BD-Live: Blu-ray's secret weapon or a bust?

Recently, Disney put on an impressive little dog-and-pony show for its upcoming 50th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Sleeping Beauty, which hits US stores this fall. While the new, restored version of the film looks fantastic, Disney hardly mentioned anything about the dramatically improved video and sound quality of the disc. Instead, company representatives were showcasing the new array of Disney BD-Live features, which will not only appear on the Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray but also on all Disney Blu-ray Discs going forward.

For the uninitiated, BD-Live refers to the interactive features on a disc that require an Internet connection to make them interactive. They also require a Profile 2.0 or "BD-Live-Enabled" Blu-ray player and, obviously, Internet connectivity in the form of an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. The Sony PS3 happens to be one of the handful of BD-Live Blu-ray players currently available, though more are on the way.

When it comes to interactivity, HD-DVD was ahead of the game, and before its demise, we'd started seeing some of the interactive features on HD-DVD discs that are now just starting to appear on Blu-ray discs--along with a few that haven't been developed yet for Blu-ray. HD-DVD called its interactive platform HDi and, like BD-Live, its features were partly designed to differentiate the format from standard DVD. The refrain we've heard several times from high-level folks in the HD-DVD camp was that just the promise of better picture and sound wasn't enough to lure mainstream shoppers--most of whom remain satisfied with DVD--into buying high-definition discs. Unlike enthusiasts, the average consumer needs a bigger carrot. Now we're starting to hear similar rumblings from the folks at Disney and other studios. Interactivity is once again the new magic lever.

So, what exactly is Disney rolling out? Well, the first thing we saw was something called Movie Chat, which lets you text chat with another person--or people--on your TV while a movie is playing (you can call up a virtual keyboard or you can log onto a special Disney site and use the keyboard on your laptop to type). Then there's Movie Mail, which lets you record a personalized video using a Webcam or cheap video camcorder, such as the Flip Video Ultra, and embed it in a scene in the movie. And finally, there's Movie Challenge, an online trivia game you can play against others in real-time online and potentially earn Disney rewards points that give you discounts on Disney products or unlock exclusive movie trailers.

We've been disappointed with the very early iterations of BD-Live, which seem mostly to involve free downloads of trailers and some video mashups. Part of the problem is that everything takes so long to download. However, Disney representatives said they'd really been working on making the experience much smoother with a strong backend system that would be ready for prime time when it launches. They described the Disney BD-Live network as an interactive "platform" that's designed to stand on its own as a social network.

Judging from the demo, we're pretty confident Disney is indeed going to take the BD-Live experience to the next level. The text messaging and trivia game ran smoothly and my recorded video message was sent up to the Disney server and appeared about 10 minutes later on a Panasonic Blu-ray player that was sitting across the room. (Except for one PlayStation 3, all the Blu-ray players in the room were the Panasonic DMP-BD50--Panasonic was a partner in the showcase, and the BD50 was one of the only non-PS3 players that could currently handle BD-Live content.)