Blu-ray drives don't ... read Blu-ray discs

Sony, one of the names behind the Blu-ray format, seems to be in trouble with the built-in BWU-100A drive, already on the Australian market.

The drive has read and Blu-ray burning capabilities, but its problem is . not reading Blu-ray movie discs, because there's no compatible program for watching movies with The new format comes with this drive, while Sony's VAIO AR laptop has WinDVD BD as a 'companion'. Another reason is that there is no HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) graphics card.

However, Sony seems optimistic about the possibility of resolving the problem soon and insists that the BWU-100A drive still works well with Blu-ray format movies because . users record it with this drive or movies HDCP protected.

HOANG MINH