BD-Live falls short again with Iron Man

Matthew Moskovciak | Oct 07, 2008

So far, BD-Live has been a pretty questionable feature overall, and last week's Iron Man mishap only makes matters worse. According to High-Def Digest, BD-Live servers were overwhelmed last week, making it impossible for many customers to access the extra content.

The fact that the BD-Live servers were overwhelmed only emphasizes the fact that most BD-Live features could easily be fit on the Blu-ray Disc, instead of having to download them from the Internet. For example, we loaded up Iron Man this morning on the LG BD300, which uses a standard USB memory stick to save the BD-Live content. Afterward, we checked out how much space the BD300 used on the USB stick--only 13.5 MB.

According to Blu-ray Statistics, there is over 2.5 GB of free space left on the Iron Man Blu-ray disc, which means the feature easily could have fit on the disc. Perhaps future BD-Live features will make sense, but as of now, BD-Live seems like it's a gimmick to sell more discs, while actually making it harder for people to access features.

And if you're one of the unfortunate Iron Man buyers that got shut out of the BD-Live features last week, don't feel too bad. What Paramount is calling a "truly state-of-the art Blu-ray presentation" is merely trivia questions about the movie, with a short clip of the movie played behind them.

Our experience on the BD300 was that it was frustratingly slow, but even if it was fast, it didn't seem like much fun. While Internet connectivity is needed for some functions, like comparing scores of downloading future question packs, the initial round of questions could be stored on the disc. We're still waiting for a BD-Live feature that's worthwhile.

Via CNET Crave | Photo credit: Amazon

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