BD-Live as a Key Feature to Watch

Like everyone else, we've been anxiously tracking announcements coming from the Blu-ray business, trying to gauge how the players and the software are doing. The Blu-ray Association held its annual CES press conference last week, and revealed the following information (compiled from TWICE):

• 10.7 million stand-alone Blu-ray Disc players and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles had shipped to retail since the launch of the Blu-ray Disc format 2.5 years ago.
• The industry saw a three-fold increase in the sales of Blu-ray Disc players compared to 2007.
• The rate of household penetration of Blu-ray Disc players is far outpacing other key consumer electronics devices at the three-year points in their rollouts. Color TV registered a little more than three percent household penetration after three years, CD was a little less than two percent after three years, and DVD saw about four percent penetration after three years. In contrast, Blu-ray players are seeing a nearly eight percent household penetration rate after two and half years.
• In software, nearly 1,100 Blu-ray titles are now available in the U.S. market.

I had commented about BD-Live features after seeing Disney's CTO Art Hair speak at Cisco's C-Scape event in December. These interactive features and related services should be a very interesting space to watch in 2009.

I didn't get the chance to visit with this company, but Dreamer, a provide of interactive TV solutions, announced last week that their BIDDLE™ platform will be utilized by Technicolor to offer digital content delivery services including online and disc-based direct-to-TV solutions for Blu-ray; allowing movie studios, broadcasters, record labels and other content distributors to utilize BD-Live as a fully-controllable direct marketing and e-commerce tool.