Why Some Blu-ray Movies Can't Play

Included with many Blu-ray releases is a small slip of paper which contains a warning that the disc may not play in your player unless your player has its latest firmware upgrade. It suggests that you visit http://www.blu-raydisc.com/forbestresults which contains a listing of all the various Blu-ray players and links to the various websites where the firmware upgrades can be downloaded.

I am sure that most ignore that warning when they purchase or rent their discs. I can imagine that a consumer who is not really aware of the availability or necessity of such upgrades will be pretty upset if he or she spends a lot of cash for a disc that won’t play in their player. I make note of this at this time as I was unable to play a few discs in the past couple of weeks myself, including Shrek The Third and a few of the upcoming releases from Fox, including the Happening, Young Frankenstein and the Omen collection without first downloading the latest firmware upgrade from the manufacturer.

I also note that there were issues with Iron Man in some players which resulted in a new version being issued before the film was available in stores. Quite frankly, this far into the Blu-Ray era, these sorts of issues should no longer happen. There is no reason why discs can’t be authored to play in all players. The need for a firmware upgrade to play the film itself is an unnecessary hassle. I can understand an issue to play certain extras due to the issue of a 2.0 profile vs. a 1.1 profile player but the ability to play the actual film itself should not require a constant monitoring of the internet to check for upgrades just to play the movies you intend to either purchase or rent.

I am sure that the brick and mortar retailers and the rental outlets don’t want to deal with the hassles of returns of films that wont play in their customers’ machines. I would therefore suggest to the studios that they ensure that their discs, or at least the films themselves, will play in each and every every Blu-Ray player on the market before those films are released. Firmware upgrades have not been needed in the DVD market for many years and should not be an issue for Blu-Ray either.

Another issue that has gotten under my skin recently concerns the reports of recent fee increases from Comcast, Verizon and other cable providers. Given the present economic climate, the last thing that consumers need are increases in their cable bills. I would suggest to these providers that they should compete with each other to increase their subscriber bases before they all start to increase their fees.

After all, all that will do is result in consumers cutting their services to make their bills more affordable. As a result, instead of increasing their bottom line, they will actually lose revenue due to the loss of subscribers and the cutting of services such as premium movie channels. Each cable or DBS provider is competing for a limited pool of customers. There is a limit as to what level of fee increases that consumers will tolerate. That limit will fluctuate between good and bad economic times. Given the present state of the economy, that limit has probably been already reached or even surpassed. Providers raise their rates at their own peril. I know that I have cut back on services and I am sure that many others have either done so as well or are seriously thinking about doing so now. I would suggest that the suits at the providers take this into account before increasing their rates.

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