Dragon's Lair may foil your Blu-ray player
Earlier this week, Dean Takahashi of The Mercury Newsasked in his blog, "Can anyone figure out what's going on here?" The question was brought about by the recent Blu-ray release of the arcade's animated reflex-a-thon, Dragon's Lair, as well as the unfortunate observation that it didn't seem to work at all on Dean's Philips player. He also experienced audio issues when placing the disc in his PlayStation 3.
We contacted publisher Digital Leisure, hoping to ascertain whether or not this was a widespread issue. While they were unable to replicate the PS3 audio problem, they did note that certain stand-alone drives may be prone to playback issues. If you're at all interested in partaking in Bluth-ray antics, this is the part you'll want to pay attention to.
During restoration and development , Dragon's Lair was tested on the following players: Samsung BD-P1000, Panasonic DMP-BD10, PowerDVD(PC), Sony BDP-S1 and the PlayStation 3. The use of BD-Java in Dragon's Lair is likely the source of problems in other players, as the Blu-ray Association's deadline for mandatory hardware BD-Java support (enabling fancy picture-in-picture features) was only recently set for October 31, 2007. "Due to the lack of Java standardization many players just aren't able to handle proper playback," says the Canadian publisher.
Be sure to consult your manufacturer's website and support forums before you purchase the game -- "There is no way to tell whether a disc will or will not work without trying it out on a player." Excellent. Future firmware updates for your player may improve your chances, but for now, getting it to work is a game of chance. And even if you win, you still get Dragon's Lair.
