Blu-ray Players Issue Update to Fix Pirates of the Caribbean Disc Playback


If you've just purchased the first two Pirates movies on Blu-ray in order to get psyched up for the third one, you probably came up with a whole lot less Johnny Depp and a whole lot more firmware problems than you expected. Apparently at least two players—Samsung's BD-P1200 and Sony's BDP-S1—have difficulty playing back the first two movies. And by difficulty, we mean they throw up their hands and give up like a fat man at the starting line of a 10K.

Samsung's already released a firmware update here, which fixes the problem. You can either burn the firmware update onto CD or download it via the BD-P1200's LAN connection. Which brings us to another point. Why isn't the Ethernet in the Blu-ray spec?

The Sony BDP-S1 is one of the few players that don't have a mandatory Ethernet port. Unlike HD DVD, which makes Internet connectivity mandatory, Blu-ray doesn't tells player makers to go nuts and put it in if they want. That means disc manufacturers can't count on the Ethernet being there for firmware updates (well, individual companies can, because they can make all their players Ethernet-enabled).

What does this mean to you? It means that part of the Blu-ray spec is lacking. This is similar to the way PS3 developers can count on there being a hard drive in every PS3 (even the cheaper $499 edition), Xbox developers can't. This affects development in game consoles, and to a lesser extent affects Blu-ray players. You can't automatically download new features for discs like you can on HD DVD players because there's no Ethernet port.

Firmware Update [Samsung]

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