Sony's first Blu-ray drive gets rap for not playing flicks

And we've been griping about Blu-ray delays in the good ol' USofA. Looks like the folks Down Under have it way worse, since Sony has just released their BWU-100A internal PC drive for reading and writing Blu-ray discs in Australia, 'cept supposedly the thing can't actually manage to play back is Blu-ray movies. Apparently they're blaming the lack of HDCP-compliant graphics cards, and the fact that there isn't any retail software that can play Blu-ray movies, just the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that ships with Sony's VAIO AR laptop -- assuming of course, that your Blu-ray content requires HDCP to begin with. That would make us wonder why Sony can't just bundle that same software with the BWU-100A, but we're clearly thinking with the addled mind of a consumer. If we were smarter, we'd realise the logic behind releasing products so saddled with rights management that they can't even play back the media they were built for. Luckily, Sony says they're optimistic about resolving both issues soon, and that for now the device is still 100% functional for storage (hooray), and can play back your own home-burnt movies as well (as well as Blu-ray flicks that are HDCP-free). All this can be yours, you lucky Australian you, for a mere AU$1,399, or about $1,075 US.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[biscuitus @ Aug 11th 2006 6:49PM]

whoa. lame.

[chkchk @ Aug 11th 2006 6:51PM]

What does this mean for the PS3? Damn you Sony and your arrogance.

[Juaquin @ Aug 11th 2006 6:53PM]

A thousand dollars for a drive that can only store data?

Wouldn't a massive multiple-terabyte hard drive array be cheaper?

[Guruboy @ Aug 11th 2006 6:59PM]

Juaquin it can also burn 50Gb discs. Do some research.

[adml_shake @ Aug 11th 2006 7:00PM]

And I'm petty optimistic that I won't be buying one eithers!

[kevin @ Aug 11th 2006 7:01PM]

Another Sony flop...I wonder if this sort of golden corporate logic is a scheme like the one in The Producers...

[eddy @ Aug 11th 2006 7:02PM]

Your sarcasm and wit is so funny and needed

[DidYouLoseASock @ Aug 11th 2006 7:03PM]

I am laughing so hard. Only Sony could pull off something like this.

[yo @ Aug 11th 2006 7:08PM]

This isn't a Sony flop...it's not like that many people are buying HD optical disc players and burners right now. Sony is a hardware company, software is an afterthought, and they depend on other companies to write such software. Be aware that this is the ONLY BD PC burner out there, and that there are NO HD-DVD PC players, let alone burners. What do you expect? With such new technology, don't expect the best from the first products. Sony is the first one to come out with a PC HD optical burner, why complain like a bitch? I don't know what the writer of this article was on when he wrote it.

[Chris @ Nov 23rd 2008 1:28PM]

Looks like you are the only tool defending the losers at Sony. Do you work for them?

[phatmuther @ Aug 11th 2006 7:12PM]

haha, unbelieveable

[Finished.Law.School @ Aug 11th 2006 7:16PM]

It will be able to play films once the root kits are installed.

[D_X @ Aug 11th 2006 7:20PM]

I thought HDCP complaince wasn't needed to play BD movies...?

at least that's what they said when asked about the PS3's High def movie output without HDMI

[shon @ Aug 11th 2006 7:23PM]

buying anything HDCP is just saying "yes" to the man.

[KC @ Aug 11th 2006 7:30PM]

I think it's valid if it was marketed as a backup device. Don't take it out of context and try to make it do something it was not designed to do.

[DC @ Aug 11th 2006 7:34PM]

I'm so old I remember when Sony was strictly a Japan-based company that made amazingly good electronics which just plain worked, always and forever. That was long before they added American executives who pretty much introduced the concept of "crap" into Sony's lineup.

[Mauricio @ Aug 11th 2006 7:43PM]

Come one guys... if you paid $1000 for ANYTHING. you'd want it to do perform exactly as advertised. Sony needs to get with it. If they keep pumping out crap electronics pretty soon people will start taking their business elsewhere.

[Booger @ Aug 11th 2006 7:49PM]

I'm so old I remember when Sony was strictly a Japan-based company that made amazingly good electronics which just plain worked, always and forever. That was long before they added American executives who pretty much introduced the concept of "crap" into Sony's lineup.

by DC

Wow! You actually know American executives at Sony? And what they have done? But yeah I think you are totally right. American executives dont pay attention, they prolly got the job due to being good golf partners. I mean really all the American executives would have to do is put money into software for Blu-ray, how hard is that? And I would also think that people in development would have asked for money for software development right?

[M @ Aug 11th 2006 8:12PM]

I did get one of these, but I have two good reasons to do so. First, I do produce HD moview that are captured in 1080p and this allows me to burn those files to a watchable HD format.

Also, at 50GBs, it also makes a great backup medium.

Sure the HDCP thing realy stinks, but its only because my monitor is not HDCP compliant. I can watch me own made Blu-Ray discs, which is why I bought it now.
M

[Jason T. @ Aug 11th 2006 8:43PM]

So what?, your PC DVD-drive can't play DVD flicks.

You need software, WinDVD, etc. to play them.

Only isssue is there isn't real software to play BD. . . .yet. Same goes for HD-DVD, and every other new format.

Basially, there still isn't a market for these $1,000+ drives for the a full fledged HDCP compliant Blu-ray software.

This is just FUD.

[Rex @ Aug 11th 2006 8:55PM]

"Um...let's see. How many more articles can Engadget write up that show bad press for Sony? Why don't we talk about how much the Xbox360 controller sucks or why you have to pay another $100+ to play HD-DVDs on the pile of crap. Or we could talk about the size of the power supply of the 360. Or the lack of quality in game choice...Point taken. Listen to some music instead and chill out.

Yours Truly,

Help Line
www.purevolume.com/helpline"

Just because you are a Sony fanboy doesn't mean you have to defend them every time something bad comes up. This has nothing to do with the xbox360 and the playstation 3. The point is, if you are going to pay $1,000 for a drive, you sure as hell be able to play the movies in that format.



Also, the 360 controller does not suck. I don't know what you are smoking, but i would like some. What MS is doing with the HD-DVD add on is making in an OPTION for consumers. YOU ARE NOT FORCED TO BUY IT. The power supply is huge, but its not a big issue. the 360 got its fair share of bad press with the discs getting scratched and the power supply being too big, so its not just one sided. It seems like a lot because Sony is doing stupid stuff.

[willyjsimmons @ Aug 11th 2006 9:16PM]

'Also, the 360 controller does not suck.'

Actually, it does.

It's too 'wide' from front to back while being held.
The analog sticks are crap for Fight Night.

But Carry on.

[Silver R. Wolfe @ Aug 11th 2006 9:22PM]

Leave the controller out of this and the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii for that matter. This is about THIS drive, not about anything to do with those consoles.

That said, it's a disappointment that it doesn't allow for HD content playback, but if you got it for backing up data, you are getting everything you could want.

[Arochone @ Aug 11th 2006 9:35PM]

Sooo...$1000 bucks for a drive that can burn a 50GB disc. Great. But how much are the discs? And even if they're FREE, I could get over 2TB in HDD storage for the price of just the drive...or a DVD burner and...um...how many DVD-Rs can you get for $950?

[willyjsimmons @ Aug 11th 2006 9:43PM]

Not that facts matter to engadget but here goes....ready

from sonystyle.com product page...

*Playback of commercial movies on Blu-ray Disc (BD-ROM) requires additional software/hardware not included with this product. Requires compatible high-definition display for high-definition playback. Playback of AACS protected media may require an HDCP compliant output and HDCP compliant display. Photo CD playback requires additional software not bundled with this drive.

Ouch.

Now remember, there are no laptops either.

Cuz in the Apple instruction manuals, they tell you it's a notebook.

Semantics are really a female dog sometimes.

[I,Robot @ Aug 11th 2006 9:57PM]

@Yo! Are you kidding? Honey… this is a Sony flop waiting to happen! You are deluding yourself to believe other wise.

People stop trying to blame engadget.com every time they report something that you don’t want to hear. They DO NOT write the articles, this information is ALREADY on the web. Just look around… and do your OWN research.

All the engadget boys do, is write little snippits for us with A.D.D, then allow us to blog and bitch about it all day, every day. So shut-up and say, "Thank You, I would like another".

[RP @ Aug 11th 2006 10:00PM]

this player is $750 at sonystyle...

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=vOEeeNsI3xQfmp_Vis0Uc5QHYOkiOcJAuQA=?CategoryName=cpu_Sony_PCAccessories_CD%2fDVDBurn_BlurayBurners&ProductSKU=BWU100A&INT=sstyle-SonyStyleRoot-homefeature-BWU100A

[Reg @ Aug 11th 2006 10:26PM]

> Well, it's a good thing that no one cares about those annoyingly-talking rude Austrailians in the first place.

A dingo took my Blu-ray!

I thought Aussies were cool. When did that stop? When that guy tried to feed his baby to the crocodile?

[Guruboy @ Aug 12th 2006 12:54AM]

"@Yo! Are you kidding? Honey… this is a Sony flop waiting to happen! You are deluding yourself to believe other wise."

A Sony flop waiting to happen? I repeat: where is the market in Australians? Tell me they hold a market share that's worthy of Sony's attention lol. Sony is doing what they can to fix the issue. This article is just so terribly written. A quote from the article:

"'cept supposedly the thing can't actually manage to play back is Blu-ray movies"

for one thing, the idiot used "'cept", and another, it's a completely misleading statement. I repeat, the hardware (what Sony is liable for), works fine. It's just that no one really cares if 3 or 4 Australians didn't do the research and find that thier player was not shipped retail and did not come with player software.

[KawF @ Aug 12th 2006 1:39AM]

Oh look ma! A bunch of cattle that didn't even read past the headline, how sweet!

So basically you tools blame the hardware for not being able to.... wait... what? You need software? Really? Shit, and here I thought magic made my computer work!

Go steal it, pirate that shit, write your own, or annoy the WinDVD folks bad enough to release WinDVD BD as not only OEM.

Did my DVD-drive come with DVD-playback software? No. Do you see me claiming that it should have? No. Why? Because I'm not a frigging tool like some of you sheeple.

I actually managed to find DVD playback software on my own, install it, and use it. It was really difficult, I had to fend of tigers and pirahnas with lasers on their heads and stuff to get to it, but I managed to.

And do you by some frigging chance miss that it's a BluRay Disc BURNER? It frigging burns massive ammounts of data on disc. That's its PURPOSE. It isn't primarialy a playback device even. Did you ever see a proffesional photographer complain that his camera didn't play back movies? I hope not.

So why would someone using a BluRay Burner to store backups have to complain that it doesn't ship with software to play back movies!

It's not marketed as a playback-device even! Wait, you mean that my $800 car is not made for offroad driving? Really? I have to buy an offroader for that? Now let's put another shrimp on the barbey 'ey!

Start complaining perhaps possibly when the BluRay PLAYERS (ie no burning capabilities) do not ship with playback software, until then:

Get back in the shed tools. Now. Seriously.

[Chris @ Nov 23rd 2008 1:37PM]

Okay genius, you post a link to the ever so easy to find software and then maybe people wouldn't think that YOU were such a tool.

[Mark Catanzareti @ Aug 12th 2006 1:48AM]

Well even the big boys screw up now and then. The thing that seperates them from the rest is that they rise above setbacks and seem to become even better.

[Fredus @ Aug 12th 2006 3:17AM]

"I'm so old I remember when Sony was strictly a Japan-based company that made amazingly good electronics which just plain worked, always and forever. That was long before they added American executives who pretty much introduced the concept of "crap" into Sony's lineup."

Actually it was America that introduced the quality control measures after ww2 that enabled Japanese companies (like sony) to become synonymous with quality.

[I,Robot @ Aug 12th 2006 3:31AM]

Guruboy, have you lost your mind? How in the hell can you defend Sony after all this? Just owning a PS2, with a couple of games doesn’t demand you show so much loyalty towards them.

Why wouldn’t Sony put the software in the box with the drive? That’s just stupid! Atrac is a piece of software, and they manage to put that in EVERYTHING they own, without fault. HDCP my ass, that is the lames excuse for piss-poor business sense I’ve ever heard.

For $1000 bucks, everything BETTER work as expected – WHEN I BUY IT, not 6 months after the fact. That has NOTHING to do with Sony love or hate, that’s just plain old common sense. Period.

Look I’m not going to go into a long-ass-list of the “Classic Sony hate arguments”, and simply say; That Sony is “betting the farm” on Blu-ray, we both know this. And if it DOESN’T pan out for them in the end, financially - They are FÚCKED!!! There ain’t enough “fanboyism” in the world that will fix it.

[Vilppi @ Aug 12th 2006 4:27AM]

"supposedly" this and "apparently" that. Hard hitting journalism surely.

[Andrew Fong @ Aug 12th 2006 4:34AM]

@Guruboy:

So a bad experience with a few Aussies in Thailand qualifies the entire country as a place full of mean people? By that logic, having seen two Thai tranvestites, all Thai people are gender-benders. You can make your point without sounding like a pompous 12-year-old.

[juv3nal @ Aug 12th 2006 5:02AM]

Until the compliant vid cards become available, the software not being available sounds like a total nonissue, or am I missing something?

[HDraogmir @ Aug 12th 2006 5:11AM]

What is wrong with you people. Am I the only one who remembers the extremely farfetched prices of DVD-ROM's when they first came out. Granted, they did NOT cost $1K, but at that time the price was pretty high, and considering the HDD limitations, the size/price ratio was about the same.
+
Remember when XVid was a luxury? Remember when SVCD's came out?
New technology is always met with scepticism, from the avarage Joe. Engadget should be delivering a hardware review, not a bash.
+
Who uses 64Bit MB's and CPU's, how about Dual Cores?
HyperTransport(Threading) took years of development and in the beginning, their uses were limited due to economical and software issues. Now, anyone who's anyone has a 64Bit workstation. But those technologies did not recieve this kind of childish mockery.
And another thing, if you do not like it, don't buy it. Buy yourself 2TB of HD, and then, buy some more, and more and more, if you're looking to be economically safe. But what will happen when you want to give your best friend the video of your wedding?
+
The problem with the playback is maily software and the hardware issues are with the motherboard and graphics card, NOT the recorder.

I salute SONY for being a pioneer(again)!

[Juaquin @ Aug 12th 2006 5:32AM]

Guruboy:

Of course I know it can burn 50GB Discs. My point is that a 50 GB hard drive (and any larger capacity) would be much cheaper per GB than this drive and blank media for it. Thus, it would be pointless to obtain this for the sole purpose of archiving or storing data. The only other purpose of BluRay is for movies, but it can't do this, thus making it a worthless piece of metal in my opinion.

[Sneezenogs @ Aug 12th 2006 6:34AM]

> Attention! There is no such thing as an Asian
> Australian! It's two different continents!

You fool! They *do* exist! You're getting confused with Thai Americans.

[TC @ Aug 12th 2006 7:39AM]

My DVD drive can't play back movies either, I need a graphics card with MPEG2 conversion and a software application to watch it on. Interestingly, the HD-DVD drive can't automatically play movies without the required hardware and software either. Most new CD drives let you play music straight to the sound card though.

[Jason @ Aug 12th 2006 8:54AM]

$1000 US buys a lot of hard drives.

[Philip Spicer @ Aug 12th 2006 10:01AM]

I used to be a Sony "fanboy", but after my recent experiences with a couple of their products and the DRM rootkit scandal, I don't believe they are anywhere near the company they used to be. Several other CE companies are now benefiting from my money.

[gspawn @ Aug 12th 2006 10:44AM]

Commenting on another Comment:
"Am I the only one who remembers the extremely farfetched prices of DVD-ROM's [...] Granted, they did NOT cost $1K"
Exactly. BluRay's price puts it in a new class of device- THAT's why people are so picky. What if you paid (in the extreme) $1million for a sports car only to find out that it didn't come with tires? Sure, it's a pretty simple thing to get 'em installed, but when you paid for "the best", you expect the little details to be handled for you.

Points:
-WHY ARE YOU ALL RACIST AGAINST AUSTRALIANS!? For the love of God, what did they ever do to you?
-Sony is indeed "betting the farm" on this player. Failing to provide software for a device that's the future of your company is not smart.
-Why release BluRay when NOBODY can play it? Even motherboards in most computers can't play BluRay regardless of attachements. Hardware requirements are one thing, but basically the entire consumer industry is not up to snuff for these drives yet. NOBODY can use these drives. Even if you paid for compliant video cards and cables and monitors, you'd still not be able to use this drive. Why the hell is it being released so far ahead of compatible hardware?
-And for $1000, you can buy a stack of external hard drives. BluRay makes a decent archive medium at best.

So not only do the players not work now, but they won't work well into the future (until manufacturers ship fully "up-to-standards" units), they cost too much, they don't deliver especially much capacity for PC users...

Not to mention Sony has already announced that the future of movies is protected broadband downloads, negating the need for storage altogether, and that BluRay will be a dinosaur as the company moved to the new format. So even IF you bought a BluRay compatible computer, it's still a waste. Quoting Phil Harrison:

""I'd be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive," he told Wired magazine - which means that we could have ditched Blu-ray in the next five or six years, grabbing games and movies by broadband instead."

[Guruboy @ Aug 12th 2006 11:07AM]

Ha ha people still don't get it.

The drive actually costs $750, it's just that it costs more in places where there is a lower market (kangaroo land)

If you can't comprehend the difference between a hard drive and a disc burner, you should just not post at all. This thing is for burning BD discs.

This first DVD players most definitely costed $1000 USD.

Like I and many people before have said, SONY IS NOT LIABLE TO STICK THE SOFTWARE INTO THE PACKAGE. As of now, all sites selling them are selling it retail with the correct software. Sony provided the hardware, that's their job.

[n2 @ Aug 12th 2006 11:25AM]

You can store the same amount of content with a hard drive and spend less than $100

[RacetrackOwner @ Aug 12th 2006 2:29PM]

DC, I'm so old I remember when electronics magazines did things like disassemble Sony equipment and point out that they used extremely low-quality components in some of their most expensive supposedly high-end equipment.

Sony has always been primarily a brand-image company. Quality has always been medicore at best, and usually far worse.

[Kuuchin @ Aug 12th 2006 3:06PM]

"n2 you are such a fucking idiot. Let's say you're comparing a 50Gb HDD to this burner. You can burn as many 50Gb BD discs as you want, and you can only have a max of Gb on the HDD. I can't believe you said something that stupid."

[Kuuchin @ Aug 12th 2006 3:11PM]

... since my comment didn't get added in my previous post... >=( I'll continue here...

You can also buy as many HDD's as you want. A 80GB HDD cost almost as much as a single 50 BD disc. And that's not factoring in the initial $1000 outlay on a BD drive.

[Mank @ Aug 12th 2006 9:42PM]

@Guruboy

"All this can be yours, you lucky Australian you, for a mere AU$1,399, or about $1,075 US."

RTFA, $1075 US =/= $750 US.