Adventures in Blu-ray

Like seriously, media giants, WTF is going on with the shit media player devices you guys are making?

A couple of years ago, I owned one of the first generation Blu-ray players to come out from Sony. Great picture and sound, no streaming services to speak of (naturally - it was early in the evolution of Blu-ray). Unfortunately, it was very finicky about playing certain discs. I had the most God awful time getting it to play every Blu-Ray disc in my collection without some kind of issue. My friends chided me about owning a Sony machine and I brushed them off. I'd owned Sony stuff all my life without issue, but I had to admit that things were not as rosy as they used to be. I decided that perhaps after allowing Blu-ray technology to evolve a little, if I bought a slightly higher end Sony player, I would get better results. The reviews I was reading had me convinced. So I bought a newer, better player. Well, for the most part, things were better. No disc issues (at first). Streaming ability.

Then trouble in paradise. I'm watching a Blu-ray, pause it, come back and the screen saver is on. I can't get out of screen saver mode! Pause, play, FFW, stop - nothing works. Every time I have to pause a Blu-ray, I may as well start the movie over. Seriously? This is where we are with player technology? Sony? Then I'm re-watching a movie this week and I can't get the player to get past the ads, even though I'd been previously watching the movie before. I give up.

Read some more reviews, head to the store and buy an even more expensive Samsung Blu-ray player. It's supposed to be the cat's ass. IT'S EVEN WORSE! It froze during setup. It froze again during updates. I began to wonder if the batteries for the remote were dead. Nope. Front panel frozen too. The online video streaming menu options are horrendously slow. I'm watching Netflix and the streaming starts to slow down during a particular program (no fault of the player). I try to pause the show to give the player a chance to buffer some programming and the delays from my remote control button action is unbelievable. I'm getting really mad and try to stop the show. It keeps playing. I press stop again. Still playing. I try to get out of the Netflix app. Still playing. I touch the power button. Still playing. The player is going into shutdown mode (based on the front panel lights) and I'm still watching Netflix.

I pack up the Samsung player and bring it back to the store. I'm actually better off with the cheaper Sony. At least it works most of the time and plays Netflix well. I guess my life will now include dealing with disc playback issues from time to time. Although I have no proof, I am quite willing to bet the underlying cause.

DRM.