BD Live Feature Not Expected to Help Decipher Plot
Angels & Demons Blu-Ray Disc (BD) debuts MovieIQ, a new BD Live feature from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Similar to Live Lookup from Fox Home Entertainment, it brings movie trivia from the web to your HDTV.
Sony partnered with GraceNote, well known for Compact Disc Database (CDDB) information, while Fox used the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).
Engadget wrote up a detailed piece when it was announced back in July:
movieIQ takes advantage of Gracenote’s Video Explore solution, which brings powerful search and navigation capabilities to connected consumer electronic devices. Video Explore allows users to search the online Gracenote video database, linking together related cast, crew, movies, TV episodes, franchises, seasons, DVDs, and Blu-rays. Gracenote’s global Video database contains rich video information for North America, Europe, and Japan, including factual metadata, synopses, credits, and detailed descriptive elements.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Sony Pictures to deliver movieIQ, a feature that takes full advantage of the Blu-ray format’s internet connectivity and truly demonstrates that Blu-ray is the future of home entertainment,” said Ross Blanchard, VP of Business Development at Gracenote. “Now, movie lovers will have access to an incredible new service where they can explore and discover all the rich details on their favorite actors, directors and movies.”
The movieIQ feature is the latest addition to SPHE’s BD-Live portfolio, which also includes social networking through cinechat, multiplayer games, and a customizable music video editor, as well as soundtrack playlists, e-movie cash, downloadable featurettes, and more, available on over 100 Sony Pictures Blu-ray titles worldwide since the technology launched in spring of 2008.
via Sony Pictures to smarten up Blu-ray with MovieIQ, the “killer app for BD-Live” — Engadget.
Sony is doing a good job of keeping up with the BD Live Joneses. It is just a matter of time before Sony, Fox, or someone else takes BD Live to the next level with social networking to drive BD sales and rentals. Presenting viewers with IMDB, or similar, information of other films by the crew or starring certain stars of a movie, you can imagine:
- being taken to Amazon or the studio’s Home Entertainment site to add the BD to your wish list
- presented the option to add it to your Netflix Queue, on a PS3 for example
- offered to stream it directly to your Sony HDTV
For example, you turn on watch Angels & Demons with MovieIQ. You are reminded Tom Hanks and Ron Howard teamed up previously on Apollo 13 so you put in on your wish list or rental queue. That updates your Facebook account and one of your friends has never seen that particular film. They add it to their queue. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Today MovieIQ makes BD smarter. Soon the whole delivery pipeline, from head end to the home will be as well. Sony is in position to provide a product at every nearly every stage. Below is a video explaining MovieIQ Sony delivered recently. We’ll see how long it takes Sony to deliver that solution to you. Happy viewing!
After the Transition 