Register Hardware

Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/05/blu-ray_controls/

DRM on steroids controls backfires on Blu-ray

By John Leyden
Published Friday 5th October 2007 15:47 GMT

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+ (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070620-blu-ray-content-protection-agency-certifies-bd.html), 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 (http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1035).

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. ®