More notes from Las Vegas and CES 2008...

Everyone was buzzing Monday about the Warner Bros decision to go exclusively with the Blu-ray Disc format, and that begs a thorough investigation and discussion here at a later time - but what I want to chat about today are some cool things that were being demonstrated at CES, and that FINALLY show us the potential of the long-awaited and oft-sought-for realtime internet connectivity from an Optical Disc player!

Both flavors of Next Gen disc connectivity were on display at CES,  each showing off their "connected wares"...  and each was on demo at the respective format's promotion group booth - I experienced demos of one at HD DVD Promo Group, and one at the Blu-ray Disc Ass'n booth. 

At the BDA booth, representatives from DVDA award-winners Technicolor Content Services were on hand to show off their live connected Jellyfish demo game using BD Live (and quite likely programmed using their new "BD Jive" programming language). While this a relatively simple demo, it does give a good example of what can be done using the BD disc as a front end interface to connect to data served from an online backend database.

At the HD DVD Promotion Group booth, representatives from DVDA award-winners Imagion were on hand demonstrating their "connected" Terminator, showing off their new "Dynamic HD ". This is another good examnple of what can be done to connect a front-end interface on an HD DVD disc to a back-end server containing data than can be downloaded to the Player's transient storage. In addition to being able to program the server data through an online web interface, Dynamic HD is set up to allow for web advertising banners and images to be easily uploadable and linked to a particular online title. The interface color scheme can also be easily changed through the saem web interface, and online community forums can be accessed in similar fashion.

The ramifications for both of these approaches for corporate, industrial and educational usage is staggering. We now have seen the capabilities of either format to be connecting in real-time, via the internet, to servers that can provide or receive data.  The ability to create Corporate HR communications, or 

Some things to think about - Bruce Nazarian, DVDA President