now few households have either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, even if they do have an HDTV. That isolates the problem to a small number of mostly tech savvy A/V enthusiasts. These are the kind of people who typically don't have a problem with a firmware update. The same can't be said for much of the general public. What will their reactions be if they buy into Blu-ray and have similar problems in the future?
Although one or two firmware problems like this are to be expected this early in the development cycle for new technology like Blu-ray, it does raise another legitimate question about how far you can go with DRM before you lose sales. Recent information that BDMV (Blu-ray's commercial movie format) discs soon won't play without AACS encryption. Neither the discs or the software required to encrypt the content have been available to consumers so far, but Authoring for non-encrypted discs has. This will apparently force people who have already created their own BD movies from Camcorder footage or MPEG transport streams (from digital TV) may have to spend a lot of money copying discs to new media, or simply lose the abillity to play it.
DRM's impact goes much deeper than deterring people from copying discs. The more visible it is to consumers, such as requiring firmware updates or making them pay to encrypt content they produce, may anger consumers. Whether it will have an effect on Blu-ray's success has yet to be seen.
Sources:
Video Business
AVSForum