Articles >> BD Live Coverage (Part 1)


On June 11th I was invited to Hollywood, California to a Disney BD-Live Event that was focused on showing off the newly remastered Sleeping Beauty available October 4th on Blu-ray and DVD.

Let’s get into Sleeping Beauty first. The Blu-ray (and DVD) will both feature the original 2.55:1 Aspect Ratio instead of the 2.40:1 found on the previous DVD. The film will show everything as it did back when it hit theaters in 1959. The sound has been upgraded to an all-new 7.1 mix that was uncovered in Belgium (pretty amazing in itself) and will truly be the ultimate Sleeping Beauty edition to ever hit home video in any form.


Now let’s talk about the event. I drove a little over fifty miles (traffic sucks in the morning!) to Hollywood and as soon as I pulled up to the Ebell Theater I was greeted by a giant Sleeping Beauty logo so luckily I knew I was in the right place. Upon arriving and checking in I was ushered inside to a giant room filled with Panasonic HDTVs, including the giant one many would be drooling over. Playing were various clips from the Blu-ray Sleeping Beauty. I, as well as a few others from the press (clearly not reviewers like myself as no one knew a thing about Blu-ray or Profiles) was greeted by several Disney reps who explained some of the features of BD-Live (Profile 2.0) as well as Sleeping Beauty. I, of course, was more interested in the shiny Panasonic BD50K sitting on stage as I knew exactly what BD-Live was about (more on that later).

Soon after that short presentation we were once again moved to a smaller room where several more Panasonic HDTVs were setup and ready for us to mess around with.

Movie Mail
First we looked at Movie Mail which is a great little feature that unfortunately I can only see Disney really using. The whole idea behind it is that anyone can record a 2 minute long video (it was set at 30 seconds for the event), upload it through Disney's BD-Live website, and it would be sent to a PS3 (or BD-Live Player, more on that later) to be watched by anyone on your accounts "friend" list. According to the Disney reps all videos will be screened before being sent so there would be no "inappropriate" videos being sent. Apparently these videos can also be saved into memory so you can watch them over and over again. Pretty nifty feature but again, I can't see anyone but Disney really using this feature.

Movie Challenge
While other Blu-ray (and HD DVDs) have had this feature before, Disney takes it to a whole new level. Disney set us up on three different HDTV's with the Panasonic BD50K to play against each other for points in a trivia contest. All the questions pertained to Sleeping Beauty or other Disney characters, and overall it was a great experience. Even though it’s been ten years since I last saw Sleeping Beauty, I won the contest (with 34,548 points thank you very much) after we answered ten different questions. According to Disney the game will get additional trivia questions as time goes on so you won't be answering the same questions over and over again. This can only be played by people on your friends list, not random individuals.


Movie Chat
While Disney touts this as the first Studio to offer the experience, HD DVD owners would be quick to point out that Warner did it first with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on HD DVD (and only the HD DVD version). Regardless, Disney took that idea and improved it so much they should call it their own.

The chat allows a host to setup a viewing and allow any and all friends to join in, at any time, and start chatting away. The host has the options of pausing the movie, rewinding, fast forwarding etc. and if you are in the chat you're disc will do the same thing. If you are using a standard Blu-ray player (BD-Live obviously), you only have the option of texting via mobile phone or using the on screen keyboard (either QWERTY or cell phone style with 2 being A,B,C for example). Now, I'm not sure how the whole texting thing works through a cell phone, but the Disney rep used his iPod Touch to log in to the Disney BD-Live website and typed his response which showed up within seconds. A bonus for those using the only current BD-Live (Profile 2.0) player called the PS3, you can plug in a keyboard and type that way as well. Nice!

Movie Rewards
Now this is a great feature that will have everyone going nuts for. During Sleeping Beauty you will get the opportunity to play games to win points. You get points for either answering trivia questions or playing those Blu-ray Java games that are getting more and more popular on discs. You take those points and can cash them in via the BD-Live function on the disc to unlock exclusive interviews, trailers, wallpapers, ring tones etc. Now, the great thing is that you can combine points from several different films if you really want something that has a high exchange value. This is an amazing feature that is sure to bring people back to the disc over and over again. Kudos, Disney!

Considering Disney and Panasonic have a great relationship (the Mall tours were amazing) it was no surprise to see everything there was either Panasonic or Sony PS3. I had a chance to give the new Panasonic BD50K a test drive and wow, such an amazing player! Everything was very smooth and fluid (the trivia games, chat, movie mail) and it will make a great stand alone player. Keep in mind it will decode everything internally (TrueHD, DTS MA) and will also bitstream them if you have a receiver that can decode them. The remote itself is very similar the previous BD30K one, and it once again retains the door that opens and closes when you insert a disc.

This will also be the first stand alone player to ship with BD-Live (Profile 2.0) and is ready for anything Disney throws at it.



Go to Part 2, a.k.a., "The Great Profile Mess" > >