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.

Disney is Bullish on BD-Live

Art Hair, Disney Studios CTO, is speaking now at C-Scape. Disney has released a Blu-ray version of Sleeping Beauty that includes the interactive features of BD-Live. There's actually a good video demonstration of the functionality on YouTube. Disney has launched the BD-Live Network that offers chat, gaming, and other interactive features.

Our Digital Media Evolution study, the results of which will be available soon, reveals that consumers are more likely to view such BD-Live features as access to expanded VoD content and trailers are more valuable than other features like chatting or attending virtual watching parties. I talked to Art about this yesterday at lunch, and he acknowledged that for "old people" like he and I, these may not make much sense. However, when you make Hannah Montana a virtual experience (Art mentioned virtual pajama parties), one can only imagine how the younger generation may respond to a feature like this.