BD Live promising, but has challenges
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business,02/04/2009
FEB. 4 | LOS ANGELES—BD Live is proving both an indispensable and confounding addition to the Blu-ray Disc production process, according to authoring participants at Tuesday’s Future of Packaged Media conference here.
Zane Vella, president of RCDb, said BD Live, with its Web-connected features, is the future of Blu-ray.
“Blu-ray discs that aren’t network-aware are dead in the water," he said.
Peter Staddon, senior VP at Deluxe Digital Studios, said Web-enabled titles give studios a powerful marketing opportunity.
“It’s a mistake to treat BD Live as a special feature, because it forces you into a narrow definition,” said Staddon. “This should be looked at like an experience across many discs. With BD Live, there is an opportunity to do things that seem trivial but are big for studios. If you take Gladiator and put it into players, its trailers are old and it dates the disc immediately. But in a Blu-ray environment, you can add in Iron Man 2, and that contemporizes it.”
To make the experience more immersive, Staddon said he would like to see developers blend popular online brands such as YouTube and Facebook into BD Live offerings.
However, as promising as BD Live is for the format and studios, its production has brought about challenges for developers.
“Each studio has their own BD Live platform, and where does quality testing fall into that?” asked Adam Lesh, chief technology officer at Testronic Labs. “We can test for BD Live on Sleeping Beauty, but then three months later, the title might be accessing completely new content.”
Developers said BD Live creation adds significant workload to an already squeezed production deadline. Typically, studios want a title’s DVD and Blu-ray versions both completed within three months of the film’s theatrical release, but that's the same length of time developers had when they were focused on DVD only.
According to disc producers, studio executives believe that BD Live's ability to offer fresh content at a later date gives them more time, as special features can be made for the Web after the release of the disc. However, developers say this is a misguided approach to creating compelling features.
“You hear [executives] say that you can just fix it in BD Live,” said Peter Staddon, senior VP at Deluxe Digital Studios. “People might not want to come back after three weeks time" to watch refreshed content.
RCDb's Vella suggests that all Blu-ray titles should include a ‘boot-strap application’ that will automatically check for Web updates every time the discs are played.
“We really have no idea what to do with BD Live or with the Blu-ray format in general yet,” said Vella. “BD Live hasn’t even been available for an entire year yet. … These boot strap applications are a no-brainer.”
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| Submitted by: | Martin L 2/8/2009 4:38:18 PM PT |
| Location: | Apopka, FL |
| Occupation: | bank operations officer |
Most people don't care about interactive features or for that matter internet access with blu-ray movies. They just want to sit down and watch the movie--period! Those of us who have bought blu-ray players and discs are interested in the higher resolution--nothing else.
| Submitted by: | Walt Asher 2/6/2009 4:11:21 PM PT |
| Location: | Troy, TN |
| Occupation: | Clergy |
I think they are full of, well, that brown stuff. The average person sits down to watch a movie, not to play with interactive TV/BD. Suggest all those advocates try to sell the same movie with interactive features and without, at a cheaper price and see just how much people want it.
| Submitted by: | Jeff Bach (jbach@quietwaterfilms.com) 2/5/2009 4:07:21 PM PT |
| Location: | Madison area, WI. |
| Occupation: | media production |
An important part of the BD ecosystem and its development is being left out of the conversation so far. The neglected part is the vast number of independent developers outside of Hollywood''s sphere. In DVDs early days, the ability of DVD authors to do corporate projects was a significant piece of the ecosystem. Each corporate project introduced corporate decision makers to DVDs. This in turn led to DVD evangelists in the corporate world who took it home, showed it to others, and used it again in other projects. To be fair I do not have a number to illustrate what percent of the market was part of this. My point is that this segment of the marketplace is almost completely absent in the current BD ecosystem due to extremely high AACS licensing costs. There are essentially no independent BD authors. Low volume specialty producers simply cannot afford to do anything with BD. This leaves the playing field almost completely to the big boys in Hollywood, which many say is probably as the BD Association wants it. This leaves a very small number of BD authors doing a very small number of projects. This slows the rollout and acceptance of BD. It also slows the discovery and development of things like BD Live. If the BD Association would consider a more reality-based licensing process, I think that BD acceptance and use would increase and the rate of innovation and discovery would also ramp up as more authors had reason to finally start developing with the BD toolset. Many people want to develop and use this toolset. BD and AACS licensing costs are unnecessarily and foolishly delaying this important part of the BD life cycle. Jeff Bach Quietwater Films Madison, WI.
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