Latest Blu-ray with Net connection falls short on delivery

It's happened to us all. We go to the cinema to see some long-awaited blockbuster, only to stagger out two hours later feeling irritable and disappointed.

It's been the same with me as I've tried out the latest in Blu-ray disc technology. It's called BD Live, and promises to combine high-definition movies with extras downloaded from the Internet.

It sounded like a grand idea, until I switched it on.

First, a bit of background. Blu-ray, the successor to the venerable DVD movie disc, is designed for use with the high-definition TV sets now found in about one-third of US homes. DVDs, good as they are, aren't capable of displaying true high-definition video - they can't hold enough data. Blu-ray players can easily handle the job.

Early Blu-ray players used a hardware and software standard called Profile 1.0. Those were entry-level players, designed to show a movie and nothing else. These machines are no longer being made.

The industry has moved to Profile 1.1 players, which include picture-in-picture technology. We've all seen DVDs with audio commentary tracks, so you can hear the director talking about his artistic vision while the film's hero blasts the bad guys.

A Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player has extra video decoding hardware, so it can show two movies at once. Now Blu-ray discs can include video commentaries that play in a small window, while the main feature takes up the rest of the screen.

While watching a car chase, you can see the stunt drivers and camera crews filming the chase. It's a bit distracting if you've never seen the movie before, but it's a welcome extra when you're watching for the third time.

Last year saw the introduction of Profile 2, a player architecture that adds an Internet connection and a gigabyte of memory for storing downloaded data. You've got to have a Profile 2 player to take advantage of the BD Live features you'll find on a number of Blu-ray movie releases. But Profile 2 isn't mandatory; Blu-ray players without it are readily available for about $200. A Profile 2 machine will run you about $100 more.

So should you spend the extra money? Given the current slate of BD Live offerings, it's hard to see why.

I tried out a couple of BD Live-compatible Blu-ray players, both from Sony Corp. The BDP-S550 lists at $399, but can be found online for around $330.

I've also been running BD Live discs on a 2-year-old PlayStation 3 video game console, featuring a software upgrade that brought it up to Profile 2 standards. The PS 3's $400 cost and lack of blockbuster games has made it something of a disappointment, but it's a fine Blu-ray player. Its powerful processor chip and big hard drive launches movies and Internet features much faster than the stand-alone Sony Blu-ray machine.

But what good are Internet-enabled movies? It's clear that Sony's film studio has no idea. I loaded up a couple of Sony film releases - "Hancock" and "Pineapple Express" - only to be offered previews of other movies and downloadable ringtones. In other words, they featured stuff I could easily obtain while sitting at my PC.

The "Pineapple Express" disc does offer one modestly amusing interactive feature - an old-school Nintendo-type game where you lead one of the film's characters in dodging pineapples and climbing ladders. The highest-scoring players are listed on a leaderboard, so gamers can compete with other movie fans around the world.

Universal Studios seems a bit more ambitious. The BD Live-enabled version of the recent film "Wanted" includes tools for setting up online chat sessions with other movie fans. It also lets viewers identify favorite clips from the movie and send them to buddies. But to use the features, your friends must each have a $25 Blu-ray copy of "Wanted." And instead of watching the film together, you must all watch separately, while texting back and forth about how cool it all is. With friends like these, who needs strangers?

I've seen just one promising BD Live application - scheduled online chats with movie people. The directors of "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy II" held live chat sessions last year with Blu-ray movie owners. But even this was done with typed-in questions and answers. To really make a go of it, there needs to be a way for fans and film folk to talk through a voice-over-Internet service.

As for the other BD Live features, there's nothing you can't get cheaper and better through a computer or game console. That's not to say that connecting Blu-ray players to the Internet is a bad idea. The South Korean company Samsung makes a $350 player that also delivers streaming video from movie rental company Netflix and music from the Pandora personalized music service. The same player also offers BD Live, and a few users might even give it a try. But probably not more than once.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.