First Blu-ray Recorder Will Not Play Protected Blu-ray Movies

The new and first Blu-Ray disk drive released by Sony won’t be able to play protected movies that are under Blu-Ray format. Sony revealed its first Blu-Ray recorder, model number BWU-100A, at companie’s “Experience More 2006″ event this year in Sydney, Australia.

The recorder will only play content that is user-recorded high-definition from digital devices. The disk drive won’t play commercial movies that are under BD format. The drive will be released without its ability of movie playback support due to the software development and copy protection issues. Another major reason the Blu-ray disk drive won’t be compatible with protected movie because commercial movies are encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), and to decrypt that, a user requires HDCP-compliant graphics card which will enable HDMI and DVI connections. However, that isn’t possible because there are no computers for sale that offer graphic card which supports HDCP.

Sony hopes it will crack the issue and allow its Blu-ray Recorder to play commercial movies in future. The disk drive with each single layer BD-R will hold about 25GB of storage and it has a write speed of 2x. The Blu-ray recorder will burn single and dual layer BD-R and BD-RE disks. It will be released later this month priced at $750 USD.