Blu-ray Disc Java is coming this fall, and it may be incompatible with some of today's machines
Early adopters, however, should be aware that being cutting edge could come with a price, such as the risk of bugs or complete hardware and software obsolescence.
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 and special features.
been gradually changed over and over again, which has caused a good amount of grief for player manufacturers,” said optical storage analyst . “The new specification and will be able to support the full range of BD-Java capabilities, including picture 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 current players won’t be made completely obsolete with the new standard.
“As is common in new format introductions, future products will include some additional features such as picture-in-picture,” said Philips “Regardless of whether first-generation hardware supports these new features, Unlike the HD DVD standard, Blu-ray players are not required to have Ethernet ports for firmware updates. Blu-ray machines with upgradable this fall.
solidified for the format. HDi, an XML-based format developed by Microsoft and Toshiba, is mandatory on all HD DVD players and enables picture-in-picture special features to run alongside the feature length film.
Warner Bros.
has released titles such as Batman Begins and V for Vendetta for HD DVD but not Blu-ray for the sole reason of the latter format’s lack of standardization. The will also appear on HD DVD first for the same reason. Warner Bros.
said that it would release Blu-ray Disc versions of such films in the fall, assumingly after the BD Java mandate takes effect.
apparent shortcoming. The studio released Mission: Impossible 3 on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, though the HD DVD version features a video picture-in-picture commentary, while the Blu-ray version does only with audio.
commentaries, those titles being Descent BD Java. Cleverly, and perhaps inelegantly, two complete versions of the movie are stored on a 50GB Blu-ray disc. One version contains the normal version of the film, while the second one features the picture-in-picture commentary hard-encoded on top of the film.
minimum 256MB of persistent memory storage. Those with network options will have to have 1GB of memory to support Web downloads.
Famed DVD producer, Van Ling, expresses discontent over the lack of standardization of the Blu-ray format.
“The whole problem comes in when minimum [functionality] on players,” said Ling. “In my view, I shouldn’t have to know what every single player can do.
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