Sony still pushing the potential of BD-Live, but is anyone listening?
By Richard Lawler 
posted April 23rd 2009 2:58PM
posted April 23rd 2009 2:58PM
posted April 23rd 2009 2:58PM
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I cant imagine anything that would make me want BD Live .. i watch my Blu rays and im done .. Spend the time on something else please
this just in.... people buy movies to watch the movie. most don't care or want the other shit on the disc or downloaded to the player.
It's hard to write on this subject without coming across as a fanboy. For me, the best bit about HD DVD was that it didn't use Java.
Even today, it's Java that takes the fun out of loading a Blu-ray disc, but movie studios can't just stick a film on a disc and be done with it. It has to be laden with silly little interactivity and shiny graphics.
Sadly we live in a world where people are impressed by whizz-bang graphics and spiffy menus. That's why the iPhone impresses people more than an N95. They're capable of similar things, but one does it with style, the other just does it with barebones functionality.
Give me minimal compression, better audio and lower cost ANY day, and I'll take it.
I have not seen any "features" with BDLive that make me care.
I'm with FNG... cut out all of the extra crap and give me a high quality movie. That's all I want. Make it as cheap as possible with as little extra junk as possible.
Don't give me BDlive, digital copy, special extended director's super awesome edition. Give me the movie.
It's all designed to get the consumers to buy garbage they don't need nor want. BD-Live is a tool that favors the studios and their licenses, and it offers nothing of value to viewers. No thanks. Sony, you can file BD-Live with the UMD IP catalog.
Man, I can't tell you how many posts I've waded through complaining about lack of Profile 2.0 support and calling Blu-ray "incomplete" even after the format war.
But this article nails it. BD-Live isn't that great at all, and I bet most people won't use it. The ONLY thing I was ever interested in was the Director's Chat with Chris Nolan, but I didn't get TDK in time.
Maybe more stuff like that -- stuff that actually enhances the movie experience rather than a bunch of gimmickry -- and BD-Live will become more compelling.
-Pie
Well, Profile 2.0 is a little more than BD Live. BD Live is an attempt to clone what was essentially a tech demo of HD DVD's.
HD DVD was trying to implement a seamless, network-enabled, multimedia delivery system. Because you had the particular combination of technologies that were needed to provide that, you could also do other things, and that's where some of the sillier "Oh, let's let people collaborate over the net when they're watching a movie" stuff came in.
For reasons that escape me, the BDA never actually understood what was going on with HD DVD or why HD DVD was designed the way it was, so it just saw "Oh, let's let people buy discs that allow them to run applications over teh interwebs", and promptly implemented that.
Technically, Profile 2.0 is capable of slightly more, but because it lacks HD DVDs standards for downloadable managed content, it's not going to ever reach feature parity with what HD DVD would have been doing right now if it hadn't been knifed by WHV.
That should read "...technically, Profile 2.0 is capable of slightly more {insert}than just BD-Live{/insert}". Tsk. Sorry, I realized it was ambiguous just now.
I understood the context, but thanks for the clarification!
The addition of BD-Live struck me as an afterthought as well. That was par for the course, though. HD-DVD and BD had a fair amount of back-and-forth to keep basically the same codecs/features/copy protection on both formats.
With that in mind, I don't see how what you're saying about HD-DVD is any different -- or any better -- than BD-Live. You have seemless download of multimedia content, as well as BD-J capability. I never saw any evidence that HD-DVD would offer anything more compelling than what we see with BD-Live now.
And the thing about seemless multimedia delivery... The main advantage would be to give all your space to the movie, and then have branching to some type of audio or video feature, but get it from the Net. None of this, however, would be entirely seemless because the latency issues with the Internet are huge compared to reading off a disk sitting in your player.
Nolan's chat worked pretty well because it was textual. He also used that remote control feature, so when he paused/played, everyone else paused/played. Text, and a remote control command, are tiny in size when compared to some multimedia download, so latency wasn't a huge issue even with hundreds of people connected. But downloading/streaming of any video content will take time, especially if it's in HD... something either format would be hit with, regardless of who won the war.
-Pie
I like directors commentaries if I am a big fan of the director. And those making-of featurettes can be interesting on occasion.
But none of these things require the flashing lights, bells and whistles that is the gimmick otherwise known as BD-Live. Its about the content, not the presentation. If the content sucks (and most BD-Live content I've seen does) then it doesn't matter how pretty or flashy it is. It still sucks.
Here's a novel idea, how about taking all the time and effort these studios are putting into this nonsense and redirecting it into stuff that really matters to most consumers, like a good easy to navigate menu and a digital copy of the film or an included DVD?
Personally think and have always thought BD-Live was a waste of time and effort. Bonusview on the other hand is a great feature in my personal opinion. Contrary to what others here have posted there are many out there that enjoy watching special features on a disc, and i for one will not buy a movie unless it has a decent set of features. I dont see the value in just buying a disc for an upgrade in video and audio and will never buy a barebones release. Give me the extras and i will most likely buy.
I think Bonusview can add a lot to the special feautes by linking it in with the movie viewing experience so you get an idea of how and why things happened at that point in time on the film.
How bout just liking a movie and wanting to buy it for the movie, itself? I like extras, too, especially on movies I really like, and, usually, I only buy movies I really like, and I'm not just talking about empty action flicks, feel ,me?
I with nearly everyone else above. BD-Live should collapse in on itself and die. Give me great video and DTS-MA 7.1 24bit on every release and spare me the crappy little games.
As long as I get all the Maximum audio and great 1080p, I DO want BD Live as well.
The best use I have found is playing a BD movie on my laptop. The computer is much better suited for entering info than any remote.
And yes, I have a 30 foot HDMI cable plugging it into my Home Theater!
I thought it had enormous potential, and possibly it still can perhaps by supplying heaps of extras that aren't on the discs, decent games and competitions for the kids etc, but in the current format it is a joke, a total waste of time and effort.
+1 BDLive has potential, but it still can't hold a candle to what was accomplished on HD DVD. German T2 Steelbook anyone?
Features are nice. Stuff like deleted scenes, making of featurettes, that sort of thing can really make buying a movie worth it. All the sort of crap that you can put on DVD makes the movie worth it. The extra crap I've seen on blu rays is just crap. You can get the same crap on DVDs. I love blu ray for the sound and the picture, that's it.
Now if only they could release terminator 2 on BD with decent sound...
BD live is great for adding content at a later date.
other than that. maybe come up with some cool stuff. but for now... alot of BD live is kinda lame. ie just trailers and crap from a website from 4 years ago. it needs to be cutting edge. not lame.
BD live has always been and will always be about suckering people into buying a machine to enable the studios to move you to downloads.
Discs with "on-line content" are useless gimmicks. If people want to use online content, they're going to use a real computer, not dick around with some half-assed UI on a disc player. They bought an HD disc player to get high-quality media, not on-line crap.
Sony has enough of a challenge just getting this format to survive; they should spend more energy on promoting it and getting titles out there.
I agree with everyone here, BD-live is just a waste of time and space on the BD. They should use that space to put some other languages, or even better extras. If someone saw the "planet earth collection" on DVD, will know inmediately that the BDs were missing those great extras where the BBC was showing how his crew was filming those amazing shots and the many experiences they lived on location were the documentaries were done.
conclusion:
-More Languages
-Better and more interesting extras.
Hmmmmmmm.....very funny.....two of the above posts saying BD Live is worthless were 2 people who posted during the format war how much of an advantage HD-DVD had over Blu-ray BECAUSE of the internet features. Ah, how things turn out and people change lol.
Forget BD-Live, they need to drop the prices on Blu-Ray players and movies. Mainstream people like me don't care about BD-Live crap.
Disney's BD-Live is a big FAIL. Not only do you have to "register" to use it (which you can ONLY do on a computer, not from your Blu-ray player!), but they take that registration information and use it to SPAM the hell out of you from all of their Disney properties.
I'm not buying any more Disney Blu-ray discs because of this, that is until they clean up their act.
I guess all these extra features are for people who have no LIFE or WORK.
I even remember during the format war days that fanboys for both sides were arguing who's format had the better extra features. When BD won (I was BD all the way regardless of it's extra features), people were still complaining that for this or that movie, the studio didn't include the online interactivity and such. I just shook my head.