CrunchGear’s Nicholas Deleon points out one of Blu-ray’s critical flaws: when you want to watch a movie, the system can force you to dick around for literally hours applying “necessary” firmware upgrades until it consents to play the disk.

Here’s just part of his hellish experience with one of Samsung’s players:

I decide to burn the firmware to a CD, thinking that would be easier. It was and it wasn’t. After finding the firmware on Samsung’s labyrinth of a Web site, I burned it to a disc. I place the disc in the player and wait some more. And wait and wait and wait. Fifteen minutes go by before the player pops up, “Are you sure you want to upgrade the firmware?”

Bear in mind that the poor guy’s reward for all this was getting to watch The Happening. Deleon’s final question — whether “Blu-ray will forever be hobbled by this type of nonsense.” — is the most entertaining aspect of the whole story. It seems almost a rhetorical question, as if we all know, deep down, that this really is the entertainment culture our children will grow up with. I do hope The Happening’s end-user license agreement came in under 57 pages.

Blu-ray player upgrade process is killing the movie watching experience [CrunchGear]