Posted by Ablang on 07/15/07 22:43

High-Def Playback: The Firmware Gotcha
As new titles become more innovative, existing players scramble to
keep up.
Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
Wednesday, June 20, 2007 1:00 AM PDT

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132991/article.html?tk=nl_texcol

We've all gotten a bit spoiled by DVD: We pop a disc into a player,
and it works.

The same isn't always the case for Blu-ray and HD DVD discs, though,
as early adopters are finding out. In this connected world, no product
is ever final when it's shipped out the factory door. Instead,
manufacturers are relying on firmware updates to keep high-definition
players current. The idea that the hardware you bought six months ago
may actually get new life every now and then has some appeal--no one
wants to own the most expensive doorstop on the block. But firmware
updates can lead to frustrations too, especially if you need them
regularly.

Of course, DVD wasn't always perfect; ten years ago, in the format's
early years, incompatibilities occurred. When The Matrix debuted on
DVD, its complex menus brought many a DVD player to its knees. And it
wasn't the first, or the last, title to do so. Many experts I've
spoken to in the industry indicate that such incompatibilities are to
be expected with a new format--and that, all things considered, Blu-
ray and HD DVD are not faring so badly.

Such historical perspective offers context--but not comfort--for
consumers caught in the middle.
Updates Transform Players

No question about it: Firmware updates can enhance your gear. Firmware
updates to Toshiba's first-generation HD DVD players, the HD-A1 and HD-
XA1, speeded up disc load times, for example. Pioneer and Sony have
improved their products' performance via firmware updates, too.
Sometimes a firmware update will add features--Panasonic's update to
its DMP-BD10 in April introduced support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD
Audio, as well as for Panasonic's EZ Sync cross-component operation.

Read the release notes for a typical firmware update, and you'll find
generic language indicating that the manufacturer is fixing a range of
issues, from bugs and glitches to performance to disc compatibility.

For consumers, the last point is key. Note the typical disclaimer that
comes with many HD DVD discs: "This HD DVD disc is manufactured to the
highest quality available. It is possible this HD DVD disc was
manufactured after your HD DVD disc player. To ensure the best
possible viewing experience, your HD DVD disc player may need a
firmware or software update. Please consult your hardware
manufacturer's website for the latest firmware or software version
and, if an upgrade is available, we suggest that you follow its
installation instructions. For additional info, please go to
www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com."

Many Blu-ray titles carry similar inserts. Look closely at your
player's manual, and chances are you'll see a proviso indicating that
not all discs may work on that player. Samsung's new BD-P1200, its
second-generation Blu-ray player, goes so far as to place a disclaimer
right on top of the unit that reads: "Please note: a) that Samsung
does not warrant (i) disc compatibility with new and existing format
discs or (ii) error-free playback in full compliance with
specifications of the compatible disc formats and (b) that Samsung
shall not be liable for any data loss recorded in your discs."

Huh.

Now that's a mouthful of legalese. And it makes a consumer wonder:
"What's going on here? Didn't I just buy a player designed to play
discs?"

The short answer is yes, you did. But in the blue-laser universe, disc
playback is a whole lot more complex than it once was.
Firmware Realities

A given player can adhere to the technical specification currently in
place, and so too can a given disc. Yet put the two together, and
sometimes you can end up with unexpected outcomes.

"It can be complicated. I'm surprised it's going as well as it is,"
admits Chris Walker, Pioneer's senior manager of optical disc planning
and marketing.

The HD DVD versions of King Kong and Miami Vice, for example, caused
error messages on Toshiba HD DVD players. A firmware update corrected
the problem.

More recently, Blu-ray's compatibility woes have made news. Disney
released the first and second installments in its Pirates of the
Caribbean trilogy on Blu-ray. Those discs, along with an earlier
Disney title, Chicken Little, did a number on several first-generation
Blu-ray Disc players (particularly with regard to the special
features).

Adhering to the technical specifications alone doesn't guarantee
interoperability. Notes Disney's Annie Chang, who shepherded the
Disney titles to Blu-ray: "There are different levels of what the
player manufacturers have to do, and what is optional."

Pioneer's Walker says it comes down to "interpretations in how
everybody writes their own software code. Every once in a while you
have a glitch. How the disc is expecting [code] to be executed
[versus] how the spec is implemented."

For Blu-ray Discs, the issue has often been tied to Blu-ray's Java
programming language, referred to as BD-J. All Blu-ray Disc players,
including the first-to-market Samsung BD-P1000, support BD-J. The real
trouble lies with the fact that players were created in a void, with
no real-world content to test.

"We're pushing the format," says Chang. "[Pirates has] really cutting-
edge programming." Once disc designers know what they're doing
creatively, the trick is to make sure the discs will work on players.
"It's a matter of working with the manufacturers to get their firmware
to play back these discs. It's the chicken-and-egg syndrome. If the
manufacturers don't have content, they don't have anything to
benchmark their players on."

As such, she adds, "there are early players that have issues with the
complexity of BD-J." For developers, that knowledge presents some
problems. "We want people to be able to play [the movie] on as many
players as possible. When you develop content, you don't want to go
for the lowest common denominator; you want to do something that
pushes the envelope and is compelling."

Enter the aforementioned disclaimers. For example, Disney's filmmaker
Q&A bonus feature on the Blu-ray version of Chicken Little includes an
insert mentioning that some features will work only on a Sony
PlayStation 3--arguably the most advanced Blu-ray player currently
available, given the game-play horsepower inside. "You can try it on
your set-top player, but you'll get varying results," says Chang. In
some cases the Q&A won't work at all.

Content companies such as Disney are getting heavily involved in
quality testing now, because developing a Blu-ray Disc today is more
similar to game development than to creating a standard DVD.

And when a playback problem comes up, studios alert the player
manufacturers. In Disney's case, says Chang, "we have a testing house
internally. When we find problems on certain players, we'll contact
the manufacturers of players, and we'll give them discs so they can
test out the problem. Then the manufacturer will respond and tell us
they can fix it in a firmware update, or there's an authoring
workaround [we could use]. If there's time, we'll go back and
incorporate those into the disc."

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.

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