| Editorial April 2009
BD Live: Comatose?
 Earlier this week, I received
an advance copy of Disney’s Bolt on Blu-ray. I settled down with great
expectation, as I’d so enjoyed the 3D version in the theater. I loaded it in my
Panasonic DMP-BD55 and pushed the "Blu-ray 2" button on my universal remote,
which selects a source input that’s connected to the Internet via an Ethernet cable.
After the usual wait, the trailers began. At the end of those, I should have been taken to
the disc’s main menu. Instead, the player’s screen saver appeared. In short, the
Pioneer wouldn’t play Bolt itself. I then loaded the disc in my Samsung
universal player, and it worked just fine -- I was able to enjoy the movie and
review it for this month’s "Video Roundup."
The next morning, I e-mailed Disney and told them about the
problem I’d had. They replied that several other customers had experienced the same
problem, and that they were working on a fix. An hour later, a second e-mail announced
that the problem had been fixed. What’s this? I thought. They haven’t
sent me a new disc. Skeptical, I loaded the same disc in the same Panasonic player. By
golly, it worked.
The only answer I have to this, since the tech folks seem
to want to keep it a secret, is that somehow a repair had been sent to my player via the
Internet. After all, Panasonic has already updated my DMP-BD55 that way. Occasionally when
I’ve turned the player on, there’s an announcement on my display stating that a
new update is available, and asking if I want to install it. I usually click
"yes" -- that’s about all I have to do.
I think these updates are terrific. I marvel at the way
they tie my player to the Internet. It beats having to burn or request a software disc.
However . . .
I recently wrote a review for another publication in which
I stated that BD Live must have been invented for slackers, who are probably the only
folks with time enough to play around with it. Though BD Live uses the Internet and I have
Comcast Blast, one of the fastest connections around, the process is anything but quick.
Today I tried the BD Live option included in the Blu-ray
edition of Milk. It took about two-and-a-half minutes to get a screen, which then
presented me with several choices, one of which was to watch trailers for other films.
This worked well, though each time I selected one, there was another wait while it loaded.
But when I wanted to access the special features, which would purportedly allow me to
enter my own list of scene clips and share them with other BD Live users, I was asked for
a password, or to establish one. What is this nonsense? If the network is smart enough to
fix my player, why isn’t it smart enough to get all the information it needs from the
disc itself? If it can identify a disc as authentic, why is a password needed?
Frustrated, and watching the clock to keep track of how
much time I was wasting, I moved on to Disney’s Platinum Edition of Pinocchio.
Here, when I tried to access BD Live, I was told that Disney no longer uses logins, but
that I’d have to accept their rules and regulations by clicking the Accept button. I
was encouraged -- this looked more like standard computer operation. I clicked Accept, and
got a screen telling me that 6MB of information I needed was being downloaded. This took
two tries and about three minutes. After the downloading was done, I was redirected to BD
Live -- which took another two minutes to reload. Once Disney’s BD Live screen
was up again, I found that my only choices were to play Disney trivia games with other
network members, or indulge in private games. When I clicked on the latter, I got a
"Coming Soon" message; when I clicked on the former, four little Pinocchio
icons came up; mine had a game-player number. I waited a minute, and someone else joined,
but apparently the game couldn’t begin until all four icons were claimed. Running out
of time, I exited BD Live.
Who does have time for this nonsense? So far, BD
Live seems to be little more than a half-baked advertising gimmick that pretends to work
like a computer but doesn’t in fact work very well at all. Most of the BD Live hype
talks about connecting with your friends, but we do that already: you can watch a movie,
then instantly text your friends via your cell phone or other mobile device, and have an
entire conversation in the time it takes to just load BD Live.
As it is, BD Live is yet another Blu-ray feature
that’s not ready for prime time. I see only one good use for it: You could download
extra features that might be added to a later edition of a movie you already own, so you
don’t have to buy it again. But you know that no big film studio is going to
give away such stuff for nothing.
By telling us that we need BD Live, the studios are
trying to sell us a bill of goods. I sure don’t need it -- I’d rather
have better video transfers and lower prices, and I suspect that most other viewers feel
the same. But even if BD Live worked quickly and effectively, I don’t think many
would use it. (On the other hand, hooking up your Blu-ray player to the Internet for
automatic updates is a great idea.)
Last month, I gave the Blu-ray Disc an over all B-minus
rating for not having released more films in the format’s nearly three years,
especially as the Blu-ray standard was set two years before that. My recent experiences
with BD Live lower that rating to a C.
. . . Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com |
