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DRM on steroids controls backfires on Blu-ray

The introduction of a new form of encryption control for Blu-ray discs last week has been accompanied by playback snags and worse, on a number of players.

4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Day After Tomorrow are the first two Blu-ray releases to feature BD+, a virtual-machine technology which allows content providers to bundle code on Blu-ray discs to check if a player's hardware has been hacked. Unfortunately the discs won't play on two Blu-ray players from different manufacturers - Samsung's BDP-1200 and LG's BH100 - with loading times on other players (including the PlayStation 3) taking as long as two minutes, the High-Def Digest reports.

Other problems including error messages and playback stutter have been reported on Samsung's BDP-1000 Blu-ray player. High-Def Digest adds that both Samsung and LG plan to issue firmware updates within the next two weeks. ® ®

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