Blue Ray Compatibility

[Steve Rhoden]

Indeed, the Pioneer Blue Ray (BDR Series) Burners
is one of the best in the business, and in
combination with DVD Architect 5…….
perfect blue-ray authoring heaven.

Steve Rhoden
Creative Director
TNX EFFECTS STUDIOS.
http://www.youtube.com/hentys

[John Rofrano]

I also use the Pioneer burner and it works great. Playback, however, is hit and miss. I have the Samsung BD1400 player and I had to upgrade the firmware several times to work through various issues. I don’t know if this is unique to the Samsung players but it didn’t leave me feeling confident that you could distribute Blu-ray discs that would actually work consistently across players.

My personal feeling that Blu-ray is not ready for prime time home use. Mom and Pop never had to upgrade the firmware on their DVD players and won’t know what to do when their brand new Blu-ray player doesn’t play the movie they just paid a small fortune for. Mom and Pop also probably don’t have a LAN in their homes so having an Ethernet port on a Blu-ray player is little help. I know my TV is no were near my router so I have to download the firmware and burn them to CD’s on my computer and boot my Blu-ray player with the disc and wait 20 minutes for it to update praying that we don’t have a power failure which would render the player unusable (we have a LOT or power outages in the summer around here).

So while you can burn ’em… unfortunately there is no guarantee that others can play them as you intended. Maybe the new players are better but this is just my experience as an early adopter. Your mileage may vary. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Steve Rhoden]

Agree with you John,
Blue-ray has some time to go before playback compatibility runs across the board for home users. In the months ahead,blue ray players is the key to bridge this gap….Also they need to find a common ground to avoid these regular firmware updates, it is nagging.

Steve Rhoden
Creative Director
TNX EFFECTS STUDIOS.
http://www.youtube.com/hentys

[Jim Kaye]

John, how old is your Samsung player? Any clue as to if the newer ones which came out recently will play the Pioneer disks. Also, just curious whether the same compatibility problem exists with professionally mastered Blue Ray disks (first run movies, etc.).

I have no problem with downloading and applying firmware updates (though the concept sucks!). However, once applied, were you able to play all your Blue Ray authored disks, or was it still hit and miss?

Jim

[John Rofrano]

The BD1400 is almost a year old. Oh it has nothing to do with the Pioneer discs. The physical discs played fine. What would happen is that none of my chapter points would work, or I could jump from the chapter menu into the movie but not be able to get back to the chapter menu after that. It was the structure of the disc and way the Samsung was interpreting the Blu-ray spec that was causing the problem.

Yes, applying the latest firmware has solved all of my problems and I can author using DVD Architect 5 and playback on the Samsung BD1400 just fine. I would imagine that you’d want to pick up a newer model player anyway. I was only pointing out that authoring discs to give/sell to clients would be a risky business right now. Luckily there are not many clients demanding them.

I have to say that Samsung has been great about the firmware updates but what scares me is what happens when they feel that box is too old support anymore? What do I do then? If new discs just stop playing am I supposed to throw the box out and buy a new one? Hopefully it’s just bugs once they get worked out everything will work. Right now, it’s working fine.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com