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I guess it was inevitable. With the release of new titles, and new security measures for BD, there seems to be some computability issues. The 2 newest titles from Fox (who else?) seem to have problems with Samsung and LG players. One is Day After Tomorrow, which is the first title with BD+, and the other is Fantastic Four 2 (either BD+ or new security keys). While they will play on the PS3, I'm not sure how they are with all of the other stand alone players, some have reported multi-minute loads.
There is clearly a communication problem here.
Jack
Follow Ups:
I downloaded the firmware update, and it now plays silver surfer (bad movie!). Preliminary fiddling seems to imply that some of my other problems may be fixed as well, time will tell-I was told I had the latest FW, but I may not have(?).Side note: Fox claims they tested these discs on all players before releasing them and they played fine on all of them. Uh Huh. Samsung, who had to write upgrades for the 1000, and 1200, but not the 1400, claims it WAS a BD+ issue. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe the latter. I don't know if the LG put out their fix yet.
JackEDIT: After fiddling around, I still have a few issues-I still have handshake issues, and I still have lip sync issues. The update only fixed some of the problems.
According to paidgeek (a Sony Pictures insider), the problem is java related for both players.
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But the closest thing to an official word is from paidgeek and until Samsung and/or LG reveal what's actually in the updates, my money's on there being a java problem that's causing the playback errors.
That doesn't excuse Fox one bit for not testing the discs. Yea, that makes it alot more competent. *rolling eyes*BTW, is this the same paidgeek that claimed video 1.1 *required* that PiP be in HD only to be corrected by his competition? (PiP in HD is optional, not mandatory)
Just checking.Jack
EDIT: Is that an *official* response/explanation, or just damage control?
Studios test the software on every player before they release it? I wouldn't know.
There is bound to be problems going forward. It is going to be necessary to get firmware out to the customer on a timely basis.
How hard could it be? There's less than a dozen players out there. If there are problems, as you say, they should be dealt with *before* they hit the customers. This isn't a production error (ie bad discs), its a software incompatibility, something thats easy to check.
Jack
is why you don't just stick with HD DVD, since all you do with Blu-ray is complain. [counter-productive]
Instead of badmouthing Blu-ray, let everyone know about the virtues of HD DVD and why you're happy with the format. [productive]
Seriously, re: Blu-ray, there's more whine with you than the Napa Vally...
It is very annoying to have two formats trying to be the same thing to the same market, and I think that is where some of the frustration arises. But out of the dozens of Blu-rays, to complain about two new ones that he probably has no intention of ever even buying...well...
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
I did buy silver surfer, and and no, it doesn't play on my 1200. WHY ELSE WOULD I BE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT? Out of 11 Blu-ray discs I own, 3 have lip sinc issues, 2 of those also freeze up, and 2 won't play at all. 5 discs with issues, out of 11? that's 45% error rate. I don't know a a FW update will fix most of these-only 1 is the recent problem. I never had this much problem with my A1.
You really are clueless.
JackEdit: I've been pretty tolerant of my 1200's problems overall, but this (silver surfer) issue has pushed me over the edge of tolerance-perhaps because it could have been easily prevented.
Never saw it. Never will, if I'm lucky. That doesn't work, so you cancel your order for Oldboy, which isn't even from the same studio?
What titles have lip sync or freezing issues?
You might want to try all those "error" BDs on a different player before you write off the format.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
I bought SS for my wife really.
lip sync:
A vs P (horrid movie)-also Froze up
Ghost rider-also froze up
Underworld
With the lip synch, it was fixed usually by pausing the movie, or switching to DD+ (Underworld pause didn't help)
after the discussion a few pages back about RE2 selling well,I got it out of curiosity. It won't play past the menu.
I did manage to get through:
Warriors of Heaven and Earth
Curse of the golden flower
Premonition
Speed
I did had a minor pause with Fifth Element, but not a big deal
Jack
HDMI has treated me okay to date, but my whole system is HDMI 1.3, the cable runs are short, and the Playstation 3 has far more computing horsepower than it strictly needs for mere Blu-Ray playback. I also don't think I've yet encountered uncompressed 24/96 lossless audio which ought to use up some real bandwidth.
The problem discs have specific spots, and its repeatable, and in the case of Silver Surfer-its a known problem. I never had HDMI problems before, and I use analog out for audio.
Jack
And is the firmware on your PS3 up to date? You'll need 1.90 to not experience audio dropouts. The video was fine.
I thought it may have been an HDMI handshake issue for the audio with these new BDs but it drops out over optical also without 1.90 firmware.
Dang Audio dropouts though. Dealer told me they had tried it out and the disc "played", silly me for assuming they bothered to listen to the audio. Hopefully, I can download the firmware fix within days... I can confirm the audio dropouts over optical. With PCM through the analog outputs I got all sorts of bleeps, tones, etc in addition to the dropouts in lieu of movie soundtracks.
you might want to stay away from Samsung and LG with regard to electronics purchases. That's not to say other manufacturers don't have their occassional problems, but these two generally have more compatibility/standards problems than Japanese or American electronics manufacturers.
I'm going to see how this upgrade is handled. I canceled my Oldboy order, since I don't know if future discs will be playable yet. Despite my dislike for the way the BDA does things, I do like owning both formats. It is still possible, that down the road (when I calm down a bit)I will replace my 1200 but it will have to be a 1.1 complaint at least. The funny thing is, that the 1200 really is a very good DVD player. No more REON chips in future generations.
Jack
I have three issues with the PS3:
#1 DTS-HD Master Audio
The PS3 has more than enough horsepower to decode DTS-HD MA, but it's not a SCEA priority at the moment. Right now they're working on Profile 1.1/2.0 capabilities and that's the next "big step" for the PS3. I'm guessing it will be the highly anticipated 2.0 firmware update (not a small point-this or point-that update, maybe around December or January). Once they get that out of the way, they'll see if there're horses left over for DTS-HD MA decoding.
#2 Video levels
Because it's software driven, firmware updates have seen the player go through an on-again off-again ability to properly pass digital video levels 1-15 and 236-254 via an HDMI-DVI path. There's only one way to properly display video and SCEA needs to make sure that it stays put. Right now (v1.93), the PS3 is in the "not-put" position.
#3 Denon DVD-3800BDCI
Based on the info that has been released, this will be the best Blu-ray/DVD player available. Yes, $2000 is rather steep, but Denon doesn't fuck around when it comes to audio and video quality.
I only have 11 discs (one unwatched), and none on pre-order. I haven't even gotten my 5 freebies yet.
Jack
I have no complaints at all with my Blu-ray player ... and frankly I just don't have the time to wait for an HD-DVD player to start up.
Prehistoric 4-Channel Lizard
There are several issues going on here, including regional, firmware, and we are not much more than a year into BD rollout. Early adoption in the digital age is always problematic. This is hardly unique to blu-ray. The glitches you're talking about are fairly minor and analogous to similar problems in the rollout of other digital products, from Windows operating systems to cell phones to SACD. Those of us who adopted flagship SACD products were cut out of multichannel. There's nothing mysterious, sinister or even wrong with any of this.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
You know, if it was a defective disc due to a problem pressing them, I could see it, but that's not the case. This is strictly a software issue. You don't put out software that won't work on machines known to already be out in the field.
Is the BDA so disorganized, that as a group they are functionally retarded?
I am so tired of Blu-fan boys defending this incompetence.
This is clearly a case where the discs were rushed to market before they were ready. It wouldn't have been hard to do some QC on the movies with so few players out there. There is no excuse.
Jack
It's more likely the fault of the players not being enabled to properly play/process what's on the disc (which implement known Blu-ray format features, security, capabilities, etc) because the hardware manufacturers didn't "turn on" these capabilities early enough. If they weren't known Blu-ray format features, security, capabilities, etc, then neither LG nor Samsung would be providing updates for something that the format isn't supposed to support.
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But is it the job of FOX to play nursemaid to Samsung and LG? The fact that LG said they'd have a firmware udate in a few days should tell you something (ie, all manufacturers need to get off of their collective asses and keep their players up-to-date).
FOX has been more willing to give its customers advanced features and use the latest technology than other studios. They're ahead of the curve and because of that some hardware manufacturers are going to have problems.
.
Via netflix. I don't like the movie content enough for an outright buy but I was curious as to the quality and if there would be any playback issues.
Hopefully the player manufacturers will get onboard with appropriate firmware upgrades ASAP. I don't trust Samsung one bit unfortunately with regards to that. Time will tell.
These guys must be idiots. With upsampled DVD as good as it is, I really can't see any reason to buy a HD player right now. A clear message has just been sent. Two competing formats and now changes to an existing format that is not fully backward compatible. My remaining temptations were just removed.
Joe
I adopted into DVD players as soon as they hit this smallish town (I literally went from store to store until I found one that sold them). My first player was a DVP-3000 or something. There was only one rental stoe in town that had DVD's at the time, and not many at that. Up here in Canada it cost me about $900 (still have it in the bedroom).
Same for a DVD recorder instead of a VCR in my main room. Paid $650 as it was a new thing. Even that one gets me a bit with the +'s and -'s, but it's only for time shifting.
As for the new players, I'll likely wait it out. The last thing I want is to buy a new player, perhaps a few discs, and then Blockbuster stops renting the discs. Then I'm stuck with a piece of garbage.
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but industry is trying to pretend to be ready for mass-market.
OTOH, if you've gotten used to watching Dishnetwork/DirectTV/Cable/OTA HD broadcasts on a fairly large screen, chances are pretty good you are going to get the itch to upgrade to real (not upsampled to) HD.
But upsampled DVD on my Oppo DVD player looks extremely good. In fact, it is as about as good with a good DVD as the average HD program that comes over Dishnetwork, though of course not as good as the best HD programming. I feel no pain watching "ordinary" DVDs at all. I have nothing against being an early adopter if there is a compelling case. I bought the first CD player, the Sony CDP-101, and certainly got my money's worth out of it.
Joe
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Its butt ugly, puts out alot of heat, has a noisy fan, doesn't have analog out, requires alot of space...
If blu-ray is nothing more than the media for the PS3, then it is destined to be niche format. Even Blu-ray insiders have (begrudgingly) acknowledged they need more than just the PS3 to survive.
Jack
...PS3 has shit for games. It's a game console , where *are* the quality games?
-Tom §.
.
I regretted my decision, but I couldn't bring myself to return it. I figured I'd get an aftermarket fan kit to install.Seven months later of near daily use--BDs, DVDs, games--we're talking several hours many times per week and the thing has never had so much as a hiccup. Survived without overheating the entire summer. I keep it on my bottom shelf, which is glass. Not exactly the best ventilation down there. Never did get that aftermarket fan.
The Sony bashers love to talk about the PS3 overheating, but the fact is that the failure rate is phenomenally low and pretty much a nonissue. The thing is well designed and well built. There's no denying that. The cell processor is a great chip. The parts used add up to hundreds of dollars greater cost than you pay for the thing. And if you keep it in your closet that's perfect. You won't hear the fan noise.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
He must have heard "I got an Xbox 360.", not "I got a PS3.".
:-)
I don't know how anyone can survive without it. It's a complete steal for what you get, the looks issue is subjective but if you don't like it, put it on its side in an inconspicuous area. You're supposed to look at the screen, not the player. The fan is far less distracting than the fans on my PC and PS Audio Premier. Only one area (lower right) gets hot.
On the one hand you seem to be saying blu-ray is a niche format for PS3, on the other you seem to be saying that blu-ray is driving sales of other players. Whatever it is, studios and early adopters are sure on board.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Any of those things I've listed can be deal killers for some people.> > > On the one hand you seem to be saying blu-ray is a niche format for PS3 < < <
It is in danger of becoming that.> > > on the other you seem to be saying that blu-ray is driving sales of other players < < <
I don't remember saying that.> > > Whatever it is, studios and early adopters are sure on board < < <
Especially Paramount and Dreamworks.Jack
Just about any of those are killers for me buying one. I have nothing against being an early adopter, but this situation is not compelling me. I think I'd rather have an iPhione if I'm spending that kind of money.
Joe
There is a better iPhone coming soon. There is no better PS3 coming soon...just ones with bigger (and a smaller rumored) hard drive. The PS3 gets regular firmware updates and is always on the network to make that process relatively painless. You admit you like pristine 1080 video and that you can see its advantages over upsampled DVD...the fact is that you're ripe to adopt blu-ray.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
There will be that many more folks that jump on it regardless of what the price goes down to on standalone players. Time will tell but I do feel confident about that.
Blu-Ray fans keep saying lower price doesn't count!
LOW PRICE=CHEAP!!!
LOW PRICE=BAD!!!
BLU-RAY=EXPENSIVE!!!
EXPENSIVE=GOOD!!!
:-)
Jack
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
A couple of hints here and there concerning CE manufacturers. Unfortunately I don't recall who (Sharp ? Panasonic ?). I'll believe it when it happens.
Just a personal bias I guess. I also didn't like the non-flat surface; I typically put discs/cases etc... on top of the player. Oh yeah, biggest hiccough: no 5.1 analog output. Other than that, I agree it was a dang good Blu-ray player.
I suppose what Jack listed are issues but not the fact that it is a game console per se.
Heck, some folks bought an SACD player and hardly any software thereafter. Doesn't mean it cannot do something else well (ie. CD) and that is the priority!
.
I think some were announced at CEDIA but haven't had a chance to get the scoop.edit: And this isn't an issue at all outside the very niche market of audiophools like us. Most are perfectly happy with DD audio, which is why it's included on every blu-ray.
-------------
"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
for multichannel analog audio volume control. I'm hoping instead that a suitable High-end Hi-def player with "audiophile-grade" DACs and SOTA audio processing/decoding will appear instead.
Sony 9000ES that had DVD playback capability and MSRP $1299 or thereabouts, the PS3 is dirt cheap for all it can/will do!!
I remember paying $24.99 for all SACD titles at this stage of the game in SACD rollout. Most Blu-rays are about two solid hours of hi res entertainment, often for $19.99...heck, The Last Waltz BD sounded almost as good as some SACDs, plus you have the film-like video experience through Scorcese's lens.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
And it looks like all the other older Blu-ray players are going to need firmware updates. I'm ready to shoot the BDA folks who let this happen without(seemingly) cooperation between CE manufacturers and studios. I've this quesy feeling LG, Samsung et al dropped the ball and were surprised by this. Even if there is a firmware fix (and there is for PS3s) either already available or ready for download, this is going to piss off a lot of consumers. Who wants to hassle with firmware downloads (or did this just put me on par with some of the early Toshiba adopters) ?And the really good part is BD+ is malleable. If the hackers break the "code", the studios just change the "code" which probably forces yet another firmware fix.
And how much firmware update fix support will the CE manufacturers tolerate for discontinued models, or even updates for current models ?
Too many of these time-wasters in both HD DVD and Blu Ray-land!! Both camps need to BURN THEIR STANDARDS INTO STONE and stop mucking about with the copy protection or with adding features that should have been finalized before the player ever hit the market, because people come home with a new movie, and they want to pop the disk into the player and have a good time: They do not want to spend their evening updating the firmware in their players! This kind of tedious fussiness is why I gave up using Microsoft Windows.
Still, best case is I have to download the disc, put an "image" on a CD/DVD??, and with some trepidation, put it into the player and hope there isn't a power glitch while the firmware update does it's thing.
It worked fine the only other time I tried it but I've heard if anything goes wrong, I could turn the player into a brick and wind up having to send the player to the manufacturer for repair work.
You burn an .iso image onto a cd. You can you Burnatonce program, which works well. Its that or hook a 25' cable from my player to my modem. This is a PITA, at least Toshiba sent me CDs quickly without having to ask, and even so, I've stopped upgrading my A1-I haven't had any problems, and I'ld rather not take the risk.
BTW, here's a mention on engadget
Jack
Could be a firmware version issue. But we still need a verdict on "Day After Tomorrow".
There's LOTS of complaints about it from LG owners. Yes, FW will eventually fix it. That's not the point-this shouldn't have happened. It was easily preventable, with a little testing and QC.
BTW, people are commenting that it does funny things on the S300 too-menu issues(?), though it does play.
It works fine on the PS3, proving once again that Blu-ray is little more than a niche format for the PS3.
Jack
I've another friend who will soon try it out on his BH100 (his pre/pro was taken out of commission by an (unrelated) botched firmware update). He had to update his PS3 player last night to get FFSS to play. And I don't believe Toshibas (or any other player) has been immume to the "need to update the firmware" itch.
Remeber what you said to me about doing homework. :)
And it's not semantics at all.
The PS3 gets both on a regular basis: upgrades in the form of scaling DVDs to 720p/1080i, upsampling CDs to 88.2/176.4kHz, new noise-shaping algorithms for audio, etc and updates in the form of patches for better internet gaming connectivity, downloading stability, video playback issues, etc.
I suspect current firmware won't cut it.
> > > Calls placed to both Samsung and LG customer support revealed that both manufacturers are aware of the issue, and that both are working on firmware updates to correct it. Samsung promised a firmware update within "a couple" weeks, while LG said an update is expected in 3-4 days. < < <
But LG told Highdef digest that they will have a FW fix in a couple days. Yes, the PS3 needed an update to play them, otherwise people get audio dropouts(?). I've been following this closely for the last 2 days.
I don't have the latest FW on my A1, nor do I have any problems, or plans to update it anymore. Toshiba updates were never *mandatory* to play discs, but more to fix quirks and access features(I admit some did improve the picture).
Again, this only detracts from the point, that these issues were both predictable and preventable if Fox actually gave a crap. This is extremely sloppy.
Jack
What I've been trying to find out is what difference there is with these BDs with the audio track versus what Fox released in the past. I don't know that BD+ makes a difference per se why the audio drops from time to time.
Apparently it's happened on multiple players. nothing a firmware update wouldn't fix....
Java versus +, I'll be the first to admit I wouldn't know about issues with either. The older Fox releases I've had no problem with the audio on those. I'm using HDMI.
Maybe now there is a handshake issue with HDMI? I think I'll try optical tonight (after the Damn Yankees game :)) and take HDMI out of the equation and see what happens?
its nothing that couldn't have been taken care of before they hit the streets. If it is BD-J, they have even less of an excuse.
Just wait until 1.1 discs come out. Luckily, the BDA is so disorganized, that they may not come out until next year.
jack
That this was a known and predicted issue. Did Fox not test their discs on the Sammy and LG players? If so, did they not tell them? Why didn't the BDA make sure the transition went more smoothly? This is probably a communication problem-but it shouldn't have happened. Why is the BDA as a group so functionally retarded?.
I can't wait until 1.1 discs arrive.
Jack
I thought this was one of the reasons for the delay with BD+ was making sure it would work with all the players out there. Evidently I believed incorrectly.
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