First Blue-ray Drive For PC Will Not Play Movies

Sony officially announced their BWU-100A Blue-ray drive for desktop PC’s yesterday, acknowledging that they will not play commercial Blue-ray movies.

Yesterday at the “Experience More 2006” event in Sydney, Sony announced the first Blue-ray player for desktop PC’s will not allow playback of retail Blue-ray movies due to the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) encryption on the discs. There are currently no HDCP-compliant video cards on the market that can decrypt the code. Even if there were, there is no playback software available to purchase that can decrypt HDCP either.

Sony is hopeful that they will resolve the issues soon and reminds Austrailians looking to spend roughly $1,072 US dollars on the unit that it’s still good for backup and storage. End users will also be able to create and distribute their own (non-encrypted) Blue-ray movies.