The Company Fix

The day the two Pirates movies--both BD-J-heavy titles--shipped, some hardware makers were ready...and others weren't.

The worst offender? LG Electronics. The company has yet to release any firmware updates for its format-agnostic BH100, now out nearly six months. Both the complex "Liar's Dice" game and the build-your-own-documentary feature stall when you try to play them on LG's $1300 player. Liar's Dice doesn't completely crash the LG, but the unit cannot return to the main menu, can't play the game, and can't see the graphic overlays that are part of the game.

In contrast, Samsung was right on top of things: The discs had issues running in Samsung's BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 players; the firmware update was released quietly for download (to the BD-P1200, which has an ethernet port) late on the evening the movies shipped, and was announced to the public and on the company's Web site two days later. Philips's BDP9000 player--a virtual twin of the Samsung BD-P1000--had a firmware fix released the same day as Samsung's, but the company took some time to get the word out.

"There's an established process within Samsung for checking compatibility with our players and new discs," says Samsung marketing manager Maria Colon. "We [work in] close collaboration with the studios, so we can address issues. It's our job to upgrade the players so that they're compatible with the enhanced capabilities of the discs. It's an evolving technology. There may be some hiccups along the way. For Pirates, as soon as we found out there was an issue, we worked with the studio to come up with an upgrade."

Samsung's proactive approach to the issue means consumers should know what to do as soon as they get the player home.

Moreover, "we're working with our retailers to fix players that are out in inventory now," Colon reports. "We'll provide a one-sheet explanation of how to perform the upgrade, and a CD in the box; or, users can download it from the Web and burn it to CD." By the time the firmware update for Pirates came out, Colon adds, the fix had already been added to newly shipping players.

Shortly before the time Pirates came out, Sony had released an update for its BDP-S1, but even so the player reportedly had issues with the Pirates discs. The issues weren't resolved until the company released its firmware version 2.0 nearly three weeks later.

Pioneer's BDP-HD1 could play Pirates, but reportedly it was slow to load the discs. The company shipped new firmware the first week of June. Says Pioneer's Chris Walker: "We added a load-in-progress bar so you don't just get a black screen while loading an intensive Java disc, like Pirates of the Caribbean or Chicken Little. We also rewrote our Java engine to make Java titles run faster, and we've increased how quickly titles load, as well. Our number one priority is disc compatibility. We'd been working with Pirates for a while, which is why we had a fix so close to the release date."

Pioneer actually held its update so it could finish work on its new player, the BDP-94HD. "This firmware should have been released the day the movie came out," admits Walker, "but we had to finish the new player's firmware development first. A lot of those features in the new player are now added to the current player."

Panasonic released a firmware update for its DMP-BD10 nearly two weeks after Pirates came out, though I haven't seen any reports of widespread issues with the Panasonic player. The company describes its update only as increasing "playability and stability."

Ongoing Cycle

And here, we've come full circle. Adding capabilities and improving compatibility in existing players benefits consumers--and such tweaking is necessary, given the fast pace and evolution of the new technologies. But how long can consumers expect the support to keep up?

Maintains Samsung's Colon: "We will issue [updates] as needed. If we update the 1200, we will update the firmware for the [older] 1000, too." Pioneer has a similar policy.

In these Wild West days of high-def playback, firmware updates seem to be a critical part of the consumer experience. As long as hardware manufacturers recognize this, and continue to offer support for players, consumers should feel confident that their player will grow along with their video collection. If manufacturers were to cease support for older models prematurely--or if they were to show a lack of willingness and readiness to tackle issues for existing players as they arise, consumers would have good reason to balk.

If you're buying a player today, look for one that has an active ethernet port that you can use for downloading firmware updates over the Internet. This way you eliminate the annoying do-it-yourself approach of downloading an update, burning it to CD, and installing it from disc--or worse, having to send away for an update CD from the manufacturer. All five of the HD DVD players that Toshiba produces have an ethernet port; so too do Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Elite. On the Blu-ray side, your choices are more limited: Just Sony's PlayStation 3 and Samsung's BD-P1200 can handle firmware upgrades via ethernet.