Blu-ray Festival: BDA Breakfast

The first event of the Blu-ray Festival was a breakfast hosted by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). The event was focused on bringing together executives from Blu-ray companies with the reporters who write about them. Andy Parsons, Senior Vice President, Product Planning, Home Entertainment & Business Solutions Division for Pioneer and Chair of the US Promotion Committee for the BDA, welcomed everyone and went on to explain some of the accomplishments Blu-ray has achieved so far.

In September, Blu-ray sold its 3 millionth title, averaging 500,000 titles sold per month since July. Blu-ray continues to sell at a rate 2-to-1 over the rival HD DVD format and shows no signs of weakening through the all-important holiday shopping season. He stressed that despite attempts by the HD DVD group to attract customers with low-price players, Blu-ray companies were adamant in their stance and that Blu-ray was developed to "be the best, not cheapest."

Parsons then welcomed David Berman, Director of the Home Theater Specialists of America (HTSA) on stage to talk about why his organization recently decided to support Blu-ray exclusively. He stated that the HTSA used polling of their customers to determine which products they were buying and which products the organizations retailers were selling. Overwhelmingly, Blu-ray was seen as the format of choice. With that data, it was easy for the HTSA to unify behind the Blu-ray format.

Once the conference ended, journalists were invited to walk around the floor and talk with executives from the respective Blu-ray companies. We spoke with Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, Vice President, Corporate Development for Panasonic and GM of the BDA. He talked about how successful Blu-ray was for Panasonic in both the US and Japan, and how new innovations like the recently revealed automotive Blu-ray player would provide an all-encompassing Blu-ray environment. Tsuyuzaki explained how involved Panasonic was in the development of Blu-ray, and when asked if it annoyed him that Blu-ray was considered a Sony product, he jokingly replied, "Sometimes."

On the floor of the event, which was held in the famous Hollywood and Highland Center, titles from Blu-ray studios were displayed on Panasonic Blu-ray players and Plasmas. Of most interest was a display showcasing a copy of the upcoming Jet Li and Jason Statham action film ‘War' which is due to be released for Blu-ray on January 1st from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The title, which will support a true Picture-in-Picture (PIP) feature, showcased many advances in Blu-ray disc authoring from the studio.

As the title was playing on a Pansonic DMP-BD10, representatives were unable to show us the PIP feature, but they did show us how the title would display the same content on a Profile v1.0 player. When the disc is first loaded, the BD-Java program benchmarks the player, and depending on its capability will either give the option to watch the PIP feature (in the case of Profile v1.1) or allow the user to watch those same clips outside of the main title (in the case of Profile v1.0). The user will never have to face selecting an option that won't work on their player.

A BD-Java interactive fighting game was also shown running on the machine. A viewer is presented with different fighting moves, such as punching, kicking, and blocking, and must select the order in which these moves are used. Once all slots are filled, the two fighters go one-on-one, executing the moves selected. The demo was showing playing against the computer, but we were told that web-enabled players would allow two viewers to fight against each other.

The upcoming release of 'War' will feature many innovative technologies, including a new pop-up menu system and track bar.

Additionally, they showed innovations in their Blu-ray authoring. Instead of the typical pop-up menu which blocks the main image, the menu in ‘War' will actually frame a scaled version of the feature, so the viewer won't miss any part of the action while navigating the menu. An option has been added to adjust how fast or slow the menu items react to being clicked, allowing the user to customize their menu experience. Also, a track bar has been added when pausing, scanning, or bookmarking the title. We also learned that, while the demo (which looked absolutely stunning) was authored in AVC, the final product will be authored in VC-1 because of the more user-friendly tools provided by Microsoft.

After this event, we were taken to Fox Studios, which we'll talk more about in the next post.