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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DrXym @ Feb 20th 2008 6:29AM
I think the last gen of HD DVD players was well engineered but I also recognize kitchen syndrome of wanting every last feature in version 1.0. It rarely works. Toshiba more or less managed it (but not without firmware updates for online content and bug fixes) but hybrids had a worse time of it and some didn't even implement HDi at all.
The problems for Blu Ray were amplified because it's not one implementation but dozens of implementations. Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, Panasonic and everyone else has to implement the same spec. Complexity breeds bugs and the more implementations, the more bugs. Simplifying the spec by moving out superfluous features and focussing on core functionality is pragmatic. New features can be added in subsequent revisions, as indeed they have.
I also think that the use of BD-J instead of HDi is both smart and daunting. BD-J is far more powerful than HDi by a mile. Think of all the games / apps that run on phones written in Java. Conversely content authoring is probably easier on HDi. I don't believe it's a long term concern but I can see why some early disks used the simpler HDMV rather than going to BD-J. This appears to be changing so maybe the tools are already improved enough. I even see it possible for MS / Toshiba to salvage HDi and pitch it as a runtime layer running over BD-J for authors that want to use it.