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Tuesday March 9, 2010
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 Will Samsung's 3D Blu-ray players actually play 3D discs? As of March 11, they officially will.
That's the question that arose Tuesday morning before Samsung announced its torrential downpour of TVs, several of them with 3D technology. Samsung also mixed in a BD-C6900 3D Blu-ray player, and answered the question of whether or not 2D source material can be rendered into simulated 3D (it can, according to HDTV analyst Zach Honig, but it doesn't look all that great).
The problem: the Blu-ray Disc Association hasn't quite finalized its 3D specification,
theoretically meaning that the Samsung BD-C6900 3D
Blu-ray player might not play a 3D Blu-ray disc.
EDIT: As of March 11, Samsung confirmed that its players are fully compliant. "The Samsung Blu-ray player (BD-C6900) has passed all tests based on Blu-ray 3D test
specification of BDA issued to date, and has officially obtained Blu-ray 3D
certification at the authorized Testing Center," the company said in a statement. "Samsung products that were
shipped to the US prior to receiving final certification are 100% certified and
do not require any modifications to play Blu-ray 3D discs." Original post continues below:
It's a possibility, albeit a very very slim one. Here's why:
First of all, Samsung believes its products meet
the spec, though the question caught John Revie, senior vice president
of display marketing at Samsung, slightly off guard when it was asked at
the Samsung press event. "We believe it's compliant," he
replied. "They'll meet certification as
is."
Numerous pre-specification products have been released
before, most notably the pre- or "draft-N" 802.11n Wi-Fi routers that
were shipped months before the specification was finalized. Those could
be updated via firmware after the spec was finalized. Samsung's BD
players, meanhile, have shipped with the ability to accept firmware
updates ever since the first player was shipped.
Zach also points
out the fact that most of the shipping players haven't even hit store
shelves, giving Samsung plenty of time to install a fix at the factory.
This all assumes that any changes can be made via software, but that
seems like a pretty safe assumption, given the history of the
technology.
HollywoodinHiDef also noted that Mitsubishi Electric
Corporation, Thomson Licensing, Toshiba Corporation and Warner Bros.
Home Entertainment have formed a BD4C Licensing Group to license patents
associated with Blu-ray technology.
Reporting by Zach Honig.
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March 9, 2010 8:48 PM
Wait a minute. The article quotes "HDTV analyst Zach Honig". Yet the byline for the article is "Reporting by Zach Honig". Is it PC Magazine policy to let its "reporters" make up quotes from themselves to cite? I've heard of cost cutting, but this does not pass the small test.
March 10, 2010 9:50 AM
@Tyrone:
No, Zach was swamped and sent his notes to me. It's a big 3D TV week this week... The quote attributed to Revie was written down by Zach. I chose to try and make explicit what Zach's contributions were.
He certainly didn't make up the quote.