Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

This is my biggest beef with blu-rays. With my dvd player, I can stop, turn off off the machine, and it will resume play where I left off.

With my PS3, I have to wait forever while the blu-ray launches through the intro screens, and then browse through the scene selection. Five minutes wasted just to start watching again. Heck, even VCRs could resume!

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

From Josh Z from the other thread about this issue. About two or three topics down from here:

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Many BDs have included a bookmark feature to compensate for the lack of resume.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Fortunately, many BD-Java-encoded discs DO have bookmarks.

Honestly, I don't find this to be a big deal, but I guess I can see how some would be annoyed.

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My biggest problem is sometimes I accidentally hit Stop when I meant to hit Pause on my PS3, and it takes you back to the PS3 menu. Then you have to wade through the corporate logos and trailers and all that crap again to get back to the movie.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

I'm guilty of doing the same thing. I think I've done it <5 times, though.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

(pet peeve alert)

If the ability to resume is so important to you that you would go back to using a VCR just for that reason, then by all means, pull out your old tapes and have a ball. If not, then this particular comment carries absolutely no weight and should have been omitted. The respective functionality of the two technologies is so disparate that they're not comparable.

This is the camp I'm in. I never really used this feature much on DVD, so I don't find it that big of a deal that many BDs don't support it. Obviously it's a different story for people who used it heavily on DVD. That being said, it's hard for me to see how the extra seconds it takes to navigate the menus presents a significant burden (though depending on the disc, the up-front warnings can represent an annoyingly long wait).

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

It could take a minute or longer to get to the spot that you were on. That can be very annoying. Remember, this is the NOW generation. If it takes more than a couple seconds, it's considered a nuisance.

And I don't buy that Blu-rays with BD-Java can never have the resume-play function. They can easily build the bookmark function into the stop button (as an option). :D

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

You should write the code, send it to the companies that manufacture the players, and make a mint.

Sorry. You did say it was easy :D

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

I find this "limitation" somewhat annoying. Seems like it would have been very easy to implement in the Blu-ray specs.

The other option is: find a player which allows you to bypass the logos, etc. I think these are called PUOPs... At least for regular DVD, this IS possible with a hacked firmware. As to whether disabling the PUOPs would also be possible with Blu-ray, does anyone know for sure? I do know AnyDVDHD can do it on a PC.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

When that happens to me, I usually just change movies, since I have to go through the set-up all over again anyway. Sometimes this makes for a better video experience; sometimes not.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

It's funny that we've progressed this far... and now we take a step back in this particular regard. This is a significant annoyance for me. I watch a ton of movies, 2-3 some nights with many breaks. One wrong key and I'm in the scene selector looking for the right point. It's gotten to the point that I make up little mnemonic devices to remember the time I was at when I paused the disc. For instance: Five Fox Execs shot with four bullets each, three die, one in critical condition for 54:31. :)

On the plus side, the scene selectors are pretty incredible on many of these releases.

But I'm baffled by this move and I'm not sure I enjoy the trade off foisted upon me.

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Sure, they could resume, but try going back to a scene half an hour away from where you currently were on the tape. Or starting from the beginning.

Edit: Come to think of it, why did we ever move on from VHS? After all, they were always packed with special features, commentaries, and stayed pristine no matter how many times you played them!

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Umm...does your player lack the Pause feature?

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I think he's saying if he intends to hit pause but hits stop instead, he's stuck.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Exactly. Luckily the 10A doesn't time out of pause, ever. But in the year and half I've had this... I'd done something to muck it up perhaps two dozen times.

In addition, sometimes I wait an hour or more to return to the movie, too. I'd like to shut the thing down and come back to it at the same point... like with SD DVD. Alas, no.

That someone made this design choice for BR is mind bottling. :)

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

This is terribly annoying for those of us who watch films in multiple sittings. The resume function should be a complete given in 2009, given that we've had it in every home video format thus far. (The OP's point about DVD and VHS is a fair one, and I am baffled by the anger and sarcasm that surfaced in reply.)

Overall I find this annoyance is more than offset by the upgrade in picture quality offered by BD, but it *is* an annoyance nonetheless.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Resume on VHS wasn't a "feature." VHS was linear magnetic tape, meaning the only reason it "resumed" was because the tape had physically stopped at that location. Because of this, if you wanted to watch a scene before or after the place where you were stopped, you would have to rewind or fast forward, often for far longer than it takes for the people complaining in this thread to use the chapter select to get back to where they are on a Blu-ray.

And, in fact, I'd say the bookmarking feature is actually better than the resume features on DVD players, because you can choose multiple bookmarks and have several handy places to return to. So I find it funny that someone would hold up VHS as an example of a superior "feature," when in fact it was a limitation of the technology that was sometimes useful if you wanted to stop watching and come back later. But it was much less useful if you stopped and wanted to start over.

In fact, wasn't one of the selling points of DVD was that you no longer had to rewind the movie when you were done watching it and that you could jump to any point in the film without waiting for the fast forward or rewind?

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

it's funny that this thread came about today. i was reading sound and vision mag from last month today at lunch and there's a letter in there about this issue.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

It appears to be a disc function, rather than a player function (PS3 owner). When I watch Lost they have the season play and it picks up where I left off.

:shrug:

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Certain shows and discs, yes.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Yeah, I've noticed that some discs will resume after "stop" is hit or you navigate to the main menu, but I don't recall coming across one that resumes after the unit is powered off (Panasonic BD30 here).

Bookmarking is a handy way to catalog and find favorite scenes, but I find it a bit of hassle as a substitute for something that should be so simple and effortless.

I mean, seriously. Machine on. Play. Machine off then back on. Play more. You'd think this wouldn't be rocket science. :shrug:

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

Not all DVD player do that, just some. I'd assume the same goes with Blu Ray. Or not.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

I think it's an issue specific to Blu-ray's technology and the lack of a seamless workaround for said issue. After all, resume works like a charm on my BD player -- when I'm watching DVDs.

Re: Is There No Way to Resume Watching a Blu-Ray?
 

I agree, for it being such a high tech device not having a resume standard is a nuisance.