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If Blu-ray is the winner, I'd hate to see the loser
Submitted by Steve Nelson on Fri, 2008-03-21 11:49.
blu-ray | consumer experience | Technology
It’s been a while since I’ve been as disappointed in a consumer electronics product as I am with my new Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc Player.
The setup was smooth, and the picture is great – really great.
However: I have certain usability expectations in upgrading from an older standard DVD player, especially given that this is a second generation Blu-ray player. From the “Powered by Java” on the box and the 4 page GNU license in the manual, this is a computer in a DVD player enclosure and doesn’t do a whole lot to hide that fact.
It takes about 3 minutes to boot this particular computer when I hit the power-on, and then another minute or so before I can watch a movie. It also seems to power itself off after being in pause for a bit – helping to keep us green I guess. But it doesn’t remember where I was in the movie, so coming back in the room after a phone call, it takes another 4 minutes to reboot the “computer” and use chapter search (once I’m allowed to do that) to get to approximately where I left off.
Maybe I need to RTFM, but unfortunately, it really is a FM. It looks like it was written circa 1988, and it’s one of those manuals where you wonder why they left 2/3 of the relevant info out of the manual, and then 2/3 of what’s left can’t be found in the index. At least it’s replete with notes that say essentially, “This may not work”.
My guess is that the format wars caused everyone to be a bit too hasty in product development and rollout because it shows.
[updated in the comments - Nov 23, 2008]
It's not getting any better for me
Though I'd gotten used to the boot-up time of the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc Player, it really got bad on me last night while watching Wall-E. Twice the system hung: unresponsive-to-buttons-on-the-remote-or-front-panel hung, have-to-pull-the-power-plug hung. The second time I decided not to go through the 10 minute reboot sequence to watch the rest of the movie, so back in the sleeve to NetFlix it went.
Then I noticed this on the NetFlix sleeve: "Problem playing your Blu-ray Disc? If this Blu-ray Disc is unplayable, get an immediate replacement Blu-ray Disc by visiting: netflix.com/replacement. We're sorry if you've been inconvenienced."
This tells me that I'm not the only one who is finding out that Blu-ray is not ready for prime time.