Blu-ray goes Live with 'Cox'

Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 12:51 PM Central

by John Couture

With this week's release of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Blu-ray enthusiasts, for the most part, got their first hands-on experience with a new Blu-ray feature, Blu-ray Disc Live (BD-Live). BD-Live allows consumers to download additional content from the Internet directly to their Blu-ray players.

HD-DVD had a similar feature and it was one of the main differences between the two formats. But with Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, Blu-ray players gain the support of BD-Live.

Of course, there's the rub. Many standalone Blu-ray players in the market will require a firmware upgrade to support Profile 2.0 if at all. The nice thing is that Sony's PS3 is easy to upgrade and late last month PS3 owners got Profile 2.0 support, making it the first player in the market to support BD-Live.

So, I eagerly put my Blu-ray copy of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story into my PS3 to experience the future of Blu-ray and home entertainment as a whole. To be honest, the future is a lot like the present, plenty of waiting around for something big to happen.

There are three clips featuring Bill Hader as Coxologist Derek Stone providing his insight into some of Dewey Cox's more robust songs. The clips themselves are funny and provide additional content in keeping with the rest of offering, but one has to wonder why they weren't just added to the disc.

Another potential snag is that there was not a streaming option available, so you had to wait until the clips were completely downloaded before you could view them. The upside is that if you don't have a continuous Internet connection, you can download the clips and then view them later even if you're offline.

It should also be pointed out that you aren't stuck having to wait for the clips to download before doing something else. You can access other content locally on the disc or hard drive while it downloads. The clips weren't high def, but then again some of the bonus features on the discs weren't in high def either so it's not that big of a deal.

The BD-Live component also allows you to download upcoming Blu-ray and theatrical trailers, in either standard or high definition. I think this is a good move right away because it frees up space on the discs for content instead of annoying and often never viewed trailers.

Overall, I think that the future of BD-Live is promising and if studios start to use it properly, it will be a compelling reason to buy a Blu-ray player. For instance, say you bought Saw IV on Blu-ray (which was the first movie to offer BD-Live content by the way) and we all know that Saw V is coming out this October.

Well, what if Lionsgate used the BD-Live feature to promote the upcoming release of Saw V in theaters. Perhaps they put out a nice little featurette say in September that is meant to bridge the two movies. It's not only value-added content for the Blu-ray consumer of Saw IV, but it's also free advertising for the upcoming theatrical release of Saw V.

Along the same lines, let's say that a few years from now they are putting together a massive Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story special edition release. What better way to whet the appetite of fans than to release a few pieces early via BD-Live to the owners of the original version?

In an ever-changing world, the future is full of potential. One of the best ideas on how to use BD-Live came from one of the fan forums. Studios could use BD-Live to transfer credits that can be redeemed to lower the price of a future purchase or download. Imagine an online marketplace ala Xbox Live where you could be given credit say to download Knocked Up if you bought Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Of course, these are two competing studios and it would never work, but you get the gist.

In sum, BD-Live holds a lot of promise and it could really help to sell the merits of Blu-ray, eventually. For now, as studios feel their way along with the new technology, it's a nice addition, but not something that is compelling enough on its own to carry the format.

UPDATE: You know that I'm a sucker for a pretty face talking all geeky. I found this Engadget interview by Veronica Belmont from CES that explains a little more about BD-Live.