Re: Paramount returns to Blu-ray...

Type in "red screen of death" at the AVS Forums and you'll find various people complaining about various such screens when things go wrong with Samsung players, Panasonics, Hitachis, and, yes, Toshibas, both high-def players and standard-def players. What's more, some readers have complained about their TVs displaying a red warning screen. So apparently it is not a Blu-ray-only problem but a generic term for a variety of problems occurring with a variety of equipment.

John

...but not those who own a PS3

I've never encounted ^that red screen on my 60GB PS3... anyone come across it when viewing a BD on their PS3?


-JIMI McLovin (the Voodoo Child)

So, Eddie, your particular worry is the red-screen warning on Fox Blu-ray discs that are not compatible with certain BD players until the players are upgraded with firmware? I'd say there are many such worries from many manufacturers on such scores. Remember, the Toshiba HD playerss wouldn't even decode TrueHD until they got a firmware upgrade.

John

I have an LG player and have not seen this red screen of death and I know a couple of the brooo-ray movies I have are new, so apparently this annoying firmware crap must be up to date on my beautiful LG (non PS3, non SONY) BH200 -- sorry, had to throw in my shill for LG since there's far too much shilling for PS3 around here.

What I don't get, is Eddie anti Blu-ray or anti SONY? Or is it both? Not that I'm trying to start an argument or anything, I'm just curious. And if so either way . . . then why?

no hendrix, cant say that i've ever seen that screen either on my 60g.

My son's Wii has never shown it either - so I guess game consoles are not affected.

tim,

i'm anti-sony in general because the company sells over-priced products and is always trying to divert the royalties flow by creating new proprietary formats instead of going along with the standards that the rest of the industry adopted (the memory stick being a good example).

blu-ray is a great example of sony's crap attitude towards customers. the format still has region coding, which means that content providers can still lock a disc to play only in certain parts of the world. there's all that firmware/bd-java nonsense, which has been defeated every step of the way by slysoft. all in all, blu-ray is a terrible format.

eddie

Another example of how Sony treats consumers

Last year Sony released a Sat-Nav (Nav-U92T). Pre-release articles stated that amongst other features it would have bluetooth handsfree - in fact photos showed the handsfree in operation.

When the unit hit the shelves the bluetooth had been dropped. The unit still featured the mic although it served no purpose and the Bluetooth LED was still present although the screen print had been removed and it never lit.

Six months later they release a "new" model which is identical to the old version except it had bluetooth.

To me that is showing contempt to consumers. They design a product then disable one of its main features so that they can release it as a new product six months later.

Now as a final kick for purchasers of these units they have announced they have discontinued all their navigation units in Europe including models released in January.