This year, I gave in and got a Blu Ray player to complement my first TV, and other than the hilarious-if -not-waiting boot up times (JVM!) everything has been working perfectly. The discs look great, they are no more expensive to rent than DVD’s, etc.
All was well until I actually splurged and bought a disc. I decided to grad the Blu Ray version of HBO’s “Generation Kill”. An excellent derivative of the book, and the latest work by several people associated with “The Wire”, which I consider to be the greatest television show of all time with nothing in second place. I was willing to support the series in its own right, but I hoped that by purchasing it might somehow help “The Wire” to get to Blu Ray.
So, with a few friends over, after waiting for my Sharp BD-HP22U player to book up, we inserted the first disc and… Nothing. The player refused to do anything, showing a dead black screen. When I tried to access the menu I got nothing, and when I attempted to advance the scene, the player showed that it was already on scene 4 of 81 and would not move.
I am not entirely sure who is at fault, the Blu Ray consortium, Sharp, or HBO, but it hardly matters. In front of an audience of four, I think I accidentally sold three Apple TVs when we decided to watch a movie on that instead. Sharp certainly did not sell any BD players that night.
I am now a few weeks into waiting for answer from Sharp about what is going on, and getting increasingly aggravated at the unhelpful responses. At this point, every time I insert a disc, I wonder if it will work, not something that one should be thinking about a high-end product. To save myself from an unsuccessful trip to the video store, I have been getting HD movies on the Apple TV whenever possible, which actually ends up being slightly cheaper due to some weird tax/fee from Blockbuster.
I have not yet decided what to do with the player if I have more problems, but I am seriously starting to doubt the future of Blu Ray. The picture and sound are great, but I honestly do not feel that my experience is lesser when watching a good movie on the Apple TV or a DVD. I hope they get it together…
