Sony Demos BD Live Interactive Capabilities

Up until the Blu-ray "Final Specification" (version 1.1), the HD-DVD promotion group has been emphasizing their format's superior interactive abilities as a major advantage.

Sony decided that, at this year's CES, they would demonstrate the new interactive abilities of Blu-ray by bringing in Hollywood writer, director and producer Dean Devlin and film critic Leonard Maltin.

Maltin reminisced about past CES video introductions and then pointed out that the new interactive abilities will enable filmmakers and directors to apply another level of creativity to their films.

Dean Devlin, whose credits include "Independence Day" and "Godzilla," said he has been shooting his films in digital for the last five years and now he feels the content can be directly translated via Blu-ray to the consumer's home.

Devlin even pointed out that, in many cases, a Blu-ray disc is better than seeing a film theatrically because there can be a wide variance in the quality of prints on a major film.

For Devlin, DVDs and Blu-ray discs allow for longer cuts of films, he says, since audiences will not sit through a film that is longer than two and a half hours in a commercial theater, but will in the comfort of their own home.

He feels that the extra interactivity that Blu-ray now has allows him to draw in and add more information to his films. He says that the consumer at home will be immersed in a "world" that he can create and will encourage multiple viewings of a title on Blu-ray.

BD Live Demonstrated

Don Ekland, Sony executive vice president of advanced technologies, came out to demonstrate Blu-ray's interactivity feature set, now called BD Live.

From a BD Live menu on the "Godzilla" disc, he sent a ringtone selected from the BD Live menu to a cellphone in the audience, which then played the ringtone on the phone.

As cool as that may seem to some, Ekland then took a Sony PSP, put it into to USB transfer mode with a PlayStation 3 and was able to transfer a special portable version of the whole film to the PSP.

Although he only downloaded part of the film, he noted that it will take less than three minutes to to transfer a typical film. He said that there are currently 25 million PSPs worldwide now that can take advantage of this feature.

Next, another Devlin film coming out soon on Blu-ray, "Men in Black," was loaded and from the BD Live menu, he loaded a BD game. It's very similar to the game "Scene It" in that clips from the movie were shown and two players with their BD remotes or PS3 controllers attempt to answer questions as quickly as possible.

Although the demonstration was local with two players, the play could be done online. These BD games will also support chat functions.

At the end of Don Ekland's demonstrations, Devlin seemed to be genuinely enthralled with these BD Live features and said that they will open new possibilities for any films he does from now on.

He said that while he is the filmmaking process, he'll be able to keep consumers involved in a deeper experience of the film.

Social Networking Features Shown

Danny Kaye, executive vice president of global research and technical strategy for 20th Century Fox home entertainment, whose parent company now owns MySpace, came out to discuss how BD Live and its BD Java capabilities open up new avenues for online social networking to be married with interactive game play to create a "truly interactive living room".

BD Live allows users to create custom trailers of their favorite scenes or parts of films and then share them online, as well as assembling a library of their favorite scenes from all their movies that they can play back for their family and friends.

In terms of the gaming aspects of BD Live and Blu-ray, Kaye showed an upcoming Blu-ray release of "Alien vs. Predator" that allows the user to choose to be one of three characters from the movie, which appears as an avatar in the game. You can also choose which weapon to carry, which is then inserted in to the actual movie.

So two players, using standard BD remotes, can play against each other online by shooting at each other's character while the movie is playing in real time.

What makes this really unique is the fact that the character, weapon, onscreen movie action, and other players' actions all change the experience of playing the game. No two game sessions are ever the same and the ideal blending of gaming, movie watching and social networking becomes possible.

Blog Your Blu-ray

Finally, Ron Schwartz, executive vice president and general manger of Lionsgate, came on stage to demonstrate how Lionsgate's upcoming Blu-ray release of "Saw 4" will utilize BD Live to enable fans to chat through a "MoLog" movie blog.

A user would simply watch the film through a menu selection on the BD Live page, which allows text comments to be added to the scenes. The comments are saved to the MoLog so that other fans can view it, see what their friends have to say, and see commentary from the the director in a way that is less invasive than an audio commentary.

Don Eklund closed the event by saying that content from Blu-ray disc films can be added after the initial release if the filmmaker and studio want. He then introduced a special filmed message from actor Will Smith from the set of his new movie as an example of how downloaded trailers for upcoming Blu-ray discs and theatrical trailers can be accomplished via BD Live.