Dear 20th Century Fox, Amazon and LG
I am writing an open letter to all three companies as I have no real idea who is responsible or who is to blame and I am unsure of how this can be resolved.
For Christmas I received The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Blu-Ray, this had been purchased from Amazon.
I unwrapped the Blu-Ray and put it into my LG BD360-P Blu-Ray player. However it did not play, I got an error message saying “Check Disk”. I did check the disk, and there did not appear to be a physical issue with the disk.
I checked the firmware on my LG Blu-Ray player and it was up to date. I also turned everything off and back on. Still no joy, I was still getting the “Check Disk” error.
I did a Google search and it was apparent that I wasn’t alone, other people were having the same issue with the same Blu-Ray disk and the same LG Blu-Ray player. According the online information the problem is with the encryption used by 20th Century Fox on The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Blu-Ray disk, this means that my Blu-Ray player can’t read the disk.
As a result I am now unsure and confused about what I can do as a consumer.
As far as Amazon are concerned there is no fault with the disk and probably wouldn’t accept a return this long after purchase and the wrapping has been removed.
20th Century Fox won’t replace the disk with one that works, as far as they concerned the disk isn’t faulty and they would only replace it with the same disk with the same encryption issues. They will probably blame the Blu-Ray player manufacturer.
As for LG, they are no longer updating the firmware for what is now quite an old Blu-Ray player and would probably point me back to the company that released the disk.
So the end result is I have no idea where to go and I have a Blu-Ray of a film I am unable to watch.
Kind Regards
James Clay
So do you have any idea? Maybe I should have bought it on iTunes.
Return under sale of goods act as unfit for purpose rather than faulty? It’s going to be unlikely as they’ll be small print I’m sure.
Unfortunately, yet again, DRM acts to annoy legitimate customers while still doing nothing really to prop up sales. Ever since the first simple copy protection mechanisms on software in the 80s, the only people who really benefit from DRM are the people who sell the myth that it is necessary to the content makers. I will guarantee that there are perfect copies of this movie available online for the unscrupulous to copy and yet legitimate customers are the only ones who have the issues – even on working players, DRM slows down disk loading, and the interminable intro videos telling you not to copy things which can’t be skipped (and which also lie and call copying a crime – it’s not, it’s a tort – a breach of contract) etc.
Ecentually the movie industry will catch up with the music industry and drop DRM I’m sure, but until then, things like this will continue to happen and only the good customers will be affected.
What annoys me the most about the ” interminable intro videos telling you not to copy things” is that they appear on the films I have purchased legitimately, that I have not copied or downloaded, the films I have paid for. What impact do they think it will have on consumers who have bought the DVD or Blu-Ray? Probably they will get so annoyed by the intro it will force them into downloading a copy that doesn’t have them…