Blu-ray news: some good, some bad
Blu-ray news: some good, some bad
Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
First, the good news: If you are among the small minority to have purchased a Blu-ray drive, or if you just like keeping tabs on format wars, you'll be happy to know that Sony's dual-layer 50GB discs are headed for U.S. shores. In fact, some of the discs may have already arrived: J&R Music now lists the discs as "in stock" and ready to ship in "one to two business days." Cost per disc: $39.99.
Now, the bad news: a Sony product manager stated last week at an event in Sydney, Australia, that the company's first Blu-ray drive for the PC, the BWU-100A, won't play commercial Blu-ray titles. You're stuck playing just your own recorded content for the time being, thanks to the lack of updated hardware and software. HDCP-compliant graphics cards aren't out yet, and there aren't any retail playback apps for Blu-ray drives that can decrypt HDCP. (An OEM version of WinDVD supposedly can handle HDCP, but it's currently available only as part of the bundle with a Sony laptop.) Add this fact to the list of reasons of why you should hold off buying a next-gen optical drive.
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