Sony responds about lack of Blu-ray playback the BWU-100A
Sony has been getting a good amount of heat lately, and the latest fuel to the fire is their first Blu-ray drive (BWU-100A) inability to playback commercial Blu-ray discs. A representative has been in contact with us and issued a statement on why this drive cannot play Blu-ray titles -- yet. The main point that this rep made is that they didn't think that the target market had any interest on playing back these titles but there is nothing wrong with the drive; it simply didn't ship with everything need to playback media. The drive is a recorder and shipped with everything need to record Blu-ray media though. Apparently, Sony is taking HDCP very seriously and is making sure that the systems that this drive is installed in is compliant before playback can be achieved.
There could be more here then Sony is letting on, but their full statement to us is after the jump.
The Sony BWU100A released last week in Australia is an internal Blu-ray Disc Rewritable Drive designed for storage and authoring personal High Definition video content to BD. This product is separate and apart from the Sony VAIO AR desktop and laptop computers geared for consumers and launched in June in the US with a drive capable of playing commercial Blu-ray media. Regarding the BWU-100A, the drive is capable of playing back commercial BD movies, but there are two things that must be present:
A. Compatible playback software. Unlike VAIO, which is engineered to be an HDCP compliant system, the aftermarket drive may be installed in a variety of different system configurations. HDCP compliant playback software for the aftermarket is not yet available, but we do expect to have an upgrade to the PowerDVD software that will make it HDCP compliant before the end of the year.
B. HDCP Compliant hardware. Once an upgrade to the PowerDVD software is made, the consumer will likely need to upgrade their video card and display to HDCP compliant ones. When we announce the upgrade to the PowerDVD software, we will also provide some recommendations for video cards & displays.
