jack999

Are you positive about this? I was led to believe that a future firmware upgrade would fix this problem.

I enjoy my Sony BDPS550 but you wouldn't have wanted to hear me curse the first time I pressed the stop button and that resume prohibited message came up. To me it's a very basic feature of a playback device. The only playback device I've got that doesn't do it is a turntable (don't leave the needle on the disk).

This is a perfect example of a technology being released with major flaws. It's quite telling when there are inserts and messages on the disc itself warning that your player might not play the disc.

I'm enjoying Blu, but it needed more work.

Rickaug

RE: Blu-ray resume feature.
It's the disk that controls that feature. Non blu-ray movies resume where you stop them. Because of this, I would not buy blu-ray movies until the feature is added to disks(bookmark or whatever) and the cost comes down. Until then, I'll rent them.

lizard

While it is true that disc encoding controls the presence or absence of bookmarking, as Josh Z pointed out above the simple "stop-play-resume" of DVD is not possible with BD Java encoded discs. I presume that it is because the Java stuff has to load first (this is also why Java discs take longer to load than non-Java BDs).

I consider it a "defect" of the format design. Yes, they likely could have implemented a way to allow resume-play but chose not to. The idea was that bookmarking would suffice, even though it is MUCH more cumbersome than simple stop-play-resume.

TurboRex

Id have to agree with this.. what a crappy feature

Rickaug

Rickaug

RE:Blu-ray players with internet connectivity. (BDP-S350 and others)

Any problems with connecting and playing? What benefits does this internet connection suppose to do?

lizard

^The internet connection allows the player to update firmware directly, without having to use a firmware CD. It requires broadband internet service.

It also allows access to "BD live" special features on discs. These are interactive extras that can be viewed on the internet via the player. Only a relatively few BDs thus far have BD Live features and most have been underwhelming, according to reports I have read.

Stormprobe

Every DVD player I have ever owned has supported resuming, and my HD DVD player supported it as well. It is a mystery to me that a supposedly more capable player like Blu-Ray doesn't support such a basic feature. This is probably just a Sony thing as almost every Sony product I have had has had bad design in either the software, hardware, or simply being non-intuitive. They have their engineers design their products with no consumer input.

Ignohippo

Why not just wait for a chapter change and stop watching at that point. That way, it'd be easy enough to forward to that chapter the next time you watch the disc.

Regardless of the limitations of the disc itself, it seems it'd be easy enough for a company to make player that could recognize different discs and remember the chapters that were last played. It may take some kind of tiny flash drive, but it seems more than possible. I would think each disc would have it's own id somewhere in the code.

As long as we're talking about chapters, one thing I'd really like (as a parent) would be the ability to edit some chapters out while playing a disc (like you can do with some cd players where you can program only specific tracks to play).

Drexl

It's due to BD-J. It wasn't enough to just make a disc like DVD but with better video and audio. They had to get fancy, so BD-J requires a program to run along with the video. BD+ also uses BD-J, and I believe BD-Live uses it as well. Apparently they can't resume to a running session once it starts, or perhaps they just won't for some reason (security?).

I agree they should have implemented a resume feature and made it mandatory along with standardized bookmarking and movable subtitles. But no, they were concerned with fancier menus, download-only features, picture in picture, and half-assed games.

lizard

^That sums it up pretty well. But I would like to point out that some BDs that don't use Java can be resumed and some recent releases (Disney?) have actually asked me if I wanted to resume the movie where I left off when I turned the player back on. I get the impression that some sort of resume could be implemented if the disc authors wanted to do it.

It sure would be nice if the designers of the format had thought to make resume mandatory though.

John Galt

^Criterions do as well. I think it's all about disc authoring as well; but I admittedly know nothing about the technical details behind it.

Jon2

There have been companies that have tried to bring this sort of "feature" to "concerned" parents. It's been a while, but I think they have all been (deservedly so) sued into oblivion by studios and filmmakers.

Let me say, as a parent, that I have never understood the need for such a feature. It makes more sense and is far easier to just not allow a child watch something with "objectionable" content.

Want to watch something with the kids, then watch something suitable for them. Don't try to dumb down something for adult tastes into something they can understand.

BTW, as for the BD resume function (or lack thereof) comments of this thread, as a Blu-ray owner... yeah that's a very minor peeve of mine, too. The talk of technical limitations is just that... talk. Excuses. Technical limitations are just that... limitations, not technical impossibilities. It isn't technically impossible to do, just very difficult.. and consequently more expensive.

bse

well, I used to never understand people who would pause or break up movies, but now with a 2 week old kid, the pause button and resume feedback feature is my best friend - the only way I get to watch stuff these days and for the near future.

Ignohippo

Let me give you an example: Iron Man. My kid was dying to see it and bugging the heck out of us daily. Two scenes made this one unwatchable for him to us: the scene where his friend gets killed in the cave because he wants to die to see his dead family; and the scene where the bad guys take the fathers from their families and are going to kill them.

It isn't "dumbing down" the movie. The movie is still the same withou those two scenes that I don't feel are appropriate for kids. As a responsible parent, I'm going to skip those scenes anyway, they might as well make it convenient for people to do so if they choose.

Giles

I've noticed it also on Warner Bros. blurays too

professor chaos

My VHS player does this as well.

TylerDurden_73

the latest OPPO BDP-93 has a resume featurebut doesn't work on BD-Java discs. I don't understand the difficulty of using a bookmark, especially since they are very common on BD-Java authored discs. Just a guess but I would say that any studio that is still using Java is still using bookmarks on their discs. Bookmark where you left off, when you resume go into the scene selection menu, find the bookmark section , and it pulls up all your book marks on that disc. Real Simple.

jack999

It's a major peeve for me and I think (of course I have no inside info to support this) the reason auto-resume is difficult to do is a result of a poor marketing decision. The designers of blu-ray decided the public wanted fancy, animated menus and thus we have to load a software system to support the menus.

I have not encountered a single, slow loading menu system that I wouldn't gladly give up for a basic menu that allowed auto resume. All that overhead really accomplishes is to make the disc slow to load, difficult to use, and prevent auto-resume.

BTW, when I say basic menu, I'm not saying I don't want extras, I just want to select them from a basic menu and get one with the movie.

If you want to take polar opposites to compare, take T2-Skynet Edition and the blu-ray of The Searchers. T2 is the slowest loading disc I have and even requires the user to respond to a prompt when the disc can't find an internet connection. The Searchers loads up one static menu with a boatload of options. It loads quickly and you can auto-resume. I'll take The Searchers menu any day over T2.

After you've seen the eye candy of a highly programmed and animated big menu once or twice, I'll bet most of us are thinking "come on, come one, get on with it!"

lizard

Exactly right!

davidh777

This. Parents would love to have enough time to watch a movie straight through but even an uninterrupted half-hour can feel like a luxury.

I wouldn't advise unplugging your VHS in mid-play, though.

PGHFlyer

Yeah, biggest format pet peeve for me here.

Closely followed by my specific pet peeve of the PS3 not providing a way to tell it to never connect to the internet. Nothing like sitting down to watch a show and it makes you wait 2-4 minutes so it can download a commercial for you to watch.

Alan Smithee

HD-DVD players will resume regular DVDs, but all HD-DVDs (with the exception of the small number of titles that don't use any 'advanced' features like popup menus) will start like they've just been loaded if you hit Stop and then Play again. Warner discs force you to wait through the FBI warning each time, and Universal discs force you to watch the Universal opening with the flying HD-DVD logo (every time I see that, I think "Yay! The format that lost!")

jjcool

Agreed. That and the long ass wait time to load a disc.

Kevin M. Dean

Don't have a PS3, but does this setting not work?

http://www.oyah.net/howtoarticles/ho...net-connection