"TrialAndError" wrote


| Samsung Blu Ray Player.
| Get message
| "Cannot play due to disk restrictions".
|
I have similar problems with a stand-alone
Samsung BluRay player hooked up to a TV.
It's fine with BluRay, but with some regular
DVDs it plays for about 20 minutes and then
turns off the sound and blocks the video with
a big legal warning. (That player also has no
light to indicate when it's on, which I regard
as an indefensible and irritating design flaw.)

It turns out the problem is that Samsung
partnered with a company called Cinavia to
add digital restrictions to BluRay. According to
Wikipedia, it's been required on all Blue Ray
players (in the US?) since 2012:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

What I don't know is whether all restrictions
are Cinavia software or whether that's the
only problem.

I get the audio warning. I've had it on a
number of DVDs from the local library and on
one from Netflix. Never on a BluRay disk, which
is *supposed to* be the only media affected.
I'm guessing that these companies are bowing
to pressure from Hollywood. "We don't care if
you have to break the players. Just make sure
bootlegs won't play." Or maybe it's actually a
plot to make non-BluRay seem undependable.
That wouldn't surprise me.

I'm hesitant to buy another BluRay player.
Personally I don't see a difference. We have
a flatscreen TV with BluRay player and a
CRT TV with DVD player. They're both fine. I
care far more about whether the movie is good.
I've never noticed a bad picture on the CRT.

To me it's like 3-D: The theory sounds exciting,
but it turns out that the mind has as much to
do with what you see as the eyes do, and the
mind does a much better job of 3-D than the
ridiculous dual-plane method of 3-D that the studios
are trying to market. Likewise, once I'm invloved
in a movie I don't think about how good the
colors and contrast are. (The other night we
watched Harvey on the flatscreen. Not BluRay.
The black-and-white was beautiful.

So the value of BluRay is questionable. On the
other hand, regular DVDs may get phased out. At
this point, most of the DVDs at my local library
are non-BluRay and Netflix sends non-BluRay.
So I'm tempted to just replace the BluRay player
with a regular player.

So the first problem is that the digital restriction
software is buggy. But your experience sounds
worse. If it were me I'd take back both players,
if possible, and get another BluRay and another
regular DVD player, with neither being Samsung.
I used to assume Samsung was a safe bet, but
they've been screwing up a number of things
recently. There seems to be something wrong
with the company itself. Last year they recalled
washing machines because the tops can fall off
unexpectedly!