We'll say it right up front -- BD-Live
hasn't impressed early, but we're not going to give up on it altogether. For the most part, it has underwhelmed because of uninspired implementation, not the technology itself. While we skip right by most BD-Live features, however, consumers are connecting their decks to the cloud some 4-million times each month to grab up freebies, according to Deluxe Digital Studios. What's the most popular kind of feature that users are getting their hands on? Trailers, of course -- reinforcing our "uninspired" comment. The linked post at Video Business hints at exciting new BD-Live developments like social networking and hooking into
mobile devices, and we'd like to see some of
these ideas get traction. But our advice is that if Hollywood doesn't "... want people to feel like they are being marketed to," then just don't market to them. Crazy talk, we know, but share your crazy ideas below.
posted Sep 7th 2009 4:45PM
I can't help but to keep thinking back to when the BD fanboys would mock the HD DVD fanboys claiming that no one would *ever* want to communicate over the Internet through their disc player, so the HD fanboys should just stop talking about Internet connectivity as a plus to HD DVD.
Now, BD-Live is touting 4m connections per month. How interesting.
HD-DVD had better online features than BD-Live. They had cool add-ons and extra content for the movie, BD-Live just has trailers so far.
key word -> "had"
4 million connections that last less than 60 seconds.
If only they lasted 60 seconds and didn't keep you looked in watching that BD-Live logo loading only to find out 5 minutes later that the BD-Live feature had nothing to offer
*locked in*
What a joke.
BD-Live is a joke and hassle to deal with. After hunting and pecking for 5 minutes to log in to BD-Live the only thing I end seeing is a trailer for the movie I just finished watching! Not only that but the trailer is already available on the disk itself. BD-Live is just a joke.
I recall a pretty good suggestion that Ben came up with during a recent podcast...
He suggested the studios provide dynamic movie trailers that are pulled from a server that are relevant to the time period when you watch the movie.
For instance, when you watch any given BD movie today, you will see previews for new movies out in theater and/or newly available on Blu-ray, but watch it 6 months from now, and you will see completely new and different trailers for movies that are coming out.
Of course, I think I would prefer to be allowed to go straight to the main menu, but if they are going to force us to watch trailers then why not implement an idea like this.
Anyone who uses BD-Live should be flogged with a bamboo rod.
Anybody that has ever used BD-Live probably already feels like they have been flogged.