Universal Studios was the last major studio to support BD-LIVE up until the year 2021

[HDTV1080P]

The Blu-ray format first came out in the year 2006. Two years later in 2008 the first profile 2.0 BD-LIVE Blu-ray enabled titles appeared on the market. At one time BD-LIVE was so popular that almost every major studio offered Blu-ray titles with the BD-LIVE feature. BD-LIVE would offer online streaming commentary tracks that synced up with the Blu-ray main video, plus streaming extra features, and streaming movie trailers.

However, several years ago Sony and some other major studios as a cost cutting decision turned off their BD-LIVE servers so that the BD-LIVE function would no longer work on the Blu-ray titles that they released. However Universal Studios up until the year 2021 was the last major studio still supporting the BD-LIVE feature with streaming new release trailers and other BD-LIVE content. However, I discovered just recently that as a cost cutting decision Universal Studios has turned off their BD-LIVE main server sometime in the last few months. One can no longer access any Universal movie trailers and other streaming content from the main server. However, on select Blu-ray titles like Fast Five one can manually toggle off and on the BD-LIVE ticker to see a written description of select Universal movie titles that can be read in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This must be one of the BD-LIVE servers that Universal forgot to turn off since other Blu-ray titles when toggling off and on the ticket does not connect to any Universal BD-LIVE server.

I well miss BD-LIVE. A few years ago almost every standard Blu-ray disc from Universal Studios showed trailers of the latest movies being shown in the movie theater if ones Blu-ray player was connected to the Internet and had BD-LIVE feature turned on. While it is technically possible to use BD-LIVE with the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format and Blu-ray 3D format, no studio to my knowledge every used BD-LIVE for 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D discs, just standard Blu-ray discs were used for BD-LIVE.

While its true that every major studio has now turned off their BD-LIVE feature including Universals main BD-LIVE server just recently in the year 2021. There are a select few smaller studios that still have their BD-LIVE server up and running at least partially. For example the Showtime Blu-ray titles that use the BD-LIVE feature still have a active BD-LIVE server up and running, but its only partially working since some of the BD-LIVE content cannot be accessed.

Its too bad BD-LIVE is on life support. The quality of the streams were mainly 720P using 2.0 DTS stereo. Technically BD-LIVE could have been used with 4K streams with surround sound on the 4K Blu-ray format, but no studio decided to do so. Also to make Blu-ray players cheaper in price no standalone Blu-ray player currently in production has a minimum of 1GB of internal persistent storage to use BD-LIVE like many older models offered, instead one has to purchase a minimum of 1GB USB stick, SD card, or external USB hard drive to use the BD-LIVE feature, bookmarks, and resume play feature.

I well miss BD-LIVE, Universal did the best job of supporting the BD-LIVE servers up until the year 2021. Some small studios like Showtime still partially use the BD-LIVE feature for legacy Blu-ray titles. For all new Universal Blu-ray titles BD-LIVE is not even an option. In fact from all new Blu-ray titles being released from every studio that I know, BD-LIVE is no longer an option. Its just to hard to get BD-LIVE feature to work from current in production Blu-ray players including 4K Blu-ray players, consumers have to go buy a external 1GB or larger storage drive and turn on the feature in the menu and make sure their player is connected to the Internet.

BD-LIVE could have been and should have been an awesome feature (like streaming commentary tracks), but BD-LIVE ended up being another failed feature that did not get used to often by consumers that own Blu-ray players.