Interactive Video + Blu-ray. Notes and Stuff.

Worthwhile: Saving the HDi platform for non-HD DVD media.

MS Don’t Kill HDi! An Open Letter from Format War Frontline

On a technical implementation level HD-DVD was farther along than Blu-ray, even at the time of its death. HDi comprised a powerful tool and a competitor that raised the stakes on its rival, especially because it was accessible earlier. HD-DVD specialists took advantage with Advanced Features on HD-DVD releases, powered by HDi. Warner’s In-Movie Experience and Universal’s U-control presented a new quality of viewer experience.

Without expensive AACS requirements, HD-DVD appeared to be taking off on its own as a favorite among producers who didn’t require strong copy protection, such as independent producers and international distributors. HDi’s common heritage with Ajax-style web development in its use of XML and ECMAScript (Javascript) attracted a new fleet of HDi specialists, inspired by the format capabilities and potential to take viewer experience to new levels. This low barrier to entry made the labor for HD-DVD production cheaper than Blu-ray Disc, and the formation of the AIC emboldened this community to invest in their education and skills. (We still offer a fine library of HDi modules at metacommons.org.)

Playing with HDi on your Xbox. Free HD DVD emulator for Xbox 360.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator is a development and test tool that allows you to run complete HD DVD projects - video, audio, and advanced interactivity - on your Xbox 360 from an external USB drive or networked PC.

Interested in exploring BD Licensing? Start here. Good luck with that.

Some nice demos of advanced BD interactivity.

BD Live demo.

No BD in the Xbox? Microsoft says no Blu-ray for Xbox 360.

Bob Cringley has an interesting, and somewhat inaccuate, piece on Apple’s implementation of Blu-ray. There is absolutely no way that iTunes is going to compete with BD, regardless of the compression efficiencies of H.264… and Macs can’t play 1080p? Seems like my new iMac 2.4GHZ can do it in most situations, though it’s probably at the upper-bounds of it’s abilities. It does play back 1080p Matroska files fairly reliably. Introducing hardware H.264 decoding to Macs is interesting though, and speculation about that is old news.

How about iTunes/BD-Live integration? A section of the iTMS for BD “extras”? games, expanded content, etc… in addition to providing some insight into what type(s) of advanced/extended content consumers actually want, it would allow producers to extend and differentiate value-added content, most likely creating additional revenue streams or at the very least, another marketing channel. Duh.

The new Old Media—Lionsgate to include iPod-enabled versions on it’s releases. Wal Mart clearing out DVDs, as sales decline.

Retail giant Wal-Mart is making less room for the back-catalog DVD titles that help widen studio profits while more customers either download high-definition films or order them on-demand from cable companies, according to one analyst.