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Reader SurveyFormat Wars: HDV Output, Part 2
Oct 22, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Burning to Blu-ray
This article describes the hardware and software options for authoring and producing Blu-ray Discs to recordable media. In our last installment, I discussed these options for HD DVD videos, and compared Blu-ray to HD DVD from the perspective of the HDV producer.
While all HD DVD discs produced by sub-$1,000 authoring programs are identical, there are three types of Blu-ray Discs, and different players may support all three types—or, more usually, a subset of the three. Sometimes, players seem to change their playback characteristics, almost at random.
For example, I produced my first Blu-ray Disc in December 2006 with Sonic Solutions DVDit Pro HD and a Pioneer BDR-101A, and it played perfectly on a loaner Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player that Sonic had provided. I liked the combination so well that when I sent the Samsung unit back, I bought another, only to find that the disc no longer played. In the interim, Samsung had “upgraded” the player firmware, excluding the type of disc that DVDit produced.
To get the disc to play, I had to find and install an older version of the firmware. It was right about then that I realized that Samsung, and other large Blu-ray set top vendors had their eyes focused solely on the consumer mass market and couldn't care less about smaller producers who were using their products primarily to play recordable media. This means that while you can certainly produce Blu-ray Discs, you need to know and control the playback environment much more closely than with HD DVD. Hopefully, this will become less important over time, but if you want your Blu-ray Disc to play on your customer’s player, you better pay attention.
