Samsung Sued Over "Defective" Blu-ray Player

Anneka notes that, although both Netflix and Best Buy threw logs on HD DVD's funeral pyre today, things are not all going Blu-ray's way. A Connecticut man is suing Samsung, the maker that brought the first Blu-ray players to market, over its "defective" BD-P1200 player. The lawsuit seeks class-action status. The problem is that the Samsung BD-P1200 is a "Profile 1.0" player that can't play some Blu-ray discs and Samsung has no intention (or ability) to upgrade these players via firmware. Quoting Ars: "The meager requirements of the 1.0 profile mean that Blu-ray players which fail to implement the optional features won't be able to take advantage of picture-in-picture, which requires secondary decoders. 1.0 players are also unable to store local content, lacking the 256MB of storage mandated by the 1.1 profile. Profile 1.1 discs should still play on 1.0 players, however, but the extra features will not work."

There's a reason...

There's a reason we call it the bleeding edge - because it cuts you. And you bleed. It's much like new software - I won't touch a new OS or game until it's had at least one patch or service pack.

Re:There's a reason...

While I agree with you , I do feel for the folks who bought these players when they were $600 + , there is no reason that features should have been missing from the players when they came to market. HD-DVD doesn't have this problem , wonder why ?

These companies need to stop doing this. People need to stop accepting the planned obsolescence excuses and realize they are milking us. These players should not have "versions" or "profiles" make it a single deployment standard and stop trying to add features the competition already has. They should have added those in the beginning.

Im just getting tired of seeing folks who bought in early getting porked by companies like Sony and Microsoft. I understand software revisions. And I don't mind it, but why are vital things like a second decoder not in the spec to make it at least upgradeable. Or even just disabled until a special disc is put in to flash the firmware to activate it ? I am tired of us folks paying to be alpha and beta testers for the corporations.

Re:There's a reason...

Here I for one totally disagree.

For a start: my laptop has a 10Mbit Ethernet port. Now 100 Mb is standard, and 1 Gb available. Is there any reason why I should expect my laptop to get a free upgrade? I don't think so.
Do I have reason to expect it is compatible with 1Gb networks? Maybe. Albeit at a lower speed. Same for these BluRay players: they were up to standard when sold, and are now the newer disks still play - without the new features of course. Why should the old player get a free upgrade? No reason for that.
People should buy products (hardware, software, whatever) based on the CURRENT feature set. Not based on promised upgrades, that is a nice extra but not relevant.

Wouter.

Re:There's a reason...

Nope, these players fail to play *new features* on new discs. The original movie format should work just fine, but things like Picture-in-Picture and the persistent storage thing doesn't. This only means that some extras are unavailable. Thus, his player does what he paid for, but doesn't do what someone with a newer player paid for.

In the end, we'll probably see Sony screw it up in another way to make his older player break completely, but that's a different story. BD+ will probably be on the receiving end of a lot of curses...

Re:There's a reason...

When 2.0 comes out on disks, those will not play on any current player

This is false, according to all the information I've read. The movies will play. But the "extra" features will lack capability.

As for Blu-ray's reputed "more" space, show me a dual layer disk.

Half of all current Blu-Ray movies are dual-layer. The first was "Click" a year and a half ago. Hitachi has a 4-layer Blu-ray disc they claim play in current players, and TDK has prototyped an 8-layer Blu-ray disc.

As to the codecs, HD DVD supports more advanced codecs.

It's true that some of the sound codecs are optional on Blu-ray players but mandatory on HD DVD players. That being said, on Blu-ray they are required to have substantially higher throughput if supported. For video, they both support exactly the same codecs (MPEG2, MPEG4/AAC, and VC-1). In addition, Blu-Ray requires the player support almost 50% more throughput-- that, combined with the higher capacity, means that Blu-ray discs can be compressed less and therefore have much higher quality audio and video. That's why a side-by-side comparison of the two almost universally favors Blu-ray on all the AV sites.

Blu-ray is largely old technology with a new specification that makes them incompatible with everything else out there.

To be fair, that more accurately describes HD DVD. That's why HD DVD players are easier to produce.

Re:There's a reason...

It only fails because most free software projects are in a constant state of development, thus my model has no initial stable release for which to base it upon. Then again, I meant to imply that I was only talking about major pieces of software, and sadly, free software occupies very little of that space for me.

Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and SLASH are free software. You are running all of them on Slashdot's server when you read this comment. I am running all of them, plus Firefox (also free) on my Windows PC, when I submit this comment.

Defective CD Players

If this guy wins, gets a court to punish a player manufacturer because it's not forward compatible with media all carrying the same media logo, then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CD" players that won't play CDs that I copied from the ones I bought as backup. And then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CDs" that won't play in some CD players because the Sony CDs have DRM that's not part of the "CD" spec.

Re:Defective CD Players

1) Recordable compact discs have their own logo and are considered a different, but analogous, media format. A player that will play compact discs, with no mention of recordable or rewritable versions in the packaging, doesn't have to play anything.

2) A DRM-crippled "CD" will not bear the Compact Disc logo, as it doesn't conform to the standard. It is a separate format that just happens to sometimes sort-of work in CD players.

Meanwhile, the movies mentioned in the article all come with a "blu-ray disc" logo on them, despite there being two distinctly different formats involved. That's misleading advertising, and I hope he wins his case. You can't create a so-called standard and then say "whoops, need to change a few things here, sucks to be you if you were an early adopter!" I understand that the bleeding edge sometimes cuts, but that's usually a result of bugs in the players or the manufacturing process, not because some idiot changed the specs of the format!

Re:Defective CD Players

"And then I want to see Sony get slammed for selling "CDs" that won't play in some CD players because the Sony CDs have DRM that's not part of the "CD" spec."

Do you see any of these logos [google.com] on the front or back paper inserts, on the OUTSIDE of the case (not inside, as in after opening the case,) SPECIFICALLY the one that says Compact Disc Digital Audio?

If you don't see the CDDA, then it's safe to assume that the CD does not follow the CDDA format, and therefore has DRM. CDDA does not have provisions for DRM, and any disc carrying DRM, or is 'enhanced' (extra data track after audio tracks included) may not display that logo on the case. The actual part that holds the disc in the case will just have the plain Compact Disc logo most often.

If you have any discs that display the CDDA logo and they have DRM or any 'enhancements' for our computer, the maker of that disc is in violation of the rules that Phillips set forth in specifying the format. You should immediately notify them of the breach of contract between the music company that made the discs and Phillips. And you should probably go ahead and lawyer up, because once you stir up the snake nest they're gonna come crawling and biting at your ankles.

I bet it gets thrown out

No way a judge will allow this lawsuit, much less grant it class-action status. Imagine the precedent this would set. I could sue Motorola because my older cell phone doesn't have all the features that their latest ones have. I could sue Toyota because a newer year/model of my car has more features. Etc. etc.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

Just to clarify, according to TFA some movies won't play:

At issue are some significant title-compatibility problems with the player. In his complaint, plaintiff Bob McGovern says that a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play on the device.
...
As one of our readers pointed out via e-mail, the P1200 has a checkered reputation when it comes to hardware reliability.

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

I have one of these players, and we're not upset about Profile 1.1 vs 1.0, we're upset that it's a total crapshoot whether or not a given movie will play on your player. I got mine in September, this isn't a device that's three years old, either, but it has been plagued with bugs. I rented Weeds from Netflix, and the disc would play fine ONCE, but not a second time (confirmed with others on AVSForum). Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't work for a month or two after release. Deja Vu would constantly hang during playback. Pirates of the Carribean 3 didn't work until last week, nor did Little Miss Sunshine. 3:10 to Yuma still doesn't work, and last week I sat down to watch Across the Universe to find that you're left at the menu screen, but with no cursor to start the movie, and you can't even skip to a chapter or work-around the issue.

Samsung needs to figure out what the hell is wrong with their firmware and correct it so that it'll actually play movies, and they need to be more transparent about what's going on. They rarely acknowledge issues, and never document what fixes are in new firmware revisions as they're released. Perhaps they could give some test units to the shops that are authoring Blu-Ray discs, or, you know, get an advance copy of the disc so that firmware can be ready on the day the movie hits the streets. Follow this thread [avsforum.com] at AVSForum for more info.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

So it may not be as simple of an issue as "profile 1.0 can't use spiffy new 1.1 features". It may be more an issue of "Samsung rushed buggy new product to market and now won't support it."

More accurately, Samsung put a player out onto the market that met the demands of the (currently unfinished) Blu-ray disc standard.

Blu-ray was rushed to market before it was ready - HD DVD's release ensured the BDA couldn't wait until the standard was completed.

The Blu-ray trade assosciation admitted as much at CES 2008, and then noted that only Sony's PS3 had any hope of being upgradeable to Profile 2.0, due in October. (I'm sure Sony was more than happy to hear that... and I'm betting it really annoys the other manufacturers in the BDA).

In contrast, HD DVD was a polished, complete standard at the time of release, and the first HD DVD players can handle every feature of every disc made - including features that Blu-ray does not currently have.

I'm officially format-neutral - I have both (Samsung's BD/HD DVD player).

I think it's funny to hear various fanbois pitting it as a Microsoft vs. Sony thing - it's more Toshiba/NEC vs. Sony/Panasonic/Philips, which is more or less what almost happened with "regular" DVD, except this time, Sony & co. decided to push its product, instead of suffering the "disgrace" of following someone else's lead. Rivalries among Japanese companies are a lot like college sports - sometimes I have difficulty telling the difference between rivalry and a full-on holy war. And HD DVD vs Blu-ray is very similar - the battle was faught in the DVD forum for years, with Sony, Panasonic, and Philips doing everything possible to prevent HD DVD from happening.

Many of the ignorant thing that the menu system used by HD DVD is Microsoft's - which is completely false. HD DVD uses "Advanced Content" - an open standard defined by Disney & Warner Brothers. The most popular implementation is Microsoft's HDi. In other words, HDi is to Advanced Content as Internet Explorer is to HTML. HDi is one implementation, and is from Microsoft; Advanced Content is the standard, and is from Disney and Warner. HDi is the most popular, much like how IE is the dominant web browser for HTML.

In the end, HD DVD's release forced the BDA's hand - the BDA had to either give up entirely (no format war and only HD DVD) or release a product based on an incomplete standard. Not wanting to give up royalties, the BDA released a half-baked product.

The part that's not forgivable is that the BD player makers had a very good idea what the final standard would be - things like internet connectivity, two decoders for picture-in-picture, built-in storage - you know, stuff that its HD DVD competitor does.

All things told, I like that HD DVD is a "finished" standard - HD DVD owners are unlikely to get "burned" - even if the format fails, the discs will still play, after all. Blu-ray can't say that - early adopters are getting burned, and will continue to be burned until Profile 2.0 players are common, if not longer.

As far as being "burned" by "losing" the format war - I remind readers that iTunes sold more movies than either HD DVD or Blu-ray in 2007. It's quite likely that both HD DVD and Blu-ray will "lose" in the end - though the discs will still play, and both discs are already rippable.

Re:I bet it gets thrown out

...but that comes with being an early adopter.

Why should it? If he bought something marked that it plays Blu-Ray it should play any media that is also marked Blu-Ray, regardless of when either was bought. Just because it was the first player to market doesn't make it exempt. If they change the spec they should change the marking to at least show that the two aren't compatible.

How I love the american legal system.

How is this a fault of a manufacturer? Especially one that is not the creator of the Blue-Ray disk. Samsung made a hardware platform with a current drive and the technology improved and the old system cannot be upgraded. Why not sue every HDD manufacturer then? My old IDE drive won't work with my new motherboard. I cannot get firmware updates and the connectors are all wrong!

These frivolous lawsuits need to stop. They really need to start tossing these people out on there asses or pressing some criminal negligence charges against them.

BluRay vs BluRay - Not created equal

I understand the point of people saying "It's Profile 1.0, not Profile 1.1, it does what it says on the box". But most customers won't look at that. They just see the BluRay logo, see the adverts for BluRay (which no doubt show off the features included in Profile 1.1) then want to know why their BluRay player can't do what the advertisement told them.

At the least, it's misleading advertising. The Profile 1.0 player being defective is a bit of a stretch, but it's not unfounded.

Devil's Advocate

One important thing to remember is Joe Consumer doesn't know or care about 1.0, 1.1, etc.

Unless they're changing the name, ol' Joe is going to get upset when it doesn't work like it says on the box. Joe is used to auto recalls and static products, and I think BluRay forgot that in their little war to win the format.

Read before you complain

Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing these companies getting a slap on the wrist for a changing definition of what Blu-Ray is by changing the profile but not making the differences obvious (it's a little tiny box on the back of a case).

That said, sounds like the guy has a case to me. Read this part:

At issue are some significant title-compatibility problems with the player. In his complaint, plaintiff Bob McGovern says that a number of movies he purchased after buying his BD-P1200 wouldn't play on the device. He also accuses Samsung of failing to offer firmware updates to remedy the problem, saying that the consumer electronics giant "does not intend to provide future firmware updates or otherwise repair" the problematic player.

As one of our readers pointed out via e-mail, the P1200 has a checkered reputation when it comes to hardware reliability. A massive thread in the AV Science forum is filled with numerous complaints about the player. "I have had the BDP 1200 for 7 weeks. Not a finished product," reads one post. "Should not have been brought to the market until it was fully beta tested. Would not play Blu-ray Weeds. Was told needed updated software."

It was defective. It sounds like the bought a DVD player (let's pretend) that wouldn't play a good percentage of DVDs. Not "doesn't play every neat feature". Not "doesn't support 12.16 theatrical sound". Just plain "won't play". They could fix it with a software update, but they don't seem to want to.

That part is bait-and-switch. He bought a player that should play any good Blu-Ray movie (possibly san-extras). It won't play many of them. Either all those movies are defective, or the player is. If it is the player, he was ripped off. At the very least, they should have replaced his player with something that would play movies.

It's more than Profile 1.1 with the Samsung

This lawsuit is not over that Profile 1.1 content will not play on this Profile 1.0 player. The Samsung in question has much worse compatibility problems--some discs don't play at all. Before the first Profile 1.1 discs came out, the Samsung refused to play BD+ discs such as Fantastic Four 2 and The Day After Tomorrow. It took Samsung something like a month to issue a firmware update to fix this issue (other manufacturers who had issues had updates out in a week or so). Furthermore, even after that update, new discs continue not to play. The problem mostly is limited to Java-enabled discs, which are in the Profile 1.0 specification.

We're not even talking about Profile 1.1 discs either. Some standard releases refuse to play, and Samsung's support has been sluggish. Problems with the PS3 and Panasonic players have been addressed within a week or two of problems occurring. There are a number of discs that have been out for months that still don't play, even with the latest firmware:
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (12/3/07)
Blade Runner (12/18/07)
Pixar Shorts (11/6/07)

That's over a month and a half with no fix! The profile 1.1 discs (3:10 to Yuma and Sunshine) don't play the movie successfully. They sputter and freeze. This problem isn't observed on other Profile 1.0 players from Panasonic, Sony, and Pioneer. The Samsung player really is defective.

Hooray Format wars

Ensuring good lawsuitarity since VHS vs BetaMax.

Is it just me?

Or are we nearing the day when Sony finally 'wins' a format war?

Re:And the problem is?

It will play Profile 1.1 discs - you can still see the video and hear the audio.

Except it doesn't, and Samsung refuses to provide an update to fix this - which is why the guy is suing.

He isn't expecting the extra features - he just wanted to have the discs play in the first place. According to the lawsuit, the player refuses to even read them.

The problem has nothing to do with Profile 1.1 - it's a flaw with BD+ [wired.com].

He got screwed over by DRM. I would have thought Slashdot would be more sympathetic to someone screwed over by DRM than to instead blame him for buying "too early" whereby "too early" is apparently six months ago.

That's a problem with BD+

If he has problems with BD+ discs, why doesn't he sue the people selling and distributing these defective discs? If the discs are being sold as BluRay discs, they should play in a BluRay Profile 1.0 player. It isn't the manufacturers fault that some crap

Re:And the problem is?

Think of this another way: I have a MacBook with a Core Duo CPU. It's a 32-bit x86 processor with SSE3. It will run OSX 10.5 Leopard in 32-bit mode, but 64-bit features won't work, and 64-bit only applications won't run. Should I go and sue Apple for selling me a defective product?

Yes.

Re:Blu-ray victory is a joke at this point

> ..but $150 players are only a recent phenomenon and it's effect on the market remains to be seen.

I suspect the $150 players were the result of the retail channel seeing what was happening and deciding that the Xmas season was their last chance to unload inventory that was about to be worthless. Add in a little inside info paranoia and deliberate postponing of the studio shifting, etc to allow retails time to dump and things make a lot more sense.

Everyone knew that only one would survive and at the first hint that the market was picking a winner the desire not to be left holding a big stack of dead inventory created a huge bandwagon effect. If I had to guess it was the PS3 finally starting to sell as the price dropped. It became obvious there was soon going to be far more BD players just on the strength of the PS3, one studio flips camps (actually just stopped doing both) and it snowballed. At this point I doubt even Sony can manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Me, I haven't even bought a HD set yet and haven't owned a console since the 2600. Waiting for the pricing to plateau out, no sense getting in a hurry to go HD just to be able to pick from a few dozen crap/blockbuster titles. :)