One of the new advancements of Blu-ray Disc technology is BD Live, which allows TV viewers to interact with features on the disc in more sophisticated ways than on standard DVD—enhanced by using live online resources, as well. (One nifty option is placing yourself “inside” a movie clip and then e-mailing to others).
Walt Disney Studios now says it plans to launch Web-connected BD Live on all of its upcoming Blu-ray Disc releases, starting in the fourth quarter, and hopes to “reinvent the experience of watching movies in the home … by laying in a level of interactivity and connectivity that has never before been attempted in any format,” said a Disney executive during a screening last week of a remastered 50th anniversary edition of “Sleeping Beauty,” according to Home Media Magazine. The classic film will be released on Blu-ray in early October.
Disney said the October release will also kick off a live, on-screen chat function with an Internet Instant Messenger-like window that allows viewers to talk with one another while watching the Blu-ray Disc simultaneously. (Text messages that appear on the TV screen are typed using special software designed for BlackBerry and other PDA devices.
For more on BD Live and other Blu-ray advances, see the June 11 edition of TV Technology.
