Blu-ray disc features vs. HD-DVD

[Deane Johnson]

I watched the SD version of Black Dahlia tonight. Not the best done movie.

The disc opens with a major ad for Universal HD-DVD. I have to admit, the ad is fairly well done. Makes you want to move to high def.

The ad showcases all the special features HD-DVD is capable of. One of the things that looks really good is that the movie starts immediately when you put it in the machine (according to the ad). Menus can be accessed anytime from the edge, I believe on the fly.

My questions is, does Blu-ray have this capability?

[Heresy]

Studios can certainly make Blu-Ray movies start as soon as the disc is loaded if they want and the pop-up menu can be accessed at any time (it comes up from the bottom on most of the titles I've seen.) BD-J can do anything that HD-DVD's system can do (HDi I think it's called) and supposedly a lot more.

[jorg]

i don`t know for shure but i thought one of the fastest movie load times was about 10 sec after putting disc in

[Iceman_II]

Yes, BD has a menu on the edge you can access at anytime during playback, and it seems to allow me to access the top menu almost immediatly after boot on most...Just when you can access the menu is not a function of format, it is a function of what the studio identifies as "Prohibited User Operations"... such as not letting you access the menu until after the copywrite notification. Interesting note, Paramount will let you jump to the menu anytime, EXCEPT, you have to wait until after the "paramount HD" splash at the begining of the film.

With the PS3 turned completely off, you put a disc in the slot, and it takes about 25 seconds to turn on, spool up, and start playing the disc.

With the PS3 already turned on, after you click on the BD icon to start playing, it takes about 10 seconds to start playing

[Iceman_II]

Heresy, I do believe that BD-J has little to do with HDi.

Profile 2 of blu-ray implements BD-Live, which would be comparable to HDi (internet connectivity)

All profiles of the blu-ray specifications implements BD-J (to one extent or another).

At the 2005 JavaOne trade show, it was announced that Sun Microsystems' Java cross-platform software environment would be included in all Blu-ray Disc players as a mandatory part of the standard. Java will be used to implement interactive menus on Blu-ray Discs, as opposed to the method used on DVD video discs, which uses pre-rendered MPEG segments and selectable subtitle pictures, which is considerably more primitive and less seamless. Java creator James Gosling, at the conference, suggested that the inclusion of a Java virtual machine as well as network connectivity in BD devices will allow updates to Blu-ray Discs via the Internet, adding content such as additional subtitle languages and promotional features that are not included on the disc at pressing time. This Java Version will be called BD-J and will be a subset of the Globally Executable MHP (GEM) standard. GEM is the world-wide version of the Multimedia Home Platform standard.

The BD-ROM specification defines four profiles of Blu-ray players. All video-based profiles are required to have a full implementation of BD-J. The 1st generation players are based on the Profile 1 (BD-Video) specification that does not require support of certain features such as Picture-in-Picture, secondary audio, local storage, and network connections. Profile 1.1 makes PIP, secondary audio and local storage mandatory. Profile 2 (BD-Live) adds network connectivity to the list of mandatory functions. Profile 3 is meant for an audio-only player and does not require video decoding or BD-J.

[Heresy]

HDi may have an Internet component to it too but it is also equivalent to BD-J in that it is used for interactive menus and special features like PiP: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...d/default.aspx

[Iceman_II]

I stand corrected

[Urian]

Can you correct me if I am wrong?

In the case of BluRay we have BD-J for interactive menus and BD-Live for internet content, in the case of HD-DVD we have HDi that is the equivalent to BD-J+BD-Live.

Is this true?

[Heresy]

I'm really not sure what all HDi can or can't do (though searching through that link at MS should provide the answers); I just remembered that it was apparently HDi incompatibility that caused the HD-DVD consortium to disallow LG from putting the HD-DVD logo on/supporting their 'combo machine' (instead of using HDi there is some kind of generic, LG created menu system for HD-DVDs.)