You may have heard of Blu-ray as the winner in the next-generation media format war set off by the advent of high definition video content. Now that the first couple of generations of Blu-ray players have hit the streets you may be thinking it high time to pair one with your shiny new HDTV, but you may run into a confusing specification: the Blu-ray Profile. What the heck is this beast, you might wonder -- and we're glad you asked. Step on into the Obsessable virtual offices where we'll break down the profiles and what they mean when shopping for a new high definition player.

 

About Blu-ray profiles

Blu-ray is an optical high definition format standard developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group of professionals including representatives from consumer electronics manufacturers, computer hardware developers, and the motion picture industry. In addition to the physical specifications of the actual disc, the standard defines and mandates specific audio and video codec compatibilities (a codec is a method of compression for storing audio and video efficiently with tradeoffs between file size and quality) and other required features. A Blu-ray Profile specifies exactly what set of those features a player has to support of its manufacturer wants to market it as supporting that profile.

There are three current Blu-ray Profiles you need to worry about in the context of Blu-ray players, one of which is already largely deprecated. Let's look at each profile one by one.

 

Blu-ray Profile 1.0

Profile 1.0 was the original hardware requirement for the first generation of Blu-ray players that began to trickle our circa 2006. Because manufacturers seemingly love to employ a set of equivalent and confusing names for standards, Profile 1.0 is also commonly referred to as Initial Standard Profile as well as Grace Period Profile. This profile essentially meets the very basic requirements for playing back Blu-ray Discs, and every player released supports the minimum requirements of the profile.

Profile 1.0 has been completely superceded by the next Profile in our list, Profile 1.1 -- any Blu-ray player manufactured after November 1, 2007 must support at least Profile 1.1. Although Profile 1.0 players are no longer being manufactured, you may occasionally find an older unit still being sold at a retailer or for sale used. Profile 1.0 players don't support some of the newer enhancements that the new Profiles provide, so although it's not strictly necessary to pick up a newer player if you happen to find a truly great deal on or inherit an older unit, be aware that newer movies may contain some features your player won't actually be able to take advantage of.

 

Blu-ray Profile 1.1

Here again we have overlapping terminology, with Profile 1.1 being synonymous with both Final Standard Profile and Bonus View. All new Blu-ray players manufactured today must support at least the Bonus View feature set. The biggest takeaway point from Profile 1.1 is that it adds support for something called picture-in-picture or PiP, typically used to present a small window of video commentary in the corner on top of the main playback, often for director or actor commentary and other special features. In order to enable this, the Bonus View specification mandates a secondary set of video and audio decoders to play back the second smaller video while the main video plays in the background. The spec also includes a small amount of local storage capability, 256 MB, to accommodate storage and playback of the special features.

If you have an older Blu-ray player that doesn't support Profile 1.1, you can still play back any newer movies that include PiP features -- you simply won't be able to access those features on your player. To summarize the requirements of Profile 1.1:

• 256 MB local storage capability
• secondary video decoder
• secondary audio decoder
• a virtual file system to accommodate logical access to the local storage area

 

Blu-ray Profile 2.0

Profile 2.0 is also known as BD-Live, and is an optional standard. Whereas Profile 1.1 is the mandatory base specification for new players and all manufacturers must support it in their devices, BD-Live is still purely optional and it's not entirely likely it will be made the new base specification any time soon. The major differentiation point of Profile 2.0 is that it requires an internet connection (usually via onboard Ethernet port), allowing a number of interactive features to become possible when playing back Blu-ray discs. The specification also bumps up the local storage requirement from 256 MB to 1 GB to accommodate enough storage space to hold the downloaded content, and supports picture-in-picture functionality just as with Profile 1.1.

Profile 2.0 support is still fairly nascent, and although the motion picture industry is touting BD-Live as ushering in a host of great new interactive content with your Blu-ray movies, the interactive special feature offerings from movie studios to date haven't been much to write home about -- yet. The format is still so new that disc makers haven't had much time to wrap their heads around it quite yet, but we expect to see some interesting and innovative ideas manifest themselves eventually. To summarize the requirements of Profile 2.0:

• 1 GB local storage capability
• internet connection (Ethernet or WiFi)
• secondary video decoder
• secondary audio decoder
• a virtual file system to accommodate logical access to the local storage area

 

Which should I get?

If you're currently on the market for a Blu-ray player and want to be as future proof as possible, it's definitely worth a look at players that support Profile 2.0 such as the attractively-priced Sony BDP-S550, the Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD, or the Sony PlayStation 3 which received a firmware update to BD-Live on March 24, 2008.

If you're not the kind of person who gets wowed about the special features on the movies you watch now, then considering a Profile 1.1-compliant Blu-ray player is a completely reasonable option. Prices continue to fall on these players and some may be too tempting to pass up, even if you may miss out on some of the extra downloadable content rolling out in the near near future. Keep in mind you'll still be able to watch the new movies with BD-Live features in your Profile 1.1 player -- you just won't be able to access the special interactive content. If that's something that doesn't bother you whatsoever, you might indeed opt for a great deal on a Profile 1.1 player in clear conscience.

[Header image credit: DeclanTM]

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