According to a news published at Ars Technica, DRM is causing again problems to end-consumers. Because of the AACS system is being cracked frequently, copy-protection systems in new titles are constantly updated, and this requires a frequent firmware update for the standalone player.
As reported at Ars Technica,
Two new Blu-ray titles that have just been released (Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Day After Tomorrow) have been reported to exhibit various degrees of failure on some Blu-ray players. Some refuse to play until after an interminable two-minute delay, others skip randomly making watching the movie futile...
After all these annoying issues, it can happen to see a red screen asking to update the firmware of your standalone. There is nothing wrong in update the firmware on a standalone, but it is really annoying if this procedure become too frequent (aka once a month when a new title is released).
Moreover, there are people barely able to insert a disc on the drive and press the play button on the remote (navigating on menus trying to understand where is the play button is a nightmare for these persons because it is really frequent to see menus full of "fancy" contents but totally unclear and confusing about the navigation), so I wonder if these people are really able to update a firmware on the drive (an error in the upgrade can make a drive totally dead).
After paying a so high price for a standalone (and for a high resolution screen... oh, wait: I almost forgot to mention the multichannel audio system), end-consumers will certainly like to have a working piece of hardware, and not all these hassles...
