Blu Ray Dis May

Blu Ray is the best, most accessible HD format on the market. I believe that. Films transferred properly to the format have never looked (or sounded) better. Take the new Pulp Fiction blu ray. It's beautiful. A few soft scenes here and there, but most of the film looks like it was shot last week. Of course, the format doesn't much change the movie (as detractors might note). All the things about Pulp that you love or hate (the endless and often profane dialogue, leisurely pace, the copious pop culture references) are still the same, but all the added fine detail really does make it more enjoyable (the stitching on Jule's wallet, which on the DVD looks red, can now be properly seen as brown. If you're a Tarantino geek, that little factoid is invaluable).

I wanted to see Pulp this way. And fortunately, unlike some other recent releases (Source Code, Trainspotting, Carlos, The Office Season 7), it doesn't use the latest copy protection schemes, so this was not a problem. But if you want to watch a disc that does use the copy protection, you might be in need of an upgrade.

For a standalone Blu ray player connected to an HDTV, the upgrade might be fairly simple. Check your player for a firmware update, install it, and off you go . On a PC, it's not so simple. Software players (Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra, Corel Win DVD, Arcsoft Total Media Theatre) need to have their security codes updated periodically to remain compatible with newer discs and copy protection schemes. But the catch is, most of these companies will only update the codes for their newest versions. If you have a copy of PowerDVD 8 + BD and want to watch Source Code, that's too bad. Cyberlink is only providing updates for versions 10 and 11. You will have to upgrade.

If you decide to pay the extra money to upgrade (at least $80 if the software is on sale on Cyberlink's website), there might be another problem. Power DVD, Win DVD and Total Media Theatre now only support monitors with HDCP (High Bandwith Digital Copy Protection) compliant connections. If you've been getting by on an analog VGA monito, too bad. You'll have to upgrade. And of course, an HDCP monitor will only work if you have an HDCP compliant video card. So if your card doesn't have at least a DVI connection on it, too bad. You'll have to upgrade. If you tried the aforementioned firmware upgrade on your standalone blu ray player and it didn't work, too bad. You'll have to upgrade.

This can all become a huge headache.  All you want to do is watch your freakin' movie. You purchased it legally, you have no intent of putting it up on a torrent or selling it as a bootleg. So why should you be forced to jump through hoops? Piracy is the primary issue, but Sony's solutions for the format do nothing to prevent it. Software exists that allows you to easily strip a disc of its security and watch a perfect copy of the disc straight from your hard drive. From there, those without moral qualms can do as they please with it.

So what we have is a great format bound by unnecessary and utterly useless red tape. The question becomes, where do we go from here?