Funai's DivX-compatible B1-M110 Blu-ray player gets outed
By Darren Murph 
posted Sep 8th 2008 2:38PM
posted Sep 8th 2008 2:38PM
Aw yeah, we dig where this is headed. Funai, best known for pumping out inexpensive wares under a variety of brand names, is evidently aiming to push its second Blu-ray player onto the market this October. Slated to launch initially in October in Europe, the B1-M110 will support DivX and, well, who knows what else. Oddly enough, the deck was actually outed courtesy of DivX, thus, we've no other specifications to mull over just yet. With the Insignia NS-BRDVD falling to $229, we can only hope that this unit becomes the first (or second, or third) to smash the $200 barrier.[Thanks, Anthony]
I don't get what's stopping current Blu-ray players from playing Divx. Its not like they don't have the hardware. All they would need is a firmware update. I get that they don't have the licensing... but that doesn't explain why they can't get them licensed.
DiVX is just a brand name slapped on top of various MPEG 4 Part 2 ASP profiles. There is no compulsion at all to get DiVX certified in order to be able to play DiVX content since it's just ASP.
The advantage of certification is that it says your player has robust and reliable ASP playback. DiVX is also a name that people associate with the format even though DiVX just popularised it and hijacked it as their own. Funai could have done without it, or gone with an alternative certification such as XVid or Nero and it probably have meant pretty much the same thing.
Personally I wish industry would produce their own neutral certification logos for ASP and AVC that covered various profiles for phone, handheld, computer, cinema systems and enforce them. The current situation with AVC is completely ridiculous since there are multiple profiles and multiple levels within those profiles. In addition some players only support certain resolutions or framerates, while others (e.g. Apple TV) claim to support a profile such as High but the smallprint say lists exceptions which means it doesn't at all. On top of that there are differences in audio codecs (AAC has profiles too), container support, maximum file sizes, bitrates, subtitles, alternate data streams etc. etc. etc. A proper industry certification is desperately required to clean up this mess. If they don't do it, DiVX will swan in and become the defacto standard and they will pocket all the money in the process.
Awesome news! It's a start.
Wake us when BD 2.0 is $120... They better hope they can have great black friday sales.
You can always count on somebody to make a "wake us up when" comment.
I think there are probably alot of people who this player will do fine for who could care less about BD live but are looking to spend between 199-250 for a blu-ray player to play the movies and extras that are pressed onto the disc. Why some people think an item like this will sell only on Black Friday is beyond me. It's great to see players coming into the market so early before the holidays at close to $200. Nobody thought that would happen either.
mntwister,
Well some of us were certain it would happen:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/21/benq-hacks-33-from-its-br1000-blu-ray-optical-drive-in-taiwan/
Yes there are some waiting for $200.... but there are masses waiting for $100.