6 ms·

Blu-Ray on Windows is the single most user-hostile computing experience I've ever had. I stopped buying/renting blu-ray movies because I didn't feel like reboot

by seldo 16y ago

Blu-Ray on Windows is the single most user-hostile computing experience I've ever had. I stopped buying/renting blu-ray movies because I didn't feel like rebooting 3 times every time I wanted to play a disc, with the software treating me like a criminal the whole time.

thehodge 16y ago
I bought my first Blue-Ray the other day and the experience was terrible, I put the disk in and nothing happened.. I tried to play it in windows media center, no ball.. not in VLC.. there was no player included on the disk. I had to download a 300meg trial of PowerDVD just to play a film I'd already paid for (I also had to update my graphics card for some reason, the computer had been playing HD content for months without needing that). That will be the last Blue-Ray disk I buy..
- viraptor 16y ago
  > That will be the last Blue-Ray disk I buy.. I wouldn't be so sure. This is exactly the experience I got in the first year of DVDs being available. (although the player was a bit lighter ;) ) After some time we got proper software for Windows and after that, there was DeCSS. Just give it time. If there is useful content on Blue-Ray, people will use it and the experience will improve.
  - sofuture 16y ago
    Right, the experience of being treated like a criminal will improve. Their shackled product won't.
    - viraptor 16y ago
      On one hand-side - yes, you're right. On the other - right now you have a choice of not seeing the movie at all, or maybe seeing it correctly in the next month thanks to this key. One step at a time. Also, there's a whole industry around copy-protection which won't go away in one day. Pretty much the best we can do right now, is make is obsolete by proving DRM is useless, while they will try to prove otherwise. DVD-s right now are a nice compromise where they did their job™, and we get the content as if it was not locked. (of course you still cannot skip the intros on "official players", but that's just an education issue - for example mplayer can play the movie itself without the added marketing crap)
      - reduxredacted 16y ago
        Pretty much the best we can do right now, is make is obsolete by proving DRM is useless The proof is in their own studies, really ... if they believe them. According to Big Media, piracy rates are incredible. It takes a few words in Google to find that everything that has ever been put behind DRM is available without it, for free (illegally, of course). The negative effects of DRM schemes are huge (see rest of comments). There would be so many very cool things that have nothing to do with piracy if DRM wasn't part of the equation. And they can be done right now by breaking US law and circumventing whatever scheme is in place.
  - reduxredacted 16y ago
    Just give it time. If there is useful content on Blue-Ray, people will use it and the experience will improve. I thought we would have been there by now. DeCSS came out at about the time my parents upgraded from VHS to DVD. My parents just purchased a Blu-Ray player, so I'm thinking ... any day now. People have commented on how long it's taken to get the HDMI master key, but I'd argue it hasn't been that long. Despite some theoretical attack methods being published as early as 2001, there wasn't any reason because HDCP/HDMI was exotic for quite some time. Going back to the "My Parents" analogy: their first device to ever have an HDMI port on it was purchased earlier this summer. Both Panasonic devices, yet my dad has to power cycle the blu-ray player occasionally because the TV won't pick the picture up. Here's my theory on how consumer electronic DRM cracking: 1) DRM or other scheme is created. It ticks off geeks/enthusiasts, but they largely deal with it. ...2) Despite itself, eventually it gains critical mass and a bunch of those geek's non-geeky parents buy devices and experience the same trouble. ...3) Geek children get constant phone calls from parents about why their new stuff doesn't work as well as their old stuff and ask said Geek Children to come over and fix it because they don't know what an HDCP Error is. ...4) One or more geeks get irritated enough with the phone calls to finally test that theoretical attack. ...5) Geeks everywhere find custom firmware for their parent's televisions and players and permanently solve the problem, while also recommending to their other non-technical friends precisely which model of TV and Blu-Ray to buy based entirely on its ability to have the play-back destroying copy-protection removed. The last part hasn't happened yet, but one can dream.
- flannell 16y ago
  I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disks. I give the format two years.
  - beaumartinez 16y ago
    Two years? Yeah, because the whole world has cheap access to 10 Mbaud internet connection.
    - Maakuth 16y ago
      Good point. Bluray will probably be the last optical media we'll have for movies, but I don't think it'll get replaced completely very soon, as there's a lot of places with consumers willing to pay for HD content, but without great enough bandwidth to stream them from the web.
    - joey_bananas 16y ago
      I bet 99% of all people who might be interested in Blu-Ray does.
      - petercooper 16y ago
        I ostensibly have a 12Mbps connection, yet only get between 2-6Mbps depending on the time of day due to contention. And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Things have a long way to go before a majority of westerners have access to solid, reliable 10Mbps connections.
        rue 16y ago
        > And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Clearly you do not.
        nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
        I think the missing phrase is relative compared to the average. "Good" broadband in many parts (the majority?) of the US is still crap shoved upon citizens with no other choice but dialup.
- illumin8 16y ago
  The experience on Blu-Ray is terrible. I have to sit through as much as 20 minutes of unskippable commercials before I get to the menu screen. They even show you commercials about how great movies are on Blu-Ray - even though they should know you already are a customer because you're watching a Blu-Ray. Not only that, some of the commercials are streamed over the Internet, which means they use your bandwidth without asking permission to download an unskippable commercial. The experience is getting a bit ridiculous, and I personally hope someone writes a DeCSS for Blu-Ray so that we can uncripple this format. Btw, I don't actually buy any Blu-Ray disks, I just have my Netflix account enabled for Blu-Ray and watch most movies in that format since it looks better on my HDTV.
  - reduxredacted 16y ago
    I personally hope someone writes a DeCSS for Blu-Ray so that we can uncripple this format. I've been using AnyDVD HD for a few years, but I have not had a Blu-Ray reader or writer until a couple of days ago and I have no Blu-Ray discs yet (Netflix, hurry up!). AnyDVD works great on DVDs and claims to work with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formatted content. It's not free, unfortunately, but it's supposed to uncripple the format. And before I get to far: I'm not a pirate, my use of AnyDVD HD is simple: I have a single SageTV Media Server (HTPC/DVR software) and I use extenders to play all of my video content on three televisions (meaning my TVs have one tiny low-power box yet all of my TVs can play a DVD or watch recorded content and live TV from my noisy HTPC tucked away in a rack in my basement). Without AnyDVD, I can't put a DVD in the basement server and play it on an extender upstairs. I was hoping to do the same with my new Blu-Ray player.
    - illumin8 16y ago
      I think the problem with Blu-Ray, and AnyDVD has this issue as well, is that every disc has a slightly modified copy protection scheme that requires additional hacking to make a copy of it. I believe this requires a company like Slysoft, that makes AnyDVD, to constantly release updates for every new movie that is released. For this reason, I doubt we'll ever see a public domain solution like DeCSS arrive. It's too bad.
Osiris 16y ago
Blu-Ray on standalone Blu-Ray players is the single most user-hostile entertainment experience I've had. My Samsung BD-P1590 has had new fewer than 4 firmware updates, the last of which actually caused the player to crash on most of the Blu-Ray movies I try to watch. I rent from Netflix and I have literally had to rip the movie and stream it to my XBMC box in order to watch the movie because it wouldn't play on my Blu-Ray player. Secondly, I've had to completely disable BD-Live because when the disc has those lame downloadable previews, it takes several minutes of just sitting at a spinning wheel or lame icon with nothing (apparently) happening. If I'm lucky the preview will download and play, but 90% of the time, the player just stays like that forever and the only button that works on the remote is Power. Lastly, the unskippable previews really piss me off. I know that DVD had this as well, but it's seriously annoying that it takes 5+ minutes just to get to the menu to watch a movie. Many times I do sit and watch the previews while popcorn is popping or the wife isn't ready to watch yet, but when I want to skip them, I really should be able to. So, despite the fact that I try to watch movie the authorized way, most of the time I find it easier to rip/stream the movie from a BD-ROM with XMBC than to actually use my Blu-Ray player. I really feel bad for the non-techies that have to deal with all this mess without being able to find sneaky workarounds to get it to work properly.
- emordnilap 16y ago
  > Lastly, the unskippable previews really piss me off. I have a samsung blue ray player too. I usuallly push stop, and then hit the "title menu" (or disc menu? I forget) to skip the unskippable stuff.
sofuture 16y ago
Stop buying movies period -- because if not Blu-Ray, it will be another technology aimed at treating you like a criminal.
- cagey 16y ago
  Or because there are incredibly few new movies worth watching?
  - mquander 16y ago
    That's certainly a very constructive and not at all trollish opinion to offer in a thread that is all about a popular distribution format for new movies.
grk 16y ago
I've never had any problems playing a Blu-Ray disc on my PS3.

by seldo 16y ago

thehodge 16y ago

I bought my first Blue-Ray the other day and the experience was terrible, I put the disk in and nothing happened.. I tried to play it in windows media center, no ball.. not in VLC.. there was no player included on the disk. I had to download a 300meg trial of PowerDVD just to play a film I'd already paid for (I also had to update my graphics card for some reason, the computer had been playing HD content for months without needing that). That will be the last Blue-Ray disk I buy..

viraptor 16y ago
> That will be the last Blue-Ray disk I buy.. I wouldn't be so sure. This is exactly the experience I got in the first year of DVDs being available. (although the player was a bit lighter ;) ) After some time we got proper software for Windows and after that, there was DeCSS. Just give it time. If there is useful content on Blue-Ray, people will use it and the experience will improve.
- sofuture 16y ago
  Right, the experience of being treated like a criminal will improve. Their shackled product won't.
  - viraptor 16y ago
    On one hand-side - yes, you're right. On the other - right now you have a choice of not seeing the movie at all, or maybe seeing it correctly in the next month thanks to this key. One step at a time. Also, there's a whole industry around copy-protection which won't go away in one day. Pretty much the best we can do right now, is make is obsolete by proving DRM is useless, while they will try to prove otherwise. DVD-s right now are a nice compromise where they did their job™, and we get the content as if it was not locked. (of course you still cannot skip the intros on "official players", but that's just an education issue - for example mplayer can play the movie itself without the added marketing crap)
    - reduxredacted 16y ago
      Pretty much the best we can do right now, is make is obsolete by proving DRM is useless The proof is in their own studies, really ... if they believe them. According to Big Media, piracy rates are incredible. It takes a few words in Google to find that everything that has ever been put behind DRM is available without it, for free (illegally, of course). The negative effects of DRM schemes are huge (see rest of comments). There would be so many very cool things that have nothing to do with piracy if DRM wasn't part of the equation. And they can be done right now by breaking US law and circumventing whatever scheme is in place.
- reduxredacted 16y ago
  Just give it time. If there is useful content on Blue-Ray, people will use it and the experience will improve. I thought we would have been there by now. DeCSS came out at about the time my parents upgraded from VHS to DVD. My parents just purchased a Blu-Ray player, so I'm thinking ... any day now. People have commented on how long it's taken to get the HDMI master key, but I'd argue it hasn't been that long. Despite some theoretical attack methods being published as early as 2001, there wasn't any reason because HDCP/HDMI was exotic for quite some time. Going back to the "My Parents" analogy: their first device to ever have an HDMI port on it was purchased earlier this summer. Both Panasonic devices, yet my dad has to power cycle the blu-ray player occasionally because the TV won't pick the picture up. Here's my theory on how consumer electronic DRM cracking: 1) DRM or other scheme is created. It ticks off geeks/enthusiasts, but they largely deal with it. ...2) Despite itself, eventually it gains critical mass and a bunch of those geek's non-geeky parents buy devices and experience the same trouble. ...3) Geek children get constant phone calls from parents about why their new stuff doesn't work as well as their old stuff and ask said Geek Children to come over and fix it because they don't know what an HDCP Error is. ...4) One or more geeks get irritated enough with the phone calls to finally test that theoretical attack. ...5) Geeks everywhere find custom firmware for their parent's televisions and players and permanently solve the problem, while also recommending to their other non-technical friends precisely which model of TV and Blu-Ray to buy based entirely on its ability to have the play-back destroying copy-protection removed. The last part hasn't happened yet, but one can dream.
flannell 16y ago
I guess Microsoft is still reeling about losing the HD format war to Sony! tbh, I think everyone knows that video streaming is the future and not physical disks. I give the format two years.
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  Two years? Yeah, because the whole world has cheap access to 10 Mbaud internet connection.
  - Maakuth 16y ago
    Good point. Bluray will probably be the last optical media we'll have for movies, but I don't think it'll get replaced completely very soon, as there's a lot of places with consumers willing to pay for HD content, but without great enough bandwidth to stream them from the web.
  - joey_bananas 16y ago
    I bet 99% of all people who might be interested in Blu-Ray does.
    - petercooper 16y ago
      I ostensibly have a 12Mbps connection, yet only get between 2-6Mbps depending on the time of day due to contention. And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Things have a long way to go before a majority of westerners have access to solid, reliable 10Mbps connections.
      - rue 16y ago
        > And I live in an area with reasonably good broadband. Clearly you do not.
        nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
        I think the missing phrase is relative compared to the average. "Good" broadband in many parts (the majority?) of the US is still crap shoved upon citizens with no other choice but dialup.
illumin8 16y ago
The experience on Blu-Ray is terrible. I have to sit through as much as 20 minutes of unskippable commercials before I get to the menu screen. They even show you commercials about how great movies are on Blu-Ray - even though they should know you already are a customer because you're watching a Blu-Ray. Not only that, some of the commercials are streamed over the Internet, which means they use your bandwidth without asking permission to download an unskippable commercial. The experience is getting a bit ridiculous, and I personally hope someone writes a DeCSS for Blu-Ray so that we can uncripple this format. Btw, I don't actually buy any Blu-Ray disks, I just have my Netflix account enabled for Blu-Ray and watch most movies in that format since it looks better on my HDTV.
- reduxredacted 16y ago
  I personally hope someone writes a DeCSS for Blu-Ray so that we can uncripple this format. I've been using AnyDVD HD for a few years, but I have not had a Blu-Ray reader or writer until a couple of days ago and I have no Blu-Ray discs yet (Netflix, hurry up!). AnyDVD works great on DVDs and claims to work with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formatted content. It's not free, unfortunately, but it's supposed to uncripple the format. And before I get to far: I'm not a pirate, my use of AnyDVD HD is simple: I have a single SageTV Media Server (HTPC/DVR software) and I use extenders to play all of my video content on three televisions (meaning my TVs have one tiny low-power box yet all of my TVs can play a DVD or watch recorded content and live TV from my noisy HTPC tucked away in a rack in my basement). Without AnyDVD, I can't put a DVD in the basement server and play it on an extender upstairs. I was hoping to do the same with my new Blu-Ray player.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    I think the problem with Blu-Ray, and AnyDVD has this issue as well, is that every disc has a slightly modified copy protection scheme that requires additional hacking to make a copy of it. I believe this requires a company like Slysoft, that makes AnyDVD, to constantly release updates for every new movie that is released. For this reason, I doubt we'll ever see a public domain solution like DeCSS arrive. It's too bad.

Osiris 16y ago

Blu-Ray on standalone Blu-Ray players is the single most user-hostile entertainment experience I've had. My Samsung BD-P1590 has had new fewer than 4 firmware updates, the last of which actually caused the player to crash on most of the Blu-Ray movies I try to watch. I rent from Netflix and I have literally had to rip the movie and stream it to my XBMC box in order to watch the movie because it wouldn't play on my Blu-Ray player. Secondly, I've had to completely disable BD-Live because when the disc has those lame downloadable previews, it takes several minutes of just sitting at a spinning wheel or lame icon with nothing (apparently) happening. If I'm lucky the preview will download and play, but 90% of the time, the player just stays like that forever and the only button that works on the remote is Power. Lastly, the unskippable previews really piss me off. I know that DVD had this as well, but it's seriously annoying that it takes 5+ minutes just to get to the menu to watch a movie. Many times I do sit and watch the previews while popcorn is popping or the wife isn't ready to watch yet, but when I want to skip them, I really should be able to. So, despite the fact that I try to watch movie the authorized way, most of the time I find it easier to rip/stream the movie from a BD-ROM with XMBC than to actually use my Blu-Ray player. I really feel bad for the non-techies that have to deal with all this mess without being able to find sneaky workarounds to get it to work properly.

emordnilap 16y ago
> Lastly, the unskippable previews really piss me off. I have a samsung blue ray player too. I usuallly push stop, and then hit the "title menu" (or disc menu? I forget) to skip the unskippable stuff.

sofuture 16y ago

Stop buying movies period -- because if not Blu-Ray, it will be another technology aimed at treating you like a criminal.

cagey 16y ago
Or because there are incredibly few new movies worth watching?
- mquander 16y ago
  That's certainly a very constructive and not at all trollish opinion to offer in a thread that is all about a popular distribution format for new movies.

grk 16y ago

I've never had any problems playing a Blu-Ray disc on my PS3.