No Fear of Sony BMG-Like XCP Fiasco With Blu-ray, Fox’s Setos Says

Unlike the Sony BMG snafu -- in his eyes a poorly executed bid “to get the genie back in the bottle” on unprotected CDs -- Blu-ray security “is designed as a total system,” Setos said. “The mechanism for people to abuse XCP is a completely different animal.” Setos said “it certainly doesn’t give me any pause” that the same thing could happen to Blu-ray. He said Blu-ray code “goes into a very special place, it’s all defined and compartmentalized, and you can’t gain access to it. So it’s a totally different metaphor” than XCP.

Blu-ray “has every reason to expect” robustness and compliance specs for the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) to be ready “fairly soon,” so as not to imperil a 2006 launch, Andy Parsons, Pioneer senior vp-advanced product development, told reporters. “Once we get that in our hands, we should be able to get everything tied up and ready to go, but we don’t quite have it in our hands yet.” He said there’s scant reason to fear a 2006 launch won’t occur, only a question of when during 2006 it will occur. Don Eklund, Sony Pictures senior vp-advanced technology, said Sony engineers are working 80-hour weeks to prepare for a launch most expect by spring. It would “kill” those engineers if they heard such a launch wasn’t happening, he said.

Fox is “resolute” in backing Blu-ray, seeing it as “the future of packaged media,” Fox Home Entertainment Pres. Mike Dunn said. “Our business is completely about content, and we think this is a giant leap forward for the consumer.” Fox also believes Blu-ray will put piracy “in the backseat again,” Dunn said. “This clearly puts the genie back in the bottle as far as packaged media goes.”

The format war front is “much quieter these days,” Dunn said. “There won’t be a format war,” he said, indicating a conflict will be averted not by unification with HD DVD, but because Blu-ray will be a slam-dunk success. Blu-ray now has 7 studios signed on, and “we have the momentum going forward.” Blu-ray has been working with major retailers for 2 months to assure that the product is launched aggressively, Dunn said: “We're very happy with the position we're in now.”

Parsons saw meaning in the event taking place 4 months to the day since Fox endorsed Blu-ray. Since then the format has averaged a new studio endorsement per month. That 7 of the 8 major studios - Universal is the exception -- back Blu-ray is “a pretty enormous vote of confidence in the format,” Parsons said. From the standpoint of the consumer who walks into a store, “you're going to see an awful lot of content for Blu-ray,” he said. “If the HD DVD folks decide to give it a run, you're probably going to find there’s only just a few studios supporting that format. So this is really creating a pretty significant format gap when you look at the 2 formats side by side. We think that’s going to be a huge, huge selling factor for consumers who are actually evaluating these 2 formats.”

Seeking to debunk what he called common Blu-ray myths, Parsons said “misunderstandings” were reported in the press that Blu-ray won’t offer mandatory managed copy when in fact it will. Mandatory managed copy is a “function” of AACS, which Blu-ray and HD DVD both endorse. Once AACS compliance and robustness rules arrive at the Blu-ray Disc Assn. (BDA) from the AACS Founders Group, mandatory managed copy will be incorporated into the Blu- ray format, Parsons said.

Likewise, speculation in the press is “completely untrue” that “BD+” protection will require a broadband connection or that a consumer will need permission to play a movie, Parsons said. BD+ “essentially will protect innocent consumers from anybody perhaps who has figured out how to hack a player,” Parsons said. “The technology will be able to detect a known hack in a title and take appropriate action only if that hack is present. If it’s not present, then the innocent consumer doesn’t have to worry about having their access to the content taken away from them. It protects innocent people from being impacted by people who are not so innocent.” BD+ also “will not interfere” with mandatory managed copy -- “despite some other assertions that have been out there” to the contrary, Parsons said: “This will co-exist quite nicely and peacefully with AACS, and we don’t see any conflict between the 2 technologies.”

Contrary to assertions by HD DVD camp “friends” about having exclusivity on a hybrid high-definition disc that also plays standard-definition DVDs, Blu-ray has such a hybrid as well, Parsons said. Blu-ray’s hybrid outdoes HD DVD’s because it’s single-sided, he said; if one inserts a hybrid Blu-ray into a standard DVD player, the laser will see through the Blu-ray layer and play back the DVD portion “without even knowing the Blu-ray layer was there,” he said. A single-sided disc can carry a label on the non-playing side, he said. “You also have the opportunity to avoid consumer confusion,” because the double-sided HD DVD solution means having to flip the disc “to put the correct side in the correct player,” he said. “From my own personal experience in tech support, what happens is people do that and then they get confused. They put the wrong side in, they don’t simply turn the disc over, they call somebody and say ‘My player is broken,’ or ‘My disc is no good.'” Blu-ray’s hybrid is a much “cleaner and more elegant solution,” Parsons said.

Specifications as elaborate as those for Blu-ray can be “subject to interpretation,” Eklund said. That’s why Sony’s release of a fully authored Charlie’s Angels disc can play a crucial role, he said. “Testing leads to clarifications” in specs to assure a disc plays properly each time it’s inserted in a player, Eklund said. By comparison, he said, DVD’s early commercialization was “less ideal” because studios “didn’t have the same opportunities to do testing in advance of hardware being released to consumers.” Eklund said that lapse put studios “in the difficult position of authoring titles to circumnavigate the characteristics” of individual players. “The CE and content communities are working together very well in Blu-ray to make sure we have a much smoother launch of the format and that we ensure a really positive consumer experience,” Eklund said.

The “interesting phenomenon” about DVD is that despite the enormity of the business, “a lot of comprehensive tools” haven’t been developed to support authoring, Eklund said. To compensate, most key authoring houses have developed their own tools to support clients, he said. “It’s not a great money-making business, selling authoring tools, because you've got a limited base of people that you're going to sell these things to, but that doesn’t remove the fact that they're extremely important.” He said that’s why Sony Pictures decided to come up with its own authoring tools “to support our current and future businesses.” Such tools “are not exclusive to Sony,” but will be marketed to studios seeking to release Blu-ray content, he said. Within a few weeks, Sony Pictures will release the first beta version of its authoring tools for testing, he said. To achieve Blu-ray’s “rich features,” an authoring tool can’t be “static,” but must be refined “to meet the imaginations of the marketing and creative people at each studio,” Eklund said: “We're going to be developing and enhancing our tools for years to come.”

Danny Kaye, Fox senior vp-research & technology strategy, said one reason his studio is “so excited about the current authoring environment is that it’s going to take us years and years to exhaust the imaginations of the people who are doing this kind of work.” Blu-ray’s features “are going to get richer and richer over a long period of time,” he said. “That’s why the format will continue to grow.” Kaye said Fox surveyed DVD consumers and authoring “professionals” the last 2 years to learn how to exploit Blu-ray’s interactive functionality in ways current DVD doesn’t allow. Blu-ray interactivity was showcased in 2 Fox “working demonstrations” shown Tues. for the first time publicly. One was a BD-Java “simulation” developed with Sonic Solutions for the film Master and Commander. The other, developed by Panasonic Hollywood Lab, showcased actual BD-Java interactivity in HD, using the movie I, Robot as demo material, recorded in MPEG-2 at very high bit rates. Like the Master and Commander simulation, the I, Robot demonstration showed the ability to access pop-up menus or game content without having to leave the movie or even reach for an extra disc -- a common DVD limitation, Kaye said.

Kaye said the Master and Commander simulation sought to show: (1) How interactive feature menus can be scrolled through in a “movie-centric experience” that doesn’t require pausing or interrupting the film, as with the current DVD; (2) how “advanced content” can be introduced and “synchronized” with the playing of the movie, a utility possible only with DVD playback on a PC, not on a set-top player; (3) how content can be updated via online connections of players equipped with the feature. “That’s going to bring continually a fresh and relevant experience to the consumer over time, and allow us, the studio, to maintain closer and continued relationships with our consumers after they've purchased our product and begun to use it.” As for “seamless” playback between interactive menus and the movie, Kaye said the DVD consumer obviously is accustomed to skipping quickly to different “chapters” on a movie disc. “But they've had to leave the movie to go to a separate menu, and there weren’t necessarily that many chapters on a screen,” Kaye said. “It doesn’t matter how much research you do with consumers. This is one of the first objections to the DVD environment that always comes up.”

Interactive features, besides HD pictures and sound, will “maximize the chances that we get as many households into Blu-ray as quickly as possible,” Buena Vista Home Entertainment Pres. Bob Chapek said. “Interactivity is a place to take the 2 worlds of bonus materials and movies that previously were in separate orbits and kind of bring them together into one seamless experience for the consumer.” In a 10-min. trailer meant to convey Disney’s “vision” of how Blu-ray’s interactive functionality might be used, Chapek said the depiction wasn’t based on BD-Java and wasn’t meant “to show what BD-Java can do.” The interactive features shown were gleaned from “the raw engineering specifications” in the Blu-ray format and help demonstrate what Blu-ray ultimately “could be,” Chapek said.

In part of the trailer, a narrator says: “With Blu- ray, your viewing experience will never be interrupted again. The menus are seamlessly loaded directly over the movie and the selections are instantaneous.” In a Q&A, Chapek said Disney “had a bit of a hand” in developing iHD, the alternative interactive system to BD-Java. “When you're part of a Blu-ray consortium, it’s just that -- a consortium,” Chapek said. “At the end of the day, things come through and they pass or they don’t pass.” That Disney didn’t use BD-Java in preparing its trailer shouldn’t be construed as a slap at BD-Java, Chapek said. Parsons said Blu-ray -- at Hewlett-Packard’s request -- continues to evaluate including iHD in its future spec at the same time it continues development work on BD-Java.