Last week, Twentieth Century Fox added a layer of copyright protection technology – BD+ – to its Blu-ray discs, a necessity brought about because hackers had recently broken the digital rights management (DRM) software already embedded in Blu-ray DVDs.

However, while intending to out manoeuvre the pirates, the new anti-copying system also prevented consumers from playing the new discs. Some BD+ protected DVDs would not play on computers using software from Cyberlink, and two movies released by Fox with BD+ protection, The Day After Tomorrow and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, would not play properly on some Blu-ray players, including LG Electronics' BH100 and Samsung's BD-P1200 players as those players do not currently support BD+ copyright protection technology.

Samsung and Sony have both released firmware updates for their Blu-ray players, with Samsung patching the BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 to fix compatibility problems found in several movies, and Sony applying updates for the BDP-S300 to address BD-Java compatibility in movie extras. However, only the Samsung BD-P1200 has an ethernet connection, so BD-P1000 and Sony BDP-S300 players will have to be updated via burned DVD/CDs.

Story filed 19.10.07