What I Think

Sony have introduced a new copyright protection scheme on some of their DVD’s including, amongst others, Casino Royale.

The issue has been noticed by a quite a few Amazon customers, and the problems reported are the same: the DVD loads, then freezes on the main title screen. The player continues to try to read the disk, fails and then shuts off after 30 – 60 seconds. The issue affects both Sony and non-Sony branded DVD players.

Some of the posters on the Amazon discussion boards have been in contact with Sony, who have confirmed that this is an issue and that a firmware upgrade is required to play the disks. They have also confirmed that they will not be removing the new copyright protection.

So if a firmware update is required to play the disks, then obviously Sony are in a position to update their players, but what about users of non-Sony players? Are the likes of Toshiba, Phillips and Harmon Kardon expected to update all their players to accommodate Sony?

Having worked for Sony, I can fully believe that Sony are arrogant enough to think that the entire world should change to work with them. Look at their past history: the MiniDisk, XCP Content Protection, OMG protection, and most famously of all the Sony Rootkit.

Tags: Media, Technology

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 00:06 and is filed under Media, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.