Blu-ray Disc Association clear up October 31st deadline / BD-J confusion
The Blu-ray Disc Association has set out minimum requirements for Blu-ray players sold after October 31st this year, but has made it clear that this doesn't make existing players obsolete.
Melissa Perenson at PC World spoke to Andy Parsons, from the Association, to clarify the situation.
He claims that all existing Blu-ray players (and let's face it, there aren't many) already fully implement the BD-Java platform - the October deadline is merely the end of the grace period.
The issue is that new code is required to implement picture-in-picture and secondary audio mixing.
"What's caused the confusion is that BD-Java will be utilized to implement these new capabilities. It's not that this is a new version of Java, it's just the code that will be used to run these features," Parsons says.
So, whilst the hardware aspects may not be in place on older players (between 256MB and 1GB of memory storage), any software issues could be sorted out with firmware upgrades.
Current players may struggle with on-demand PiP commentary, and interactive Internet functions, though Parsons believes that these are not make-or-break functions.
So, early Blu-ray adopters will be able to enjoy future film releases on their players, but could miss out on new features unless they're able to upgrade their player.
