Posted on Wednesday, April 04 2007 @ 0:36 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
This may be bad news for people who already bought a Blu-ray disc player, later this year a new Blu-ray disc
specification will arrive and not all of today's Blu-ray machines will be able to play all content of these discs:
The Blu-ray Disc Association has mandated that all players of the format released after October 31 must adhere to a specific feature set that is currently not standard for today’s hardware. All Blu-ray Disc players after the fall date must support BD Java, a programming language for Blu-ray Disc media used mainly to deliver picture-in-picture for in-movie commentary and special features.
“Blu-ray player requirements and BD-Java specifications have been gradually changed over and over again, which has caused a good amount of grief for player manufacturers,” said optical storage analyst Wesley Novack. “The new specification and requirements will ensure that all Blu-ray players manufactured past October will be able to support the full range of BD-Java capabilities, including picture in picture and more.”
Early adopters of Blu-ray players may find themselves with inadequate hardware to support media using BD Java software.
Novack continued, “This might be bad news for early adopters who have already purchased a player, but it will not prevent them from playing back future Blu-ray movies. Owners of first generation Blu-ray players will probably not be able to use the full range of interactive features available on future Blu-ray Disc titles.”
