EngadgetHD is the first to report something we all suspected. Blu Ray players are not ready for BD+ DRM.

Fox has released it's first two Blu Ray titles after a long hiatus from releasing anything for the platform. Fox's The Day After Tomorrow and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer both use Blu Ray's proprietary BD+ DRM. According to the article, players will likely be unable to play the titles without a firmware update. The Samsung BD-P1000 was reported as being able to play the new discs after a long delay, but the newer Samsung BD-P1200 was unable to play the discs at all, giving a firmware update necessary screen on both discs. There is at this time no firmware available for the BD-P1200 to remedy this situation. It is unknown at this time how players from other manufacturers will fare with these titles. Both Disney and Fox claim BD+ as one of the pillars of their preference of Blu Ray over competing HD DVD. I doubt the Blu Ray consumer would agree at this point.

I imagine this is just the first of many reports on how Blu Ray's unfinished specification is negatively affecting Blu Ray player owners as BD+ and BD-J begin to be implemented in disc releases.

WesleyTech.com is reporting that Samsung has cancelled their new flagship Blu Ray player, the BDP-2400.

According to WesleyTech, there is no explanation for the cancellation. They also note that the forthcoming Samsung combo player, the BD-UP5000, has been postponed until December. Since Blu Ray specifications are in a state of flux, one can easily jump to the conclusion that Samsung was unable to release either unit within the time window necessary to include the Blu Ray Profile the units were designed to implement. We'll see if that ends up being the case, or whether Samsung is scaling back their Blu Ray support in favor of a combo player focus that eschews partisan players altogether.

According to this thread on AVSForum, the Samsung BDP-1400 is the first Blu Ray or HD DVD player capable of sending compressed audio via bitstream over the HDMI connection.

Previously, all Blu Ray and HD DVD players would decode Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD and output them as LPCM via the HDMI connection. The only problem with this is that no player as yet decodes DTS-HD or the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. For the new variants of DTS, Blu Ray and HD DVD players extract the core DTS track only. Now that AV receivers and pre/pros are beginning to appear that feature onboard decoding of these new codecs, Samsung is the first to offer users the option of sending uncompressed Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver or pre/pro to decode.

The Samsung BDP-1400 Blu Ray player is available now, and has a suggested retail of $499.

Colorado based brick and mortar AV retailer Listen Up has posted an interview with Denon's Jeff Talmadge, Director of Product Development and Systems Integration.

In the interview Talmadge discusses the forthcoming Denon Blu Ray players, and states that Denon is committed to supporting both Blu Ray and HD DVD, and that a combo player ranks very highly on their list of priorities. However, of particular interest is when Talmadge lets it slip that Profile 1.1 Blu Ray discs may not play properly in Profile 1.0 players. All players and discs starting October 2007 will adhere to Blu Ray Profile 1.1.

To date all Blu Ray players are Profile 1.0, and unlike HD DVD, not all Blu Ray players are equipped with ethernet for firmware updates. If the hundreds of thousands of Blu Ray players now installed are unable to properly play discs that are manufactured after October this is a big deal. Three words: Class action lawsuit.

While it's been public knowledge that Profile 1.0 players would be unable to utilize Blu Ray's BD-J interactive features once they are implemented, if Talmadge is correct the troubled format may have even bigger problems ahead of it.