Will My Blu-ray player play films in the future?

There is a bit of controversy circulating around the internet that early adopters of blu-ray disks will lack features of future Blu-ray disks, and although this is true some claims are being made that the early players will not play future disks.

Although the former statement is true, feature on some future disks will not be accessible on certain players, the latter is simply not true.

Lets put this into context, Blu-ray players have a profile, 1.0, 1.1 and in the near future 2.0. Features are categorised in these profiles so for example picture in picture on future disks are part of profile 1.1. If you have an early player that is only capable of 1.0 you will be able to play a 1.1 disk and get the full experience but you wont be able to access the picture in picture feature.

What impact does this have on the current blu-ray player owners? It seems for a majority it will have little impact. One of the reasons why early players are not future proof is that they cannot connect to the internet and so cant be upgraded, this is where the most popular Blu-ray player sold to date has the advantage.

By quite a large margin the best selling player with the largest install base is the Playstation 3 and this is a wireless device which connects to the internet no problem and has already been upgraded to profile 1.1 and the upgrade to 2.0 is just around the corner.

Good news in all this is that one of the standards being introduced for profile 2.0 is the ability to connect to the internet which means that any future upgrades wont be a problem.

If you have been a little bit of an early adopter and you bought a player after November last year then you are probably already set and any player bought then or after that date had to be at least profile 1.1. If you bought one before then just remember you can still watch the film without any loss of picture.

Early adopter generally know that by being the first person on the street to have the latest technology they will probably have an out dated device quicker than the guy next door who waited 2 years before taking the plunge.