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Sony Releases Blu-ray Drive That Doesn't Play Blu-ray Movies

Now it may just seem like common sense to us (and we're not all that smart), but one might think that if you are the creator of the Blu-ray format, then you would make sure all of the Blu-ray drives you released were fully-functional, including the ability to play Blu-ray movies that you yourself created, right?

Apparently not so, according to Sony.

To paraphrase Ripley from Aliens, "Did IQ's drop sharply while we were away?"

First announced in Sydney during Sony's ironically titled "Experience More 2006" event, the BWU-100A PC drive has a fatal flaw - it won't play commercial movies encoded with Sony's proprietary Blu-ray format. To be fair, it's not entirely the fault of the drive; the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) used on commercial movies can only be decoded by a special graphics chip that is not for sale in today's PC market. Add to this handicap the fact that most playback software currently doesn't support HDCP (only WinDVD so far, bundled with a Sony laptop), and you've got a disk drive that is severely limited.

Why Sony didn't wait until desktop PC's caught up with their technology is beyond us. But then, when has Sony been known to make a logical decision in the last few years? After the CD rootkits, delayed and over-priced PS3 announcements, and all the Blu-ray missteps, Sony is quickly positioning itself to become the new pariah of the tech industry.

source: cnet.au

Posted by on August 19, 2006 10:55 AM
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Either you do not fully understand this field or you are a HD-DVD supporter!

The drive itself CAN play Blu-ray movies! Your computer does not have the necessary equipment to view Blu-ray movies. You need a HDCP compliant motherboard or graphics card, a HDCP compliant monitor and a Blu-ray decoding software. How can you blame Sony for being ahead of everyone? This news title is inaccurate and misleading. But, I guess that was the purpose!

-- Posted by: Wellinformed at August 19, 2006 5:16 PM

I believe I stated that in the article.

-- Posted by: Perrin at August 19, 2006 5:34 PM

The BWU-100A is a Blu-Ray BURNER, it is not intended to be a movie player.
As a burner, it is completely viable to a large audience, seing as it support 50Gb discs.
But I guess you were only trying to pick out negative aspects...

-- Posted by: sagarat at August 20, 2006 1:39 AM

yeah the new fad right now or the in thing is dissin sony i guess is this microsoft-sony sony-toshiba thing that forcest people to pick sides

-- Posted by: terminator theory at August 20, 2006 7:07 AM

Great... another misleading article headline. So many of these. And people claim to be professional bloggers, journalists, film critics, etc.

Sony is the company everyone loves to hate right now and attention grabbing headlines (even if they are lies) are good for getting some hits and ad-clicks I guess.

Carry on.

-- Posted by: David at August 20, 2006 10:55 PM

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