Sony Promises BD Live On All Blu-Ray Releases

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is pledging to feature BD Live interactivity on all of its Blu-ray Disc releases that street after last week’s Blu-ray bow of Men in Black. Rich Marty, Sony’s VP of new business development, demonstrated the BD Live interface it has made standard in all forthcoming Blu-ray releases during a Tuesday Home Media Expo session for Home Theater Forum members here. Sony’s BD Live interface will vary in terms of its offered selection of Web-enabled features, but certain elements such as downloadable trailers, will be incorporated into all upcoming Blu-ray releases.

Also standard to each Sony Blu-ray title is the ability to pop in any of the studio’s upcoming releases in the format and access past features that were downloaded onto BD Live enabled players.

Marty told the HTF audience that Sony is especially committed to such Web-enabled interactivity because of early positive consumer reaction on the studio’s first BD Live releases, Walk Hard and The Sixth Day.

“We have seen a great response so far,” said Marty. “Twenty percent of people who bought the titles are activating BD Live, and of that 20%, 75% went and downloaded something from the discs. There is an appetite for this.”

Sony will push for increasingly innovative BD Live features, added Marty. The studio promises creating live red carpet events that can be enjoyed by networked Blu-ray player users.

“We are in the early days of BD Live, and this is just a taste of what the technology can do,” he said.

Courtesy Video Business.