John Mayer's BD-Live Wonderland
June 23, 2008

The serial celebrity dater knows his women and Blu-ray technology as well! Mayer's concert release on Blu-ray on July 1 will represent Sony BMG's first release that incorporates picture-in-picture and Web-enabled BD-Live interactivity.
Where The Light Is: John Mayer in Los Angeles features 22 songs, and picture-in-picture experience with Mayer musician buddies Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino. The BD-Live feature is a backstage performance of the song "Belief" that viewers download with their networked BD players or Playstation 3.
Besides being Sony BMG's first, this Mayer Blu-ray release has to be one the first music-based discs to boast BD-Live at all.
That is very forward-thinking on Sony BMG's part, since the studios haven't even all got their act together on that one. Warner Home Video, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment are amoung studios that have yet to really detail their first BD-Live releases. 
Yet Sony BMG should be rallying around advanced Blu-ray features. It's a sister company to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, which was one of the first studios to street films with BD-Live interactivity.
If advanced interactivity starts showing up on other relatively niche releases, like Where the Light Is, that should be a boost to the format. Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson have loved themselves some Mayer, but generally music DVDs are not considered broadly appealing home entertainment.  
BD-Live will look like a bigger deal if it moves from novelty bonus feature to established extra on a whole range of releases.

Posted by Susanne Ault on June 23, 2008 | Comments (0)