Hands On With BD Live - Continued

After you've finished, you can then go back to the disc's main menu, via the option at the bottom of the screen. The PlayStation 3 stores the downloaded items on its hard drive and you can see which discs have downloaded items (but not view them) in the 'BD Data Utility' folder on top of the video section of the XMB. I would imagine that stand-alone Blu-ray players would store the items in the settings menu, or somewhere similar.

So what did I think? Well, BD Live is an interesting aside. Obviously it's only just starting out, but hopefully they make good with their promise of providing extra content after the discs release and not just advertising for other movies.

I would hope however, that they don't use the technology for technologies sake; that is, hold back a feature which would otherwise be ready to author to disc (for example; a commentary) just to advertise online features. Of course, if a feature is legitimately created after the fact, then providing it online is a great use of the technology available.

As 2009 rolls ahead, I would imagine that more companies will embrace BD Live - at the moment, it's currently solely the domain of Sony Pictures releases. Disney have made many favourable comments towards the technology and they are committed to including BD Live features on all Disney films, starting with the September release of Sleeping Beauty.

Now that the Blu-ray format has gotten over its hardware teething problems, the possibilities that software and networking can bring to the format can start to be realised, potentially taking things to a place that no one yet knows.