First Interactive Blu-Ray 2.0 Discs Soon

[Oddmaker]

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is targeting April 8 as the date it will release its first batch of Blu-ray Disc titles that can be connected to the Internet for more bonus materials and features. The musical spoof “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi thriller “The 6th Day” will be the studio’s first two BD-Live titles. Their release coincides with the launch of a new software update for Sony’s PlayStation 3 that makes the game console the first Blu-ray player with Internet connectivity, an ability known as “Profile 2.0."
“Ultimately, all Blu-ray players will be Profile 2.0. When the format launched in June 2006, Blu-ray players were of the basic Profile 1.0 kind, meaning they could offer neither picture-in-picture nor Internet connectivity, something the doomed HD DVD rival format offered from Day 1. Sony’s two BD-Live titles each include exclusive downloadable theatrical and home video previews along with a FAQ about BD-Live functionality. “Walk Hard” includes three featurettes that star Bill Hader as Derek Stone, a historian and expert “Coxologist.” These featurettes are available only via the BD-Live download. BD-Live titles also have the potential to enable a wide range of Web-based features, including ringtone and wallpaper downloads, peer-to-peer interactions, live virtual events and gaming.More of the story over at Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2429776820080324).

[51|RandoM]

Don't care about the extra BD features which are mainly to sell more things to people anyways but maybe we'll see more in this update than just BD stuff. fingers crossed.

[bKangy]

Does anyone really care about this though? Seems like a useless feature.

[Flatpicker]

I'm so confused...
So Spec 2.0 allows you to connect to the internet and get DL content?
Will that also allow you to have the HDDVD type interactive content on disc?

[frederec]

I'm really not crazy about disc content that has to be accessed over the internet. Mainly because it will almost certainly be inaccessible in a few years for various reasons. If it's just fluff like trailers and such, that won't bother me. But I hope they don't keep good content on the servers.

[Rifter]

Well, it IS nice that BD, 2.0, is finally reaching the HD-DVD 1.0 standard... :-) I do find that kind of ironic.

[51|RandoM]

Does anyone really care about this though? Seems like a useless feature.

Lots of people in the HD-DVD camp cared about it at one point.

[frederec]

Well, it IS nice that BD, 2.0, is finally reaching the HD-DVD 1.0 standard... :-) I do find that kind of ironic.

Isn't it generally understood that Blu-Ray was rushed to market to compete with Blu-Ray? If that's the case, it would make sense.

[51|RandoM]

Will that also allow you to have the HDDVD type interactive content on disc?

Yeah.

The real reason 1.0 and 1.5 players couldn't do any of that is because they lacked the hardware. PiP is nice, but on a standalone player that means having two tuners(or whatever it is called in the HD age) instead of one built into the player. None of the original players went that route as they were already too expensive with only one. Ditto for network interactivity. Kind of hard to do when your player doesn't have Ethernet or Wi-Fi built-in.

The PS3 already has the horsepower and networking to handle the increased feature set, it just needs a software update which will presumably give or unlock the ability to run bd-java.

[Grimmjow]

Anything that updates something that I already enjoy is nice is a plus to me. Can't complain when they are making it better but of course someone always do.

[Yeti2005]

Couldn't they have picked better movies to introduce this feature? I am excited about what they can do with BD-Live. I feel bad for the poor bastards who buy a non-PS3 blu-ray player becaue their players will soon be out of date.

[beefyjr]

Well, it IS nice that BD, 2.0, is finally reaching the HD-DVD 1.0 standard... :-) I do find that kind of ironic.

Yeah, no joke. My paperweight HD-DVD player has done that stuff since I bought it.

I'll be interested in buying a PS3 when Sony finally manages to catch up to where everyone else started from.

[Rifter]

I'll be interested in buying a PS3 when Sony finally manages to catch up to where everyone else started from.

You know, I care a LITTLE about HD-DVD, since I have the Xbox 360 player. But, it cost me $180, and I got like $250 worth of DVDs with it. NOW, Best Buy is giving me $50 back. That is like $300 worth of stuff, that I paid $180 for. I HONESTLY can't complain too much, at this point.

I have always planned on getting a BD player as well, in the form of a PS3. :-) I get the console, and the constantly updating standard... seems like win-win for me.

[bean19]

Does anyone really care about this though? Seems like a useless feature.

Marketers. It's one of those "features" designed not because there is a need but because this is a possible new revenue stream. People rent the Blu-Ray movie and then they go buy the T-shirts. Sony probably gets a cut for the sales too.

[ElPresidente]

A about time. Those free little extras that came with HD-DVD films while not necesary were a lot of fun. The health bars in Transformers for instance.

[fitbabits]

I care, but I'm still bitter over the HD wars. I backed the losing side and it ticks me off because the inferior format won.

I realize that may be sour grapes, but it's how I feel right now.

[morose]

The interactive menu stuff in HD-DVD (completely with PiP for special features instead of dropping completely out of the movie to watch them) were pretty slick. Made it feel like a truly next gen device. HOWEVER, it's ultimately eye-candy. I spent a lot more time watching and re-watching the movie itself than I did playing with all the doodads on my 300 HD-DVD (for example). And I could just have easily watched all the extra stuff from a standard DVD format menu.

I do want to make a small correction though. Someone mentioned the PiP on the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs being like having PiP on a TV, and that's not really the case. You don't need a physical "tuner" for that stuff since you're just reading data off the disc. It's more like having Media Player open twice on your PC. Doesn't take two video cards for that, just takes having a software backend that can handle opening multiple copies of Media Player. HD-DVD had a more advanced/flexible operating system. Blu-ray is finally catching up, which is a good thing. Hopefully the Blu-Ray player in the PS3 is fast enough to keep up while reading multiple data streams. That's the only hardware limitation I could see being a problem.

[torrefaction]

I'm with the people that are slightly annoyed at the inferior format winning. All well. Gives me an excuse to get a PS3, anyway.

[Demo_Boy]

I think that HDDVD players were required to have two diodes so it could read two places on the disk at the same time.
Blue ray was able to do this by copying the movie onto the disk multiple times with a different PIP for each stream.

So you can see why Blu ray needs to be bigger.

[morose]

I've not heard of having two diodes in a non-dual format player (i.e. one that reads both Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD, thus requiring both blue and red diodes for the different media types). But I admit, I've never looked at the engineering specs.

[grognard66]

Yeah, sad that the inferior format won. This will only continue to reward Sony for releasing products before they're ready (PSP/PS3/Blu-Ray) and encourage them to continue this practice. Also more than a little ironic that Sony would elect to call this version BD-LIVE...

[Pluvious]

I think having extra special features only available online is a really stupid idea. Didn't I just pay $30 for the movie?.. put it on the goddamn disc!!

[The Ligand]

Yeah, sad that the inferior format won. This will only continue to reward Sony for releasing products before they're ready (PSP/PS3/Blu-Ray) and encourage them to continue this practice. Also more than a little ironic that Sony would elect to call this version BD-LIVE...

Your post seems to ignore the fact that the delay in the ps3 release was due (in large part) to Sony's making sure that it was actually worthy of being released (which, from a hardware perspective, it certainly was). One of the criticisms which people have leveled at microsoft was precisely that they did not make sure the 360 hardware was ready: they rushed the design and release so as to get to market sooner. It was still probably a smart (albeit very expensive) move to rush to market, but rush they did. The picture is obviously more complex than just these factors, but at least the ps3 from your list of examples doesn't really fit what you're trying to say.

[tiremfej]

I feel bad for the companies that have to raise their prices and still be more expensive and inferior to the PS3.

Company A: "We want to make a player cheaper than the PS3 with more features so we can make some money."

Company B: "Yeah, we do too!"

Sony: "YOU'LL GET NOTHING AND LIKE IT!"

Company A and B together: "Oohhhh...:("

Consumers Worlwide: "Yeah!! We're getting ripped off by SONY! SONY! SONY! They'll tell us what to buy even if it's inferior BS!! YEAH SONY! SONY! SONY! SONY would never lie to us would they?"

The Sheephearded standing around the corner wringing his hands togther: "Excellent" (In his best Mr. Burns voice).

[Wilkz07]

i watch almost all the bonus features on dvds that I buy. HDdvd did it right when they had internet downloads with their movies. Bourne Ultimatium had some like that.

i can wait until the profile 2 players come out.

[gzsfrk]

Add another voice to the "sucks that Blu-ray is just now catching up with HD-DVD yet still won the format war" crowd. But I blame no one other than Toshiba--they could have won the war in November 07 if they have released the HD-A2 at a standard $99 price beginning on Black Friday and onward through the Christmas shopping season. Instead, the cleared out the A1s at $100, and set the A2s at $180-$200. Seeing as the $100 players sold out immediately everywhere they were offered, that should have been the hint Toshiba needed. I'm sure that was selling them at a loss, but I daresay it wouldn't be a terribly heavy one. And it still would have been better than losing $4 billion AND losing the format war.

It's all hypothetical, but I'm confident that if they had put every A1, A2, and A3 they had available on the market at $100-$120 retail, they could have sold in excess of 5 million players in the final quarter of 07. At that point, there would have been no WAY Warner Bros. could have gone exclusively Blu-Ray, $450 million from Sony or no. In fact, as it was, I've read that they were about to jump over to the exclusive HD-DVD bandwagon until Sony came calling with their money truck.

Sigh... Oh well--at least the format war is over. Now let's see how long it takes to get a sub-$100 Blu-ray player. My prediction? 1Q 2010.

[absolut taco]

I think having extra special features only available online is a really stupid idea. Didn't I just pay $30 for the movie?.. put it on the goddamn disc!!
hey, there is only so much you can fit on 50GB... *roll eyes*

[absolut taco]

6th day was such a lousy movie. I can't see anyone buying that...

[Chainblast]

Does anyone really care about this though? Seems like a useless feature.

It's not a useless features, it's DLC! :|

[grognard66]

Your post seems to ignore the fact that the delay in the ps3 release was due (in large part) to Sony's making sure that it was actually worthy of being released (which, from a hardware perspective, it certainly was). One of the criticisms which people have leveled at microsoft was precisely that they did not make sure the 360 hardware was ready: they rushed the design and release so as to get to market sooner. It was still probably a smart (albeit very expensive) move to rush to market, but rush they did. The picture is obviously more complex than just these factors, but at least the ps3 from your list of examples doesn't really fit what you're trying to say.

There's no saying whether an extra 6-12 months of development would have addressed the RROD situation for MS. I've been in the EMS industry for 25 years and there are issues that just don't show up in a simulated testing environment.

360 was feature complete when it launched. Yes, they continue to add features but there was an established set of ground rules to ensure that everyone benefitted from a set standard. By contrast, both Blu-Ray and PS3 did not have a set standard resulting in a fractured install base. It is well known that Sony launched Blu-Ray before it was ready because they could not afford to let HD-DVD get too large a head start. What's sad is that it has taken them 2 years to finally match the features HD-DVD had from Day 1.

[tiremfej]

This is the sound of my hands clapping :clap: :clap:

I'm glad to know someone around here finally gets it. It's a shame really, we're forced an inferior tech because Sony had bigger money pockets. Ohh...but BR-DVD has more space...bleh. Why has HD-DVD outsold it again this month?

[The Ligand]

There's no saying whether an extra 6-12 months of development would have addressed the RROD situation for MS. I've been in the EMS industry for 25 years and there are issues that just don't show up in a simulated testing environment.

360 was feature complete when it launched. Yes, they continue to add features but there was an established set of ground rules to ensure that everyone benefitted from a set standard. By contrast, both Blu-Ray and PS3 did not have a set standard resulting in a fractured install base. It is well known that Sony launched Blu-Ray before it was ready because they could not afford to let HD-DVD get too large a head start. What's sad is that it has taken them 2 years to finally match the features HD-DVD had from Day 1.

I certainly don't have experience in the industry, so I can't speak to whether the RROD situation could have been been avoided given more time. If you say it couldn't and you know about this stuff, then I don't have any reason to disbelieve you. However, you say, "Blu-Ray and PS3 did not have a set standard resulting in a fractured install base." I understand your point with respect to Blu-ray movies, but what about the ps3 hardware was not sufficiently standard at launch? Aside from firmware updates which have added a few features/fixed bugs, my launch console is essentially as it was when I purchased it. The PS3 has evolved as movie-player (as BD-standards have progressed, naturally), but it's other capacities don't really seem greatly changed. Are you defining the console's readiness for market by its ability to play hi-def movies?

[torrefaction]

It amuses me that people make the outright assumption that Microsoft intentionally released with the RROD problem, despite the billion dollar write off they took (With no legal pressure). Yeah, it sucks...but companies aren't quite as malovent as people think.

[Pluvious]

I for one, don't think they intentionally released knowing about that problem. I think they did a good job with addressing the problem actually. I would hope however, that the next version of the 360 has a bit more stress testing and a WHOLE lot more quiet then this rev.