The future of Blu-ray is the networked experience made possible by BD-Live, the part of Blu-ray that gives players Internet connectivity. But despite everything the networked Blu-ray experience can enable, they are all still limited by the 20th-century interface of the humble remote control, which is great for channel-surfing but clumsy for more advanced inputs like text.

Enter BD Touch, a new solution from NetBlender for expanding the possibilities of BD-Live by combining the awesome power of the iPhone with Blu-ray. NetBlender was spun off from a DVD production company with expertise in Web-enabled discs in 2005 and also offers a new Blu-ray authoring tool called DoStudio.

The idea for BD Touch grew out of the inspiration NetBlender CEO John Harrington found in his new iPhone. "It occurred to me the first time I played with an iPhone," says Harrington. "The interface is really quite exciting as well as the connectivity of the device. Several of us were sitting around the office saying that there's no reason it couldn't connect out to all sorts of other devices, like Blu-ray."

Harrington and his team speculated that Apple would eventually offer an SDK to develop applications for the iPhone, and though it took a while to be released, they were right in the end and ready to move forward with their vision of harnessing the power of the iPhone and Blu-ray together.

On its most basic level, BD Touch allows an iPhone and a Blu-ray player to talk to each other over a local network (typically Wi-Fi for the iPhone and wireline for Blu-ray). While this is enabled by BD-Live on Blu-ray, it does not mean that anything is necessarily going out over the internet.

For example, one of the first demos NetBlender has shown is that of moving a portable media file from a Blu-ray Disc directly onto an iPhone. "We know that movie studios are very hot on doing digital copies, but prior to BD Touch there's been no elegant way to get them from the disc onto the mobile device," says Harrington. "It was up to the viewer to go put the disc into a computer and have the right hookups to move stuff over." Now on the Netblender website you can see a demo of how moving these files can be drag-and-drop simple from within the iPhone without need for a third computer.

But this is only the beginning.

On a simplistic level, using an iPhone as a remote control for your Blu-ray player will allow for things like using the iPhone's QWERTY keyboard to more easily input data, such as credit card information.

Another level up would be to recognize the value of having a remote control with a screen for applications like trivia games where what's shown on the iPhone can differ from what's on the TV screen.

Beyond that BD Touch can utilize any of the iPhone's features, such as its geo-location ability as well as its internal gyroscope.

And even though the focus of BD Touch is on enabling a local connection between iPhone and Blu-ray, perhaps its greatest potential lies in leveraging the connectivity both technologies feature.

Ultimately it's Harrington's goal that BD Touch be a key enabler in helping the industry drive adoption of BD-Live. "The issue with BD-Live is that while it certainly generates excitement, there's still the question of how many people will actually plug their players in, which is what Hollywood needs," he says. "We hope that our apps can help play into that and generate that enthusiasm."

But it's not just their apps that they hope do this. NetBlender has released BD Touch as a suite of SDKs with the goal of encouraging the entire industry to take on the challenge of creating new networked, multi-screen experiences. "By putting a platform out there we hope to see a lot of creativity grow around it," says Harrington. "We also think that to help sell the Blu-ray format building an ecosystem of creative applications is vital."

The BD Touch SDK comes in to two parts: Connect and Premiere Blend/In. Connect is a free extension of the iPhone SDK that facilitates the create of the BD Touch apps that reside on the iPhone. Premiere Blend/In is the licensed SDK that allows for the creation of the applications that reside on-disc. It also opens up the ability to tap into all the capabilities of the iPhone, like geo-location. Pricing varies based on intended use and availability is somewhat limited as applicants are being prequalified and prescreened. "The Premiere Partner program is not something the whole world will join, but we're looking to work with a reasonable number of qualified partners," says Harrington.

Currently the development of any BD Touch application requires a two-part process, building both the iPhone and on-disc applications. Eventually, Harrington expects to see the implementation of some basic apps and functionalities baked into all Blu-ray Discs so that iPhone apps could be developed separately. And NetBlender is in discussions with hardware manufacturers about getting basic BD Touch features in players to help further spur flexibility in the development of applications.

Also noteworthy is the potential for developers to create applications other authors can use, as is the case with the aforementioned digital copy transfer application, which is being developed by a NetBlender partner to be offered to Blu-ray authors as an option that can be implemented by simply checking a box.

While BD Touch was only just released in spring '08, Harrington suggests that the first BD Touch titles should be hitting markets in time for the holiday shopping season, though no specific titles have yet been announced. "We need to keep in mind that the production for a Hollywood disc is actually beginning the authoring process right now and everything wraps up in August or September and goes off to replication. So the opportunity is between now and late August, which is a pretty short turnaround, but the response has been positive enough that I think we can expect to see some of this functionality on the Q4 releases," says Harrington.

Geoff Daily (geoffdaily at gmail.com) is a contributing editor to Streaming Media magazine.

The Authoritative Blu-ray Disc (BD) FAQ Has Moved!

Hugh Bennett’s The Authoritative Blu-ray Disc (BD) FAQ has moved to its new home at Hugh’s News (www.hughsnews.ca).

It can now be found at: www.hughsnews.ca/faqs/authoritative-blu-ray-disc-bd-faq

Sony is announcing a professional solution for Blu-ray Disc™ encoding, with the introduction of the BAE-VX1000 multi-codec video encoder. It is designed for real-time encoding of MPEG-2 or H.264/AVC primary and secondary video streams suitable for the Blu-ray Disc format.

“With Blu-ray technology now being recognized as the HD optical disc format for the consumer electronics industry, more studios are increasing production of BD titles,” said Chris Marchitelli, marketing manager in Sony Electronics’ content creation division. “This encoding solution provides a range of features to speed the BD-ROM workflow, offering high-quality and ease of operation for BD-ROM authoring professionals.”

The BAE-VX1000 encoder is designed to meet the needs of the growing encoder market as applications grow beyond BD-ROM to BD-Live for network enabled features, and BD-R/RE for small quantity production. The new solution is affordable and can decrease total encoding time by up to 30 percent over the existing BAE-VA700 solution. This is accomplished through enhancements such as parallel capturing and pre-processing, the elimination of LDEC checking, and increased encoding algorithm efficiency.

It can support a simple and affordable single PC configuration that can accomplish AVC encoding in real-time, ideal for smaller production houses. It can also be easily expanded to a networked distributed processing configuration, in order to achieve the higher performance required by some production facilities.

A multi-codec design enables compatibility with most common Blu-Ray authoring applications, such as Sony Creative Software’s Blu-Print and Sonic Solutions’ Scenarist. The option of using of AVC or MPEG-2 technology will give production professionals more flexibility, depending on their timeframe, client preference or other individual workflow requirements. MPEG-2 encoding for traditional DVD authoring is also available.

The BAE-VX1000 offers multiple settings that are engineered to suit individual production needs. An “Express” mode supports AVC real-time encoding with one PC, when encoding speed is the top priority. When using additional networked processors, “Fast” and “Quality” modes are also available to meet higher performance and quality priorities. The BAE-VX1000 also offers a built in real-time AVC elementary stream decoder that greatly improves the efficiency of quality checking procedures.

New features also include: template parameters, batch processing, support for one PC standalone encoder and compatibility with Windows® Server 2003, XP, and Vista (64-bit operating system required in each case). “It is designed to maintain a high picture quality BD workflow,” Marchitelli said. “Through distributed processing, it can control a large number of PCs for real-time performance, making it possible to build a scalable system and shorten your overall encoding time with no compromise in picture quality.”

The BAE-VX1000 encoder is expected to be available this summer.

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness

Falcon Technologies International (FTI), the worldwide leading manufacturer of optical data storage discs for professional and archival applications, today announced that it has tapped CD Dimensions to resell and distribute a wide range of Falcon Pro Media recordable DVD-R, CD-R and Blu-ray Disc solutions. Built on the companies’ mutual commitment to quality, the partnership makes Falcon Pro Media products easily available to CD Dimensions’ large customer base, including business end-users, duplication service bureaus and resellers.

“We are pleased to welcome CD Dimensions, Inc. as a reseller and distributor of Falcon Pro optical recording media solutions,” said Mr. Adel Michael, co-founder and CEO of Falcon Technologies International (FTI). “Both of our companies are leaders in providing the highest quality recording solutions available. Our relationship with CD Dimensions gives us access their extensive customer base of business end-users, disc duplication service bureaus and resellers.”

"Offering quality and industry-leading media products has always been CD Dimensions' number one mission," said Gina Calabro, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at CD Dimensions, Inc. "With the new line of Falcon Pro Media products we can now offer our customers a superior alternative for their professional and archival media needs.”

CD Dimensions customers can currently choose from a wide range of Falcon Pro Media solutions, designed to provide stunningly vivid and crisp printing results with today’s disc printing devices. All Falcon printable surface discs feature print-to-the-hub formulations. Each disc can be printed all the way to its hub to maximize visual impact. Discs are available for inkjet and thermal disc printers, with silver and white surfaces to accommodate diverse printing needs.

Following is a breakdown of the Falcon Pro Media solutions currently offered by CD Dimensions:

• DVD-R with white inkjet printable surface
  
• DVD-R with silver pearl inkjet printable surface
  
• DVD-R with white thermal printable surface
  
• DVD-R with silver thermal printable surface
  
• Dual Layer DVD+R with white inkjet printable surface
  
• CD-R with white inkjet printable surface
  
• CD-R with silver pearl inkjet printable surface
  
• CD-R with white thermal printable surface
  
• CD-R with silver thermal printable surface
  
• BD-R (Blu-ray Disc) with white inkjet printable surface

FTI’s printable surface discs are the ideal solutions for professional disc duplication and printing applications. The discs combine best-in-class printing capabilities with exceptional recording and playback performance. The surfaces are designed to dry quickly and lock-in vivid color.

Falcon Pro Media DVD-R, CD-R and Blu-ray Disc recording media solutions are designed to unyielding quality standards. To ensure absolute quality consistency, all FTI media is manufactured by highly skilled staff at a single state-of-the-art facility in the UAE. Only FTI recording media solutions provide Certified Swiss Quality (CSQ), validated by the company’s certification by Swiss ISO organizations, considered among the world’s most stringent.

The unique inorganic recording material formulation deployed for FTI’s recordable Blu-ray Discs helps achieve exceptional stability for longer archival and superior data protection. By partnering with a leading Blu-ray technology provider, FTI has positioned itself on the leading edge of Blu-ray technology.

Additional Media Solutions for Professional and Archival Applications
Along with its printable surface discs, FTI offers a complete line of recording media specially designed and developed for the most demanding professional and archival applications. Key FTI advancements include a 24k gold reflective layer formulation that gives discs a more than 300 year archival lifespan, and the company’s Ultra Hard Coat (UHC) anti-scratch protection.

With its innovative formulations, FTI has achieved an archival lifespan of more than 300 years for FalconMedia Full Gold EP recordable CD-R media, and more than 100 years for FalconMedia Gold EP recordable DVD-R media. A 24k gold reflective layer provides maximum resistance to degradation caused by environmental factors such as corrosion, a major cause of failure in standard media. Both solutions have been subjected to accelerated aging conditions, confirming the discs’ archival life-spans.

FTI’s Ultra Hard Coat (UHC) anti-scratch protection is the most reliable solution to protect mission-critical data against potential disc surface contaminants and mishandling. Applied to the media’s polycarbonate layer during the manufacturing process, UHC technology increases the disc’s scratch resistance and also helps fend off other contaminants such as smudges from fingerprints.

www.falconrak.com
www.cddimensions.com

Just in time for the company’s 50th anniversary, arvato digital services has installed the first production line for Blu-ray discs at its Gütersloh headquarters. The Gütersloh Blu-ray facility is the second within the group after the production plant in the United States. The new machine can produce Blu-ray discs with a storage capacity of up to 50 gigabytes.

With the high-resolution Blu-ray discs already in successful production since last year at the U.S. facility in Weaverville, the first Blu-ray production line in Gütersloh has now been running since early April 2008. arvato digital services has already produced over 1.5 million of high-resolution discs since its introduction. “We’re starting with one Blu-ray line in Gütersloh and will soon increase capacities to respond to customer demand,” says Sven Deutschmann, CEO EMEA Manufacturing at arvato digital services. “The new high-resolution format offers an array of technical features for our customers in the sectors of video, IT/high-tech, games and audio. We’re ready and anticipate an extremely dynamic volume growth in Europe,” says Deutschmann.

arvato digital services has recently produced the first dual-layer Blu-ray Disc (BD50) for splendid medien. The disc was developed by Enteractive Studios in Hamburg, Germany. “Together with arvato digital services, we are looking forward to celebrating our joint premier with a top new release. In the Name of the King will go on sale on April 25, 2008,” notes Thomas Wicki, Sales and Marketing Director at Splendid Film GmbH.

The Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2002 by a group of leading companies in the consumer electronics, music, computer and software industries. Blu-ray discs are written and read by a blue laser with a wavelength of 405 nm, shorter than that used with DVDs. What makes the Blu-ray Disc unique is its high-density storage capacity of 25 gigabytes per layer and side, which enables data volumes of 50 gigabytes in a dual-layer process. arvato digital services, as an innovative media replicator, offers both formats.

About arvato digital services
arvato digital services offers a broad range of services and solutions to its business partners in the sectors of IT/high-tech, games, video and audio. 8,000 employees deliver top quality to our customers worldwide—and have done so for exactly 50 years. Our global footprint covers 18 countries on all five continents.

arvato digital services is a leading provider of integrated solutions, including every step of the value chain, from replication, fulfillment, distribution/supply chain management to financial services and electronic content distribution. All these processes are supported by innovative end-to-end IT systems. Our solutions create value for our customers and ensure that they are well equipped for the challenges of their markets.

Together with arvato print, arvato systems and arvato services, we form arvato AG, the internationally networked media and communication service provider. arvato AG is a division of Bertelsmann AG, headquartered in Gütersloh, Germany.

www.arvatodigitalservices.com

The Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA) has announced that it has joined the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) in the establishment of industry metadata standards for the digital delivery of home entertainment content via the Internet. In doing so, CDSA actively joins EMA's Digital Delivery Council, which has gained the participation of leading studio and retailers for this vital step in the industry's technical development.

The industry metadata standards will provide uniformity in the communication of product data by content suppliers to retailers and in the nomenclature used to convey that data.

"We welcome CDSA and its members' support in our effort to create a common language for digital files and thereby streamline the pipeline of entertainment from the studios, via retailers, to the consumer," says EMA President Bo Andersen. "Without common standards the industry faces substantial inefficiencies and unnecessary roadblocks to the inevitable development of our industry's digital future."

According to CDSA President Charles Van Horn, the fact that the various online home entertainment retailers require differing sets of metadata with their files causes unnecessary production difficulties for his association's membership, which is set with the responsibility of storing and delivering the content on behalf of their studio clients.

"Only through bringing the digital service providers into the discussions with the studios and their retail partners can we truly overcome what is becoming a burdensome production and distribution process," Van Horn says. "Everyone - the studios, the retailers, and their service providers -are all in a position to benefit from the establishment of standards and we applaud EMA in taking such a collaborative approach to solving the metadata debacle."

CDSA joins current members of the EMA Digital Delivery Council including: Lionsgate, Warner Home Video, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Home Entertainment, Cinema Now, and Netflix.

The EMA Digital Delivery Council was founded in June 2007 to facilitate education for any company that delivers digital data through a financial transaction, whether it is a subscription model or an individual sale. One of its first steps was the development of a Digital Delivery Glossary, which ultimately led to the understanding that there was no single "metadata language" for the industry's digital video files.

CDSA has also been actively involved in investigating the metadata issue, which came as a direct result of its establishment of standards and procedures for the protection and security of digital files through post production facilities. These Post Production Security Standards and Procedures specify requirements for security management applied by content production, compression, encoding and authoring organizations in post production that contribute to the security of video and audio content from front end production to delivery. These standards and procedures were presented to the industry in 2007 in cooperation with Deluxe Digital Services.

"Our members were encouraging us to begin our own metadata standardization initiative but, once we became aware of EMA's efforts, it only made sense to work together since the most effective plan involves bringing all concerned parties around a single table at one time," Van Horn explains. "We encourage all our members and all our partnering associations to work together to help build these standards as quickly as possible."

MPEG LA, LLC, world leader in alternative one-stop patent licenses, today announced that several MPEG-2 patent owners have filed an enforcement action in the Federal District Court of the Southern District of New York against Target Corporation (“Target”) and Doe Corporations 1-10, fictitious names for corporations currently unknown to the plaintiffs, for infringing patents essential to the MPEG-2 digital video compression standard used worldwide in digital television broadcasting and DVD.

According to the complaint, Target offers in its retail stores a variety of products under its Trutech® house brand name, such as digital televisions and DVD players, that use patent protected MPEG-2 methods without having entered into licenses with the individual patent holders or a portfolio license that includes these patents offered by MPEG LA. The complaint also alleges that at Target's request the Doe Corporations manufacture and produce the unlicensed products for sale by Target under Target's Trutech® brand name, but these Doe Corporations are not believed to be licensed or paying royalties on Target's behalf.

“We have offered Target a license, but regrettably they have refused,” said MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn. “We join those patent owners whose technologies Target is using without benefit of license and those companies who are licensed and paying their fair share of royalties in the hope that these actions finally will get their attention.”

The suit seeks, among other things, monetary damages and an injunction prohibiting Target from using MPEG-2 patents in its products and from offering, marketing, or importing them.

www.mpegla.com

Europe's premier DVD film content locking and billing mechanism has finally launched in the USA. Liquid11's unique patent pending product is designed to create a new window of exhibition for content owners worldwide. DVD locking allows content owners to lock films held on a DVD and bill viewers for an PIN used to unlock the video content. DVDs can be distributed freely thus driving impulse buyers and new sales through the pay to unlock method.

The European launch over 12 months ago has proved that DVDPay is a secure way to create new revenues and has shown to offer both content owners and distributors strong residual incomes. The existing billing options of premium SMS and premium telephony used in Europe have been complemented in the USA with the addition of automated credit card billing, which is accessible via the phone.

DVDPay Sales Manager, David Morris said "It was important for us to adapt our billing platform to the existing habits of the USA market. We were particularly keen not to restrict credit card billing to internet users only as a high percentage of our cover-mount target customers are not regular web users. Developing an easy to use phone based credit card billing system via a 1-800 number makes our product accessible to all USA markets".

Morris went on to say "our unique algorithm based locking generates an individual PIN for each user. This stops syndication of a static PIN which was the main reason previous products had not returned significant revenues. DVDPay is the only film locking product available that offers a total package of security and billing, giving both the content owners and distributors the peace of mind they need to experiment with new distribution channels. Both the film and the print media industry have seen many negative changes recently due to technological advancements and I'm sure both industries will be pleased to see that in this technology is working in their favour".

www.dvdpay.co.uk

Data Protection Solutions by Arco, a long established leader in easy to use, low-cost drive to drive backup technology, today announced EzMigration 3 hard drive migration software. Designed to shelter the end user from the complexities of the drive copy process, EzMigration can greatly simplify the move to a new or larger boot drive.

EzMigration 3 works under Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and 2008. Its purpose is to transfer a complete drive image (a duplicate or clone) of one drive to another. It can also expand the drive image partition or move a partition where necessary. Partition expansion is required when one wants to migrate to a larger drive. Partition expansion may also require moving a partition to another location on the drive.

EzMigration was developed as a low-cost alternative to DPS-Arco's existing EzCopy stand alone hardware drive copiers. Aimed primarily at the non-technical, occasional user, it is designed to be simple enough and non-threatening enough for computer users who have little or no experience copying drives.

"We have completely redesigned the EzMigration look and feel in an effort to eliminate anything that might cause confusion or make a user uneasy. It's pretty much a click and drag operation," says company CEO Itzik Levy.

EzMigration can be used to copy any drive but it is particularly useful for people faced with the job of having to migrate their boot drive contents. EzMigration transfers an exact image copy of the original drive to the new one. This eliminates all the work normally involved in building or rebuilding a new boot drive by installing one application at a time. Once the drive image has been transferred to the new drive, all of the information on the old drive-including the applications, data files, preferences and partitioning-will be on the new drive. In the case of a boot drive migration, the new drive will be bootable and ready to use. This type of move cannot be achieved through a file by file copy.

Since most people will want to migrate their data to a larger drive, EzMigration includes a drive partition expansion utility so that new drive owners can take advantage of the full storage capacity of their drives. Whenever a drive image is copied to a new drive, the image creates a partition which is limited to the size of the copied drive. For example, if a 60 GB drive is migrated to a 120 GB drive, the result will be a 120 GB drive with a 60 GB active partition and 60 GB of unusable drive space. The partition expansion utility provides a quick and easy way to expand the 60 GB active partition to the full 120 GB so that users can take full advantage of their new drives.

EzMigration sells for $39.99 and is available for immediate download. For additional information, click here.

www.arcoide.com

PACSGEAR, Inc., the leader in document and multimedia connectivity for PACS/EHR, today announced the addition of a high volume, high quality robotic CD/DVD burner for PACSGEAR MediaWriter™. Planned for launch at the upcoming SIIM Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, MediaWriter D200 uses the Epson® Discproducer™ to quickly write and print DICOM CDs/DVDs with one click. Discproducer has two CD/DVD drives and a capacity of 100 discs, giving hospitals, healthcare networks and imaging centers a DICOM distribution solution that is easy to configure, deploy and maintain.

“MediaWriter D200 provides a scalable solution that fits our customers’ DICOM image distribution requirements. We selected Discproducer after an extensive evaluation and concluded that it meets the standard of reliability that our customers demand. This burner/printer easily fits on a desk and produces up to 100 discs without reloading,” said Brian J. Cavanaugh, President of PACSGEAR. “We now offer a complete line of affordable, automated DICOM distribution solutions that span from desktop to film room.”

www.pacsgear.com