Swimming in the Blu-ray tar pit

As I noted in my blog yesterday, Blu-ray made the business decision to leave lots of features undefined, wrapped under a BD-J Java layer that can do pretty much anything...assuming manufacturers choose to actually do something with it. In contrast, HD DVD chose to standarize a lot of features up front, wrapping it all in a simpler HDi XML-based layer that is not as much of a general purpose toolbox, but allowed HD DVD players to roll out more features faster as well as ensure early adopters that they would have more consistency going forward.

With wind in its sails from the recent defection by Warner Brothers into the Blu-ray exclusive camp, Blu-ray's future looks a lot brighter. That future, however, involves a lot of flux for consumers, as Blu-ray needs to standardize the kind of features that HD DVD had from day one.

This means that players capable of being upgraded remotely (e.g. the PS3) have the advantage, while standalone players which can't be so easily upgraded are faced with being unable to use features in the latest Blu-ray DVDs (assuming they can still play them...which remains to be seen).

Representatives at the Blu-ray booth at CES told BetaNews that the PlayStation 3 is currently the only player they would recommend, due to upcoming changes to the platform. But Pioneer, Samsung, Panasonic and Sony have all been selling standalone Blu-ray players to customers.

This serves to perpetuate the dominance of the Blu-ray market by the PS3, which accounts for 75% of all Blu-ray playback devices in existence. That suits Sony well, though I fail to see why that would bring much cheer to Blu-ray's hardware partners.