Netflix, Blockbuster and Pandora streaming are now being supported in Blueray players

Samsung's BD-P3600 is an example of the new Blueray players coming out with Internet capabilities.

the BD-P3600 comes with a standard Ethernet RJ-45 jack, and a Wi-Fi USB dongle.

It can stream media off connected PC although I am told it's setup is difficult.


But the interesting this is It now supports streaming movie rental from Netflix movie rentals and Pandora Internet radio.

You can read the manual for it here.


All Blueray players are required to support MPEG-2 Part 2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and SMPTE VC-1. The Samsung player also supports DIVX.

• MPEG-2 is the codec used on regular DVDs, which allows backwards compatibility.
• H.264/MPEG-4 AVC was developed by MPEG and VCEG. 
• VC-1 is a codec that was mainly developed by Microsoft.

Newest Blue Ray players now support what's know as Profile 2.0 also known as BD-Live.

Despite Profile 1.1 also being known as "the Final Standard Profile", the newer Profile 2.0 is just starting to roll out.

The reason it's called BD-Live is that the major difference between profiles 1.1 and 2.0 is that Profile 2.0 requires that the player have an Internet connection, usually via an Ethernet port. Although some Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players have an Ethernet port, these are strictly for firmware updates or playing video from streaming video from users PC's and can't be used to access downloadable content across the Internet.

In addition to Ethernet connectivity, the other major requirement is 1GB of local storage capability. All that means is that the player has to have some way of adding storage to the player, which is where the downloadable content is stored. Some players use USB ports or SD card slots to fulfill this requirement, while other players have some built-in storage.

There is also a Profile 3.0, but it is an audio-only profile, intended to be used with audio-only Blu-ray Discs.

Wikipedia BlueRay Player profiles

Netflix has been working with a number of hardware vendors to make them "Netflix Ready"
List of Netflix Ready Devices
These include:

• LG Blu-ray Players : LG BD370, LG BD390 
• LG HDTV's : 55LH50, 47LH50, 42LH50, 60PS80, 50PS80  
• LG Home Theater Systems: LHB953, LHB977
  
  
• Roku and TIVO - HD Set Top Boxes,
   
• Samsung Blu-ray Players Models: BD-P1600, BD-2500, BD-P3600, BD-P4600
  
  
• Insignia Blu-Ray Player: NS-BRDVD3, NS-WBRDVD
  
  
• Sony Blu-ray player: BDP-N460
  
  
• PS3 and XBox360 game consoles.

In addition Samsung BD-P1600, BD-P3600, BD-P4600 and Tivo support Blockbuster On Demand a competing service to Netflix.