Iron Man Bluray only compatible with PS3?

[QuantumFluxx]

Well today a bluray copy of Iron Man fell into my lap and I hunkered down to watch it on my father's BDP-1500 Samsung Bluray player. Inside the case was a piece of paper which stated the following:

This Blu-ray Disc is manufactured to the highest quality available. It is possible this Blu-ray Disc was manufactured after your Blu-ray Disc player. To ensure the best possible viewing experience, your Bluray Disc player may need a firmware or software update. Please consult your hardware manufacturer's website for the latest firmware or software version and, if an upgrade is available, we suggest that you follow its installation instructions.

Now the front of the case boasts about its awesome BD-Live experience which means its obviously a Bluray 2.0 disc. Now from what I thought I understood about the 2.0 vs 1.0 shenanigans, is a player with only 1.0 compliance will only be able to just watch the movie and view whatever features are on the disc, but with no ability to download extra features from the internet. This is something I didn't think mattered to much to someone who doesn't watch many special features on movies anyways.

Well I popped the feature disc into the player (it's a two disc set), and got the usual loading screen at the start of Bluray discs, and then just black. We let it sit for a good 5-10 minutes and the disc just would not load. We checked to make sure it was clean and tried again, still wouldn't load. So I dragged my laptop out, connected the Bluray player to the internet and downloaded the newest firmware update, which Samsung claims to have released on 08/08/08. I put the disc in after the update and still got a black screen that went nowhere.

So I then decided to try the special feature disc out, and it loaded fine. So I took the feature disc down to my room and put it in my PS3, and sure enough, it worked fine. I ended up having to drag the PS3 upstairs to watch the movie.

Now my main reasons for this post are as follows:

1. Has anyone else had this problem if you've recieved early copies as well, or is this a problem unique to samsung players?
2. If this is strictly because the BDP-1500 doesn't currently support 2.0, can I expect future movies to be this strict on requirements as well?

The way I understood it, people who bought their Bluray players before 2008 that werent PS3's are completely S.O.L. in regards to 2.0 compliance, and if this is the strict future of Bluray, theres going to be a lot of early adopter anger over this. I don't see how it can be plausible to completely shut out the consumers who adopted early. Now I'm not too worried about that particular model of Samsung player as it has the hardware necessary to make it 2.0 compliant whenever Samsung gets a firmware update out to support it, but what about all the people with earlier versions? I know the PS3 is the best bluray player in terms of future-proofing, but this can't be right.

I've tried doing some google researching but I can't find any mention of Iron Man Blu-ray featuring some kind of new features that make it incompatible with older players. Anyone else have any ideas or experience on the matter? Maybe find a news site I overlooked with info on this?

If this is the future of bluray, I'm glad I own a PS3 >.<

[TheIgster]

Well it had better work on my 1500 since I just bought the 1500 a couple of weeks ago and I plan on buying Iron Man when it comes out.

Don't really know what to think of this. Samsung does say that with a firmware upgrade (coming soon), the 1500 will be upgraded to profile 2.0.

[QuantumFluxx]

Yeah I just need to ammend my previous post with a bit of new information, when I did the firmware update via the internet it didn't download the newest firmware, it just grabbed the next firmware in the steps towards the newest. So I downloaded the absolute newest the 08/08/08 version 1.3 firmware from samsung and loaded it onto my USB drive, stuck it in the player and updated.

Unfortunately, this still did not fix the problem, as the movie still would not load.

I can only hope that Samsung has a firmware update coming out soon, as in their defense, the movie isn't actually coming out until Sept 30th. If they don't have one by then though, I think people may be in for some grief.

This may also just be an issue with the 1500 itself as well, just some wierd compatibility problem with it, whereas say a Sony or Phillips model may have no issues with newest firmware. I don't know, I just found it odd that the disc came with a warning about compatibility when I've not seen any other BD movies do this.

[TheIgster]

I've seen that warning with just about all discs I've purchased, so I wouldn't worry about that.

I won't be a happy camper if I buy Iron Man when it comes out and it won't play on my JUST PURCHASED BD player though.

[QuantumFluxx]

Yeah I can imagine. The only bright side is, if this is a 2.0 compliance issue, as least you and my father will eventually be able to play the movie whenever samsung releases the update that enables it.

The irony is my father originally had the BD-P1400, last years model which didn't have any possible future with 2.0 as it lacked storage space among other features that are required for 2.0 to work. I tried telling him about the lack of 2.0 and he brushed me off saying he didnt care about special features, which was a valid point if you don't care about them, so what if you can't download more? Who'da thunk they'd alienate all their early supporters by basically paper-weighting their investments.

[rfielder]

You mean a Blu-Ray 2.0 movie is not backwards compatible at all? That is just plain stupid with a capital "stupe"!

It would make sense if the 2.0 features are not available on an older player, but not being able to view the movie at all is a surprise. Not a nice surprise at that!

[O2B WILD]

Have read on this site, that Samsung Player won't play the new Iron Man BluRay. Well guess Sony won't play it either. I thought the disk was faulty so took it back to Wal=Mart and stood in huge line to exchange it. Brought it home and same problem.
If you want to watch the movie I found the only way was to go to scene's feature and start the Movie from the first scene.
It does take a minute or so for the scenes option to work, but be patiance it will come up.
Thanks for everyone's input on this, as I thought it was just me, and my player or copy.

[riceman]

picked one up at BB today (new shipment - they sold out after 2 days, along with FS across the street), plays fine on my PS3.

[Tom.F.1]

Irom man played just fine on Both my Samsung players.
BD-P1500 had 1 error, it paused for almost 2 seconds at the beginning of one chapter about 1/2 way through, and continued by itself.
BD-p1400 was flawless.
Both have the latest firmware updates.

Movie was pretty enjoyable, but then i've always liked comic book heroes.

[Eluder]

Tested Iron Man on my friend's BD-P1500 last night with the latest firmware, but not connected to the net. We just flipped through chapters since his TV and BD are only about a week old, so it was more like showcasing the material than anything else. No issues with Iron Man, but had quite a few with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which we watched in its entirety.

[Rooster14]

No problems on my PS3, updated to 2.43.