Blu-ray Compatibility Testing: Not Encouraging

[BassPig]

Today, I decided to try playing a disc that I created with Encore, a Blu-ray disc that my Sony BDP-S301 reads just fine, at a local Sears consumer electronics showroom.

They had three Blu-ray disc players:

Sony BDP-S300
Samsung
Sharp Aquos

I tried the Aquos first, but was dismayed to see that it displayed "cannot play this disc" after a minute of waiting.
The store salesman suggested I tried the Sony (which I thought was almost a wast of time because MY Sony plays this disc with no issues). To my utter shock, It produced the "cannot play this disc" after a minute of loading.
Finally, I took it to a Samsung player on another Blu-ray display on the end of an isle. That player did not recognize the disc either.

So thus far, 3 out of 4 Blu-ray players cannot play a disc authored in Encore. The ONLY player this disc works with is my Sony BDP-S301. Just one model higher than the one in Sears, and that makes the difference between play and no play.

What this amounts to is that if you're planning to deliver weddings on Blu-ray, be prepared to be doing a lot of refunds and eating the cost of a lot of blank BD-R media.

This is worse than I every imagined. I really had hoped the days of the Toshiba DVD player of 1998 were long gone. A 25% success rate means that recordable is NOT ready for prime time.

[setarip_old]

Just curious - After the dismal failures at Sears, did you attempt to REPLAY the burned disc on your Sony BDP-S301 - to make certain it hadn't been damaged on its journey?

[Eric69]

You it the nail on the head BassPig. Those early days of DVD are back. It really depends on the profile the player is and the manufacturer.

The players you tested are all profile 1.0 which are unlikely to playback BD-R/RE. All have no future updates planned. Here's a good wiki to look at:

http://dostudio.netblender.com/wikipapers/wiki_BDprofiles.asp

Your right...BD-R is not ready for prime time but things will change eventually. I wouldn't offer it to clients unless they are aware (in writing) the issues involved this early on in BD's development.

Here's an idea - do an HD DVD and throw in a $40 player for free :)

[BassPig]

Just curious - After the dismal failures at Sears, did you attempt to REPLAY the burned disc on your Sony BDP-S301 - to make certain it hadn't been damaged on its journey?

Yup. I'm playing the disc right now, and it plays perfectly. I transported the disc in its jewel case, which was in a pocket of my jacket. Disc is not damaged and still plays fine on the BDP-S301 here in the studio.

[BassPig]

You it the nail on the head BassPig. Those early days of DVD are back. It really depends on the profile the player is and the manufacturer.

The players you tested are all profile 1.0 which are unlikely to playback BD-R/RE. All have no future updates planned. Here's a good wiki to look at:

http://dostudio.netblender.com/wikipapers/wiki_BDprofiles.asp

Your right...BD-R is not ready for prime time but things will change eventually. I wouldn't offer it to clients unless they are aware (in writing) the issues involved this early on in BD's development.

Here's an idea - do an HD DVD and throw in a $40 player for free :)


Thank you for the link with the list of players and profile revision. That was illuminating, as it revealed that the player manufacturers have repeated the same old mistakes as 10 years ago, with no provision for burned discs. Maybe the movie industry pressured the mfgrs to make sure that burned discs never play, as it certainly seems reasonable to expect them to include this capability under NORMAL circumstances.

That's also very good advice about having the client sign a waiver. But such caveates are going to only harm sales of BD discs from event videographers. Who in their right mind would sign a waiver and gamble that the very expensive disc they bought is going to play or not in their player. From the client's perspective, it looks like a cop-out on the videographer's part--an excuse to pass off 'defective' discs with no obligation to support them. It's too bad this has not been resolved.

It looks like there will be a large number of these players that cannot be upgraded, sold this year. Very disappointing news.

[Eric69]

Maybe the movie industry pressured the mfgrs to make sure that burned discs never play, as it certainly seems reasonable to expect them to include this capability under NORMAL circumstances.

Thats the word on the street. Who knows the reasons?

I would still offer the service if I were you, just to show your on the bleeding edge. But I would explain to the client the issues involved first. I wonder how many event videographers have been burned in the last year or so?

[BassPig]

I certainly plan to offer it, but I'm reluctant to put too much money into authoring tools in light of the compatibility issues at the moment. It looks like this is going to be a long-term problem, because how many people who've spent $379 on a Blu-ray player are going to replace it in a year, or when they want to buy their daughter's wedding video on Blu-ray?

Among my colleagues, few are getting requests for HD output, but more than half are shooting HD now and downconverting for DVD. However, when I saw my XDCam footage on Blu-ray last week, it blew me away, and I'm sure I could sell it at bridal fairs with a good plasma screen demo in my booth. The concern is the show stopper that a high probability of disc non-play is in the cards for so many potential clients.

[jamos]

I certainly plan to offer it, but I'm reluctant to put too much money into authoring tools in light of the compatibility issues at the moment. It looks like this is going to be a long-term problem, because how many people who've spent $379 on a Blu-ray player are going to replace it in a year, or when they want to buy their daughter's wedding video on Blu-ray?

Among my colleagues, few are getting requests for HD output, but more than half are shooting HD now and downconverting for DVD. However, when I saw my XDCam footage on Blu-ray last week, it blew me away, and I'm sure I could sell it at bridal fairs with a good plasma screen demo in my booth. The concern is the show stopper that a high probability of disc non-play is in the cards for so many potential clients.

All those players are first gen BD players which may have issues with playing a burned BD without a Firmware upgrade (which basically is what your BDP-S301 is, a firmware updated BDP-S300).

It may be best to just author AVCHD format (many new cameras record in that format). Almost all BD players can handle that, and you most likely could easily fit a wedding on a dual layer dvd at 720p and get great results. And as always you can easily covert a AVCHD format to DVD for persons that do not have BD players.

I use AVCHD disks for my video and they all play fine on my PS3 and my Sony BDP-S500.


with the new live content BD 2.0 disks coming out most persons will have to either update the firmware on thier BD players (if there is a upgrade) or buy a new one if they want that feature so I would not worry about the players you tried.
The ps3 is now 2.0 compliant so that would be the best choice for anyone considering a BD player purchase because of its cost and upgradability (though its video is not as sharp as my Sony BDP-S500).

Also what burner did you use to burn the BD-R and what media did you use ? (I would suggest only using Verbatim BD-R disks) If you do not get a good burn some players may have issues with the disk. The best burner for the money is the Liteon (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106037)one for around 350$. the quality of the burn can not be overlooked.

Bottom line is for a while you will have to offer both formats dvd and bd (AVCHD). Same thing happened in the 90s when the dvd players started coming out (VHS or DVD).

[jamos]

What this amounts to is that if you're planning to deliver weddings on Blu-ray, be prepared to be doing a lot of refunds and eating the cost of a lot of blank BD-R media.



Just have to offer both formats BD (AVCHD) or DVD. I would seriously look at just burning to dual layer dvd disks using AVCHD format if I were you also since they are so much cheaper than blank BD disks. there are some tricks out there also using root stream files that will make the AVCHD disk look like BD or AVCHD if the player can only recognize one of those types. (ie some players will think the disk is BD others will think its a AVCHD but both should play it fine.

[kumi]

there are some tricks out there also using root stream files that will make the AVCHD disk look like BD or AVCHD if the player can only recognize one of those types. (ie some players will think the disk is BD others will think its a AVCHD but both should play it fine.

Can you elaborate? That sounds interesting.

[fico99]

You can author and burn your AVCHD video's (both 25fps and 30fps) directly to an 'AVCHD DVD' using Nero Vision 5 including menu's :cool:

Another alternative is Roman's tsMuxeR which let's you multiplex M2TS files, containing VC-1, MPEG-2 and/or H.264 video's into a complete authored Blu-ray Disk BDMV File Structure (without menu's), which you burn to a DVD5 or a DVD9 with the UDF 2.50 format. These DVD's are then recognized as a Blu-ray disk ;)

[Rodger]

Well....this settings work perfectly for me with my SAMSUNG BD-P1400:

--bitrate 9000 --level 4.1 --keyint 25 --min-keyint 2 --ref 2 --mixed-refs --bframes 2 --bime --weightb --nf --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --ipratio 1.1 --pbratio 1.1 --vbv-bufsize 22000 --vbv-maxrate 30000 --qcomp 0.5 --merange 12 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input" --mvrange 511 --aud --nal-hrd

Well..."WHO" or "WHAT" did the encoding? x264 by MeGui?

PS: Since BluRay is still very young and there are LOADS of incompatibilities with the existing profiles (see firmwareupdates of players - reasons!) It is no biggie if there are problems...Even if you use scenarist or similar.

I guess the most compatible results are the simple ones. Video via MeGui and then Mux+create blu-ray structure with tsmuxer.

[BassPig]

We shoot with Sony XDCam format here, so our edit is 35mb/s long-GOP MPEG2. Presently, we are testing with Adobe Encore, though Encore seems to like to take a holiday more often than not, so many projects have been put on hold, waiting for a time when we can do another import into Encore (which can take a full workday before someone notices the app is just hung and doing nothing).

The first two test discs that we made work very well in the BDP-S301. We're going to try BD-R instead of RW next, as some of the compatibility problems could be due to the RW media. The discs we are using are the ones included with the LG burner that we're using to make the burns.

AVCHD is a dirty word around here. :)