Technicolor to Demo BD-Live Extension App for Handhelds at CES

Technicolor will demonstrate at CES an app for “all handheld devices” that will extend the functionality of the BD-Live feature on Blu-ray discs, Bob Michaels, vice president of worldwide DVD for Technicolor’s Digital Content Delivery group, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Called Media Echo, the app will “align itself to what society is starting to evolve to,” Michaels said, “especially with the invention of the iPad.” He compared the feature set of the “second-screen” app to fantasy football apps that enable viewers to follow stats on players while they're watching a live game. Media Echo will wrap details including actor bios and interactive games around a feature film, he said.

Michaels wouldn’t provide details by our deadline of the movies that would be used during the demo but said the app would encompass 2D and 3D technology. Technicolor will show a 10-minute demo to CES attendees on both active and passive 3D TVs, Michaels said. The standalone app will “dive into the content a little deeper than what we could ever produce on Blu-ray disc,” he said.

3D is still “really early” in its development stage, Michaels said, and now that some TVs are in market, and the delta is narrowing between the cost of a 2D-only and 3D TV, content creators will exploit more capabilities of the fledgling format. He said prices have become so negligible between 2D and 3D TVs that “most of those who are buying monitors this year and next year are going to have 3D capability.” In the next year or two, consumers will see “some pretty innovative ways of how you cope with integrating 3D with your life,” he said.

3D Blu-ray players are starting to mature, Michaels said, and will allow content producers to exploit interactive features associated with 3D technology. While the Sony PS3 can be upgraded to play back 3D, it doesn’t have the ability to play back 3D Java “with true 3D menus that allow you to place objects in 3D space,” he said. The extension Technicolor has demonstrated allows consumers to adjust menu depths and play with interactive games in 3D, he said. Upcoming discs will make current Blu-ray 3D “look tame,” he said. Early on, there “hasn’t been a lot of creative knowhow and experience about what to produce,” he said, and the industry has been careful to ensure that early discs play and behave correctly on all players in the market.” Michaels said Technicolor has produced more than half of the 40-plus 3D titles in the market.

After the industry seeded the market with proprietary bundles for 3D TV early adopters, it’s time to see 3D content on retail shelves as a standalone SKU, Michaels told us. The content is there, he said. “Many films have already been processed,” he said, and are awaiting validation to ensure they can play on all the 3D players in the market. In addition to studios’ “tent pole titles,” he expects to see producers like IMAX release 3D content for home viewing over the next year. “Now they have a specific home video product that would allow consumers to play back what they envisioned in an IMAX theater,” he said.

Time to market is going to be “essential for the retail side of things,” Michaels said. He envisions a packaged media environment where consumers will buy a value pack because it offers both the 3D and 2D experience along with digital copy. “If that gets consumers to perceive a value, they'll go buy the disc,” he said.

Technicolor announced this week that it has cut production time for Blu-ray 3D by more than 50 percent and “and we are even closer to matching the production times of a typical 2D Blu-ray Disc.” Michaels said shaving time from the production schedule was sensitive from a day and date standpoint. When it introduced its production services at CES last year, Technicolor said it would take roughly twice the time to make a 3D disc. Production efficiencies and faster computer processing have enabled the company to “double the amount of work in a similar amount of time as a standard Blu-ray,” he said, which he said “is the key to managing some of the content creators’ expectations.”

Despite the upcoming release of Media Echo and consumers’ increasing preference to use content in a mobile environment, Michaels is still sanguine about the future of the Blu-ray Disc. “Ultimately, it’s going to be about what the consumer wants, and the consumer will drive what we create and get to market,” he said, saying BD-Live “is the best and most future-proof channel for delivering content to the home.” As long as consumers have discs loaded in a Blu-ray player connected to BD-Live servers, he said, “We will be able to update the viewing experience of that Blu-ray Disc forever.”