After taking a six month break, Fox returned this week, releasing
"Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and "Day After Tomorrow" on Blu-ray. While many have been looking forward to these titles,
not everyone has been able to play them back. According to High-Def Digest and Engadget, there are playback
issues with select players from Samsung and LG.
But while the discs have generally been well-received (our own Peter Bracke
raved about the audio/video quality in his review of 'Silver Surfer'), what was initially a cause for celebration has become an
exercise in frustration for some Blu-ray fans as incompatibility issues with some players have hindered playback of the discs.
The
most severe problems have been reported on Samsung's BDP-1200 and LG's BH100, which are both said to be incapable of playing back the
discs at all. Less catastophic issues (error messages and playback stutter) have been reported for Samsung's BDP-1000. The discs appear
to play back fine on all other Blu-ray players (including the PlayStation 3), although users have reported lengthy load times of up to
two minutes.
While many speculated that BD+ was the cause of these problems, they appear to be an issue with BD-J.
Samsung and LG are reportedly aware of the problem and are working on a fix. However, it is unknown when firmware updates will be
available.
