Sony Pictures Home Entertainment was kind enough to send us a screener copy of the upcoming Blu-ray release of '
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story', due to hit store shelves on April 8th, day-and-date with the DVD release. After updating my
PlayStation 3 to be BD-Live (Profile v2.0) compatible, I threw in the disc to check out how the idea of BD-Live has translated to an actual experience.
After the disc loaded, I was taken to the main menu. From there, I selected "Special Features" and then "BD-Live". The first time you access the BD-Live screen, it will take a minute or so to load, but every time after that is only seconds.
The BD-Live menu is exactly as what was seen on this site
only a few days ago. Immediately, I went to download one of the Blu-ray exclusive clips of Derek Stone as a "Coxologist". Clicking on "Download Now", I was again presented with a download bar, and I waited patiently for the clip to load. After what must have been a five minute wait, I was presented with a two minute clip in standard definition. Not exactly the speed I am accustom to for such a low quality video clip.
Keep in mind, I have a fairly fast fiber optic Internet connection, so download speeds have never been an issue. A similar clip, which admittedly is streamed instead of downloaded, might take only a few seconds before playing on YouTube, which begs the question, why make a viewer download a clip if streaming would be considerably faster? So, that's exactly what I did. Opening up the Internet Browser on my PS3, I googled "Dewey Cox" and watched the nearly four minute trailer on YouTube only seconds after loading the page.
The answer is that the files you download remain on your machine even after it it turned off. So, for those viewers who don't have a permanent Internet connection to your PS3 (or will not have a permanent Internet connection to your future BD-Live Blu-ray player), this means you can download the extra content and view it at a later date even if you are no longer connected to the Internet. It must have been a difficult decision for Sony, on whether to stream the clips or download them, but being that they decided on downloading, one would have hoped that they would have used faster servers to distribute the content.
Like any Blu-ray fan, standard definition just doesn't cut it for me anymore, so I went to download a high definition trailer of the upcoming '
Men in Black' Blu-ray disc release (Yes, I know when it is coming. No, I can't legally tell you when yet.). This time, it took about 20 minutes to download a 2.5 minute clip averaging about 8Mbps and having a 2-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack. Not exactly Blu-ray quality, but HD none-the-less.
You can definitely see the potential BD-Live features have, but as of right now, they are not quick enough for the average viewer to wait around for. If you plan on picking up this release next week, and have a PS3, definitely check it out, just make sure you have a few minutes to spare.