The way I see it, they had to launch in 2006 because of the PS3. Regardless of whether there was a format war or not, it had to be ready to be included in the PS3, which they couldn't have launched any later than they did. They weren't going to let MS and Nintendo have more of a head start.

Perhaps they could have released the standalones at the same time as the PS3 rather than months earlier, but November of 2006 was the deadline.

They had to release the standalones when they did in order to have a better chance against HD-DVD.

In retrospect is it really any worse than what Microsoft did with the 360? They never should have been released as is. I work with someobdy who was on the 360 project and they couldn't even get 50% yield out of the factory. Many were latent failures like people saw at home after buying a player.

They knew they were going to fail right and left and sold them anyway.

the difference is 360 customers could send them in for repairs under warranty.

Stand alone BD customers are completely S.O.L

I still maintain to this day that that first Samsung player, and the software released during that summer, is what started the grass roots movement of many HD enthusiasts towards HD-dvd.

On HD-dvd launch day most of us figured the format didn't have a chance in hell of winning, and people didn't really start buying into it until they saw what was being released on Blu-Ray.

There is no way to upgrade SA-BD players?

I also disagree. Selling known defective units is much worse than anything Sony has done with their players.

Outside of swapping them out for a new model, no.



Basically the same thing. In coming months, when 1.1 and 2.0 titles become mainstream, the 1.0 players could be looked at as "defective" from a perspective.

from the perspective of people who give a rats ass about java-based games on their movies...

I don't think that you can really even convince yourself of that.

And it took MicroSoft a couple of years to admit what a failure-prone sack of crap the first few million 360s were.

Lol. If you think that's the only thing profile 1.1 or 2.0 will be used for, you are in for a big surprise.

Disc menus, web enabled content, PiP, interactive control over the movie and features, etc etc etc. The possibilities are endless.

Being a neutral owner, and seeing what's been done with HD-DVD, I can certainly tell you it is amazing and they'll be missing out.

Its more than games, Java problems have caused people to not be able to access the entire disc because the presence of the java code.

Only if you're going to redefine defective. IMO there is no comparison.

Would I be pissed if I had bought a 1.0, yes, but only at myself for jumping in at the beginning. But not nearly as pissed as I would be had I purchased one of the known defenctive 360's and had to wait to get my unit fixed. In many cases people went through mutiple units before they got one with the real fixes in place.

Yes, but even without the format war it had to be ready by late 2006.

Agreed. Not defective, just not what they want it to be.

And their final statement was a load of crap. They knew all along there was a huge latent failure problem and kept shipping. Yield was as low as 10% at some points with a large percentage of the failures being units that were "fixed" and shipped without them ever being fully and successfully tested.

A lot of people on this forum, by just following these threads, know that Java is utilized on Blu Ray for more than just games. I

All of the problems with Fox October discs were blamed on Java implementation.

Furthermore, Java is supposedly implemented as part of the BD+ encryption to prevent the code from being permanently cracked.

And whats the point of turning this into a fanboy bash of Microsoft. The 360 problems have nothing to do with standalone Blue Ray profiles. But its the typical distraction - attack Microsoft since it has no relation. Microsoft deserves its own place in hell and I won't buy a 360 because of those problems either.

A 1.0 player won't be obsolete, but its going to be buggy as hell with these discs, and lets see if these companies continue to support 1.0 players when their new stuff comes out.

This isn't quite the case. There are plenty of European sites now that already offer region-free "upgraded" BR players from the first crop that play both A/B region coded BR discs as well as PAL/NTSC R1/R2 encoded SDVDs: 1.0. I am unsure how quickly the newly introduced at CES 1.1/2.0 models will be distributed on the market but if any issues are detected with playback regarding the main feature on 1.1 encoded discs some sort of terminal upgrade might be an option.

Aside from the Samsung 1200/1400 issues with a few discs however all other 1.0 players have handled 1.1 encoded discs/main feature without a problem.

So even though a 360-like "upgrade" might be introduced later on for 1.0 hardware only by those companies who have recorded known issues I think it is very unlikely, at least as of this moment, that such "upgrade" is expected.

Pro-B

That's what I was thinking, thanks. Some features may not be supported, but playing the main feature is all I believe people could reasonably expect.

Yeah, as long as the player can play the movie and deliver on lossless, I have no problem with it. I have no idea why everyone is up in arms about 1.1. I've watched RE:extinction and War PIP and it's nothing to write home about. I felt the same way with hd-dvd pip titles as well. If you're going to watch PIP more than once, more power to you, but it's definitely not a feature most people are in to.

PiP offers some truly cool possibilities, though (see "300" on HD DVD). Whether or not studios actually realize those possibilities is another matter entirely.

not to pick on you specifically, but i have no idea why there's always someone that makes this kind of comment when others state that they don't want a profile 1.0 player. PiP has tons of potential for interesting features that give unique insight into the filmmaking process (300 is a great early example) and for those who care about such features, profile 1.1 is important. why can't everyone just accept that some people really want it and others don't care about it?

But it's the minority of people that want it that are making it seem the majority want its it as well which is just not true. Heck most dvd owners can barely get through a commentary and now when they upgrade to BD, do you think they are going to sit and watch a movie with a little square on the the screen the entire time through?

I hope the manufacturers can somehow get the players to handle java discs better. My Panasonic is a tad on the sluggish side when it comes to those. And load times increase. Resident Evil 3, by far, has taken the longest to load to the menu screen. I hope some firmware updates can help with this issue.

This I will agree with that java capabilities need to be improved asap.

I got my Onkyo 605 yesterday and hooked up my Panny BD30 to it.

Wow, DTS-HD MA on "Live Free or Die Hard" and "300" Dolby TrueHD sounded spectacular!!!

Money well spent!