Let me get this straight - you would rather treat the machine as obsolete and not use it any more than extend its features by upgrading it?
I don't know what sort of Blu-Ray player you have, but both the ps3 and the netflix-capable thing my BiL has include a network connection port around the back. This strikes me as far superior to the old approach where you had to take a buggy or outdated device back to a dealer for a replacement, or sell/donate your existing model to someone if you wanted the improved model. Upgradeable firmware extends the life of the product you bought, generally at zero $ cost and requiring only a few minutes of your time.
As a kid I started hacking before I knew the name of the activity, because I liked finding out how things worked and was surprised to discover that many cheap consumer devices had the same components and functionality as higher priced ones, just disabled by a jumper or solder bridge on a circuit board. Later I discovered that many digital devices came with replaceable EPROMs and that carrying out the replacement required only a miniature screwdriver and a little patience. A good chunk of my career has revolved around selling or developing or consulting on making products more modular and user-configurable and arguing against the inherently wasteful approach of planned obsolescence. The increasing popularity of network connections on video players, DVRs, and consoles has been a big factor in getting streaming services like Netflix from concept into reality, since most people don't want to build video servers of their own.
I can see why you're pissed off with the blu-ray player that just won't play the disc; it's bad standard setting/QA not to have any kind of fallback handling. But your other player is upgradeable precisely so as to avoid this kind of problem. I bet that was even one of the selling points in the product description. I'm baffled that you consider this so much hassle you would prefer to use an inferior technology.
I consider it a waste of my time to pop a disc in only to be told the drive needs to be upgraded. Plug it into the network (because I learned that if I leave it plugged in the discs spend 30-45 minutes downloading crap over the network that I have no interest in watching) …anyway, plug it in, click upgrade, and 15-30 minutes goes by while it downloads and then does the upgrade. In theory.
If it was a once in a year thing, then maybe fine, but each of the last three BD's I tried playing required an upgrade. I went through the process twice, but it sort of kills the interest in watching the movie if I have to upgrade each time. Perhaps it was incredibly bad luck, but I really have better things to do with my time then upgrade a consumer device every time I want to use it.
I'm not the one treating the machine as obsolete, it's the media industry which has decided that the best way to combat piracy is to make its customers go through this stupid upgrade process (which may or may not work, and may or may not brick the player). And yes, I would prefer to use inferior technology if I can use it, play it, reuse it as I find necessary. I can burn DVDs once to mp4 format and play to my heart's content on a variety of devices.
Certainly, that should not be happening every time, and sounds like a QA issue at the publishing end. From what I remember of Blu-ray disc authoring, content has a tag for the firmware version it expects to see, but can be set to Require or Warn if it finds an older version present - 90% of the time Warn is more appropriate because while the disc author's firmware may be more recent the content doesn't necessarily depend on any features in that version.
I'm curious about whether these were all from the same studio or finishing house (a lot of video publishers outsource the disc authoring to a specialist company, if you are the sort of person who likes to sit through credits you'll see them come up at the very end). Chances are the publishers are not even aware of this problem, since it's not in their interest to make stuff unplayable if it doesn't have to be. Most producers are rather technophobic. I'm sort of curious about which titles were involved, but although I know some people in Hollywood it's unlikely that I'll be able to track down an answer about this.
Plug it into the network (because I learned that if I leave it plugged in the discs spend 30-45 minutes downloading crap over the network that I have no interest in watching)
It seems to me that your real complaint is that the extra features offered my most movie studios are not that great in terms of content. You do want to watch them (or you wouldn't have tried and been obstructed by the download requirement), but are generally disappointed by the quality of the supplementary content after you've downloaded it.
I don't really remember at this point whether they were from the same studio, filming house, nor distributor, nor do I care to dig into it.
As far as the network thing goes: I assume it's extra features, but don't know, it wasn't something I requested, I'd just clicked "play" on the player and, well, watched as it said it was downloading content.
Rather than finding fault with my walking away from blue-ray, could you explain to me why increasing the friction in the experience over what we were used to with DVDs is going to benefit the entertainment industry?
I don't know what sort of Blu-Ray player you have, but both the ps3 and the netflix-capable thing my BiL has include a network connection port around the back. This strikes me as far superior to the old approach where you had to take a buggy or outdated device back to a dealer for a replacement, or sell/donate your existing model to someone if you wanted the improved model. Upgradeable firmware extends the life of the product you bought, generally at zero $ cost and requiring only a few minutes of your time.
As a kid I started hacking before I knew the name of the activity, because I liked finding out how things worked and was surprised to discover that many cheap consumer devices had the same components and functionality as higher priced ones, just disabled by a jumper or solder bridge on a circuit board. Later I discovered that many digital devices came with replaceable EPROMs and that carrying out the replacement required only a miniature screwdriver and a little patience. A good chunk of my career has revolved around selling or developing or consulting on making products more modular and user-configurable and arguing against the inherently wasteful approach of planned obsolescence. The increasing popularity of network connections on video players, DVRs, and consoles has been a big factor in getting streaming services like Netflix from concept into reality, since most people don't want to build video servers of their own.
I can see why you're pissed off with the blu-ray player that just won't play the disc; it's bad standard setting/QA not to have any kind of fallback handling. But your other player is upgradeable precisely so as to avoid this kind of problem. I bet that was even one of the selling points in the product description. I'm baffled that you consider this so much hassle you would prefer to use an inferior technology.