NY Times Disney Blu-ray Article

[HD Man]

Saw this article in today's NY Times, and I'm not sure how everyone else feels about BD-Live, but the idea of chatting with others during a movie, recording video messages, and ringtones just doesn't really get me excited.

What happened to an awesome visual experience and outstanding audio premise of Blu-ray? Not sure if 2.0 will really drive the masses to adopt the this newer DVD format, or even drive those with 1.0 or even 1.1 to upgrade to 2.0 profiles.


July 14, 2008
Disney Taps Into Blu-ray’s Interactive Technology
By BROOKS BARNES and ERIC A. TAUB
LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company, along with the broader entertainment industry, is counting on “Sleeping Beauty” to help awaken interest in Blu-ray DVDs.

In October, the company will release a 50th anniversary edition of the classic animated movie in the high-definition Blu-ray format. But Disney is not stopping there. “Sleeping Beauty” will also come with unusual features geared toward a generation of viewers that embraces interactivity and social networking.

Viewers can watch the movie in tandem with friends in other locations and chat using a laptop, P.D.A. or cellphone. (Comments appear on the screen.) Parents who are not able to watch the film with their children can record a video message that will pop up during a designated scene as the child watches. Viewers will also be able to compete against others around the world at trivia.

All of these activities are possible because of a technology that connects Blu-ray discs with the Internet, which the entertainment industry is calling BD Live. Disney and other studios, including Lionsgate and Sony, believe that BD Live could be Blu-ray’s killer app, potentially altering the tepid response that consumers have given Blu-ray to date.

“Our research shows that so many people watch TV with their laptop nearby,” said Lori MacPherson, senior vice president and general manager for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment North America. “Online gaming and texting are already popular. The question is, how do we harness this?”

Hardware is a giant hurdle. First-generation Blu-ray players are not compatible with BD Live and cannot be upgraded. Although Sony’s PlayStation 3 can use the technology, there is currently only one BD Live Blu-ray machine — Panasonic’s DMP-BD50K model — and it costs about $800.

Several new BD Live-enabled machines will arrive in stores by fall, but they will still be out of reach for many. The new Blu-ray players will sell for as little as $400.

There is also the problem of acquainting consumers with a technology that sounds daunting. In reality it is fairly simple to use, but Disney plans advertising and demonstrations in stores and elsewhere to help introduce it to the public.

“We need to demystify this technology for the mass market,” said Bob Chapek, president of Disney’s home entertainment unit.

The lack of compatible hardware has not stopped the studios from incorporating BD Live features. They assume the market will catch up. Lionsgate released BD Live titles in January 2007. With “Saw IV” and “War,” viewers can exchange messages with other fans and see the conversation as the movie is playing. Text chat, which Lionsgate calls MoLog, for “movie log,” is also available in the recent release of “Rambo.” The company said it would add BD Live features to selected titles in the future.

Sony currently has eight BD Live movies, including “Men in Black” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” By the end of August, an additional eight movies will be available, including “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and three “Starship Troopers” titles.

Viewers of “Walk Hard” can download three featurettes. “Men in Black” offers a multiplayer game, and viewers can upload a still image of themselves into two of the three “Starship” movies, which will then be incorporated into a series of stills from the movies.

Consumers will also be able to download new trailers appropriate to the rating of the movie they are watching.

Lexine Wong, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s senior executive vice president for worldwide marketing, is pitching Blu-ray with BD Live as “packaged media that feels new and exciting.”

“BD-Live lets us have a direct relationship with the consumer, which we could never have with packaged media,” she said.

Making DVDs exciting is a trick movie studios are desperate to pull off. After years of blistering growth, domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year to $15.9 billion, according to Adams Media Research, the first annual drop in the medium’s history.

While DVDs are still a big business, any decline is cause for concern because DVD sales can account for as much as 70 percent of revenue for a new film. Results for 2008 have been mixed, with overall sales flat. Sales for the DVD version of the box office hit “I Am Legend,” for example, were notably soft.

Blu-ray discs, which sell at a sharp premium to standard DVDs, are growing quickly but still occupy a tiny bit of the market. The industry estimate for sales of Blu-ray discs in 2008 is nearly $1 billion, up from $170 million last year.

The BD Live-enhanced Blu-ray discs cost even more. The “Sleeping Beauty” Blu-ray set will carry a suggested retail price of $40.

Another barrier, according to consumer surveys, is the opinion of many people that they do not need to upgrade to high-definition DVDs with futuristic-sounding side offerings; standard DVDs are good enough.

Mr. Chapek of Disney brushes aside that skepticism. “Henry Ford said, ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said “a faster horse,” ’ ” Mr. Chapek said. “We don’t rely on the consumer to have our vision for us.”

Although “Sleeping Beauty” is Disney’s first BD Live-enhanced Blu-ray release, all of the company’s future Blu-ray titles will include BD Live features. Mr. Chapek says he sees BD Live as Blu-ray’s breakthrough moment.

“The idea of my little girl being able to experience a movie and chat in real time with her grandparents across the country is very exciting to me,” Mr. Chapek said at a recent BD Live demonstration in Los Angeles. “I can’t help but think it will be exciting to a lot of consumers, too.”

[Scooby Blu]

I'm with you ! Just give me better A/Q and V/Q and I am fine with that. I guess the younger generation might use this function. Not me ! I have a hard enough time making time for a movie much less chatting about it while I am watching it ! Busy, busy , busy. No time to kick back and zone out here, gots ta chat.

[HD Man]

I haven't actually seen BR Live demonstrated, but can't even imagine watching a film with messages popping up on the screen, etc!!

It's bad enough going to the movies and having cell phones ringing, people talking loud, etc, but I don't want that from friends/family when I'm trying to enjoy a film.

[JTK]

It's kind of cool but I personally couldn't care less about any of it. I want great picture and audio quality. Nothing else really matters to me.

[JJ]

Originally Posted by HD Man

I haven't actually seen BR Live demonstrated, but can't even imagine watching a film with messages popping up on the screen, etc!!

It's bad enough going to the movies and having cell phones ringing, people talking loud, etc, but I don't want that from friends/family when I'm trying to enjoy a film.

Good point! I was actually going to start making a case pro-live; but sometimes when I have company over for movies, there's always a chatterbox who won't shut up or stop making snide remarks about the movie. That's why I'm glad I can make it go loud enough to drown them out,

But perhaps in a different context, this could work - i.e., students who have to analyze a movie for class, communicating with distant relatives, etc. It just needs to have more uses. I'd love to have the option, though, just in case.

[Tok]

This comes to mind...

Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.

I agree I am not really that excited by these BD-Live enhancements. I am sure those diehard redants that slammed BD for not doing things like this will now be equally slamming these so-called features.

[kpkelley]

This may be a new article, but the story is pretty old:

http://www.hollywoodinhidef.com/blog_detail.php?id=207

[HD Man]

Originally Posted by CraigW

I am sure those diehard redants that slammed BD for not doing things like this will now be equally slamming these so-called features.

Now that is absolutely true!!

I may even come to like the feature, and won't specifically not buy a player that is 2.0 profile, but assume the operator will be able to turn the features off and on he/she deems fit.

I guess you could also have polling at the conclusion of movies, discussions of alternate endings, etc, or the studio could ask customers what catalog movies from their vault they would most like to see on blu-ray, etc. The on-line interactive aspects are pretty endless, and that might be kind of cool.

[kefrank]

while the specific features announced for Sleeping Beauty don't really excite me, there is potential for the studios to do some cool things with BD-Live, such as:

-- automatically cataloging your Blu-ray collection online (given the appropriate user-input)
-- allow user-created content such as menu themes, amateur commentaries, etc to be downloaded, experienced, and rated
-- allow users to set up a custom "pre-movie reel" from a vast library of trailers and other content - basically, a customizable version of the "Warner Night at the Movies" feature on some of the classic WB DVDs

there are many others. i just hope the studios get creative enough to make BD-Live worth it.

[owa]

I haven't been all that excited about the stuff offered so far but I've been voting for the live chat type functionality in the Sony BD-Live polls. With most of my friends having kids, we don't get together nearly as often to watch movies. So, I'm thinking it could be somewhat fun to have chatting during movies but it would only work for movies that we've already seen or campy type movies. I wouldn't want to be trying to type text during a movie I was trying to watch for the first time. Also, keyboards for text entry at a minimum (I wonder if voice-chat is possible over BD-Live). If I have to use a remote/controller and it takes like 10 minutes to type a message, it won't be very useful for realtime chatting (imo).

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm not all that excited about certain BD Live features, like text chats with other people during the movie.

However, it's probably still a very good idea to pursue development of features like that.

It's a good idea for one very true reason: not everyone likes the same things.

There's so many people in this forum and others griping about the inclusion of extra features and other stuff like that. I have one answer for that: don't watch it! No one is twisting any viewer's arm to watch any extra features or use BD Live functions and any of that other stuff. But other people do like that sort of thing. And it is just plain ignorant to pretend or insist otherwise.

While in movie text chatting via BD Live may seem silly to me, I can see a younger generation or just other people more turned on by text function crap getting into it in a big way.

Blu-ray has the ability to do a lot of different things to make lots of different customers happy -and thus make a movie disc more appealing to a larger group of people.

[Blu Titan]

I had a lot of initital doubts about BD Live. However, BD Live can have a lot of interesting application. I am a PQ & AQ guy, but I do understand that many people care for the extras and the interactivity.

[fdm]

[Neo65]

I'm skeptical about this BD-Live and interactivity in general, but then, people who buy Sleeping Beauty in BD are either interested in animation history or are heavy movie collectors.

Either way, while a new movie is not going to find this useful, an old cult classic could have a chance.

But, I'm still skeptical, and the interactive camp has been saying all these wonderful stuff for a long time, if Sleeping Beauty is hyped up, the interactivity would have a tougher job of succeeding. I'm in the wait and see camp, but I'm not holding my breath here. What can these things deliver that google on a simple laptop can easily do today?

Btw, the article seems to mention something about watching a movie with the laptop nearby. If the BD-live experience is on a laptop and not on the main screen, it would at least remove one main flaw I don't like with the interactivity --- ie: covering up the movie with stuff that is meaningless to me ( like someone standing up and blocking my view in the cinema --- that's just inexcusible);.

[Josh]

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1412

Old news.

[david2189]

i personally think its a good idea, this might move the people that dont care about the picture or sound quality and think dvd is "good enough"

[Blurayne]

Well in my opinion; i say anything that is an extra to blu-ray is a plus. Is it a feature i would use most likely not. But its good to have just in case. But i am an "extra junky" especially on Blu.

[Clark Kent]

The pushing of BD-Live by Disney and the other studios is about one thing- marketing the value-added features Blu-ray has over dvd. If they are serious about putting it on every single release it means they've tested it on a focus group consisting of their core customer demographic and had an excellent response to it. I think there is a belief by some of the studios that the enhanced audio and video Blu-ray provides over dvd isn't a big enough selling point to get the average person to upgrade from dvd. It's also about marketing to younger consumers.

[Blu-Ron]

I've worked for Disney for many years. Not surprised here. Still...bad idea IMO.

[Blu-ray Fanatic]

I'm hoping for an update one day that'll let me watch a movie, download content from the PSN, update the system, etc. all at the same time without waiting for each one to finish.