20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced that it is introducing new BD Live technology tied to popular movie database IMDB.com with the Blu-ray release of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'. Dubbed "Live Lookup," the IMDB feature will let allow viewers to hook into the site via BD Live to access up-to-date filmographies and other information related to 'Wolverine' cast and crew.
This is the first time Fox has incorporated IMDB into BD Live interactivity, and it also appears to be the first studio world-wide to do so. However, in September 8 (just a week before 'Wolverine' hits shelves), Sony is releasing 'The Quick and the Dead' and 'Silverado', both of which feature a similar, proprietary live feature from Sony called movieIQ.
As much as like Sony, I like the IMDB feature much more from FOX, considering the lengths they sometimes have to go thru to authenticate info, and that sounds fun if you can click on character and say 'Where do I know him from?" then BOOM! IMDB profile on screen, fantastic!
Well with the IMDB feature built into the disc you wont have to go anywhere. Props to the studios for trying to implement more interesting uses of BD Live.
So instead of studios dropping the prices of BD movies they add in more junk that few people use to justify the prices... Don't get me wrong, I use IMDB, but it's much faster using it on a PC than it is a BD player...
Bios and filmographies are an ancient artifact of DVD that I actually miss. Originally created seemingly to flesh-out content and provide another bullet point on the back of the box, I found them very helpful. I was kind of sad to see them go. So far the only thing like that on Blu-ray is a BD-Live downloadable skin for Transformers. I'm glad to see them making a comeback although it would be cooler if it was incorporated into watching the movie like the Transformers skin. For example, if you hit the A button, bios and filmographies for all the actors on the screen comes up. Wouldn't that be cool?
I must admit this feature doesn't quite redeem itself. If I want to go on IMDB, I'll go there on my
Internet on my computer. That is, unless, the IMDB feature leads you to exclusive content not
found on the site by computer (which I somewhat doubt)
I hate to say it, but those pining for and/or expecting the movie studios to lower the prices of new release Bluray movies, or even catalog releases for that matter(special edition Wizard of Oz anyone?)are likely to be heavily disappointed for the foreseeable future, because as long as there are plenty of people in this world paying the prices that the studios/retailers are asking right now(and there are tons of 'em), then the studios/retailers have no incentive to lower prices in ANY fashion.They will still keep charging current prices and/or keep producing higher priced boxed sets/special editions to force a higher profit margin.It's much cheaper for them to produce a "deluxe versions",and fill them with content/premiums that only cost then pennies-few dollars more to produce, all the while charging the consumer an additional $10-$25+ of which all is pure profit to them.
Best advice...if you want your Bluray movies cheaper, don't buy them when they first come out.wAIT 3-6 months and buy them off Amazon during one of their special sales.
I don't know the details of the Fox IMDB feature, but I have seen the Sony one. The Sony version uses on disc data that is updated in the background and cached, so there is no delay when you want to look up something. It's also based on timecode, so you get information based on where you are in the movie, actor, music, trivia, whatever. It'll be interested to see if Fox just slapped a Java text parser in front of imdb.
Couple of other notes on movieIQ. To kevinokev, movieIQ is turned on directly from the main menu, the choice is either play or play with movieIQ. To fettastic, movieIQ is incorporated directly into the movie, you just hit enter and the data linked to the timecode of the scene is displayed. The product was designed to give you quick access to those "who is that" types of questions that happen when watching a movie, but then get you right back to watching the film. It was specifically not designed to mimic web browsing, which is best done on a computer. In the presentation I saw they showed research that clearly showed that people will beat you up if you try to surf for information on the BD player while others are trying to watch a movie with you.
