That’s not to say that the Pioneer BDP-120 isn’t worth $599. Who can asign value to these things in today’s crazy consumer electronics market anyway? For $599 you get a BD Profile 2.0 player with a 0.8 second startup time, a super sexy slim design and your typical 1080p/24Hz playback and HD audio decoding. But it’s worth noting that the same model was priced at under $US300 back in January, and the Aussie dollar isn’t doing that badly at the moment…

Also announced yesterday was the BDP-LX52, a premium Blu-ray player worth $999 which has 48-bit deep colour gradation and heaps and heaps of video tweaks for videophiles.

The question now is whether or not these premium Blu-ray players can compete with the cheaper players on offer from the Korean manufacturers, which include extra video services like YouTube, and in the US, Netflix. While we don’t have similar offering here just yet, when we do, these pricier players are going to need to support them in order to survive…

[Pioneer]

Perhaps more disappointing is the fact that the version on sale in Australia on July 30 isn’t actually the Director’s Cut of the film – we only get a 2-Disc special edition, which doesn’t look like it includes the “Maximum Movie Mode” we’ve seen before either.

Despite the fact that this sucks for Watchmen fans, I’d still class the film as a “must-have” Blu-ray purchase when it hits shelves in just under two weeks. And as an added bonus, it’s good to know that the complete motion comic Blu-ray will also hit shelves the same day.

The Watchmen BD comes out July 21, then Zack Snyder will host a community screening (allowing viewers to watch the movie along with his live commentary on their Blu-ray players) during Comic-Con on July 25. Is the experience worth the price of the disc alone? Definitely not. But if you’re a big Watchmen fan, the screening is certainly a nice bonus if you’re already purchasing the Blu-ray on day of release. I just wonder if Snyder’s bladder is heartier than Nolan’s. Place your bets on pee breaks now. And remember, Watchmen is a long movie, too. (AU: I wouldn’t expect this to be available to Australian Watchmen fans… [Video Business via engadgetHD]

MovieIQ pulls everything from cast lists and crew info to soundtrack data and production trivia from the Sony-owned Gracenote video database—a name that might sound familiar, since it’s also one of the biggest CD databases in the world, and the one the iTunes uses to identify and name your discs. You can peruse the data manually, or wait for a (disable-able) icon in the corner, which shows up when info about a particular scene in available.

There’s no way to tell how rich the database will be—meaning, how well it will compare to IMDB—but the concept is solid, if a little late. Honestly, when Sony announced in 2006 that BD-Live would bring interactive, online content to Blu-ray players, this, I think, is was most people expected. [SonyInsider via Techradar]

San Francisco, CA (June 18, 2009) – Sony Pictures Home Entertainment today announced the launch of movieIQ, a new Blu-ray Disc feature powered by Gracenote® that offers viewers access to a real-time movie database. With a movieIQ-enabled Blu-ray Disc and an internet-connected Blu-ray™ player, movie fans can immediately access continuously-updated information on cast and crew and explore relevant trivia such as production facts, music and soundtrack information all tied to scenes within the movie. SPHE will feature movieIQ on upcoming Blu-ray Disc titles starting in September and will offer it on all major catalog titles and new releases including Angels & Demons, Easy Rider, Punch Drunk Love, The Quick and the Dead, Silverado and sex, lies, and videotape.

“It has always been our goal at Sony Pictures to offer fans the ability to truly connect with their favourite movies using BD-Live,” said Lexine Wong, Senior Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “We know many people interrupt their movie-watching experience to look up the filmography of an actor or to find out more about a song playing in the background. Now through movieIQ, movie lovers can dive into constantly-updated information about the movie they are watching without leaving their sofa, further enhancing the experience of watching movies in this always-connected age.”

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 favourite 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.

About Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is a Sony Pictures Entertainment company. SPE is a division of Sony Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE’s global operations encompass motion picture production and distribution; television production and distribution; digital content creation and distribution; worldwide channel investments; home entertainment acquisition and distribution; operation of studio facilities; development of new entertainment products, services and technologies; and distribution of filmed entertainment in 67 countries. Sony Pictures Entertainment can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.sonypictures.com.

About Gracenote
Gracenote, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, is a global leader in embedded technology, enriched content, and data services for digital entertainment solutions within the Internet, consumer electronics, mobile, and automotive markets. Formerly known as CDDB®, Gracenote delivers a substantially improved consumer experience in digital media devices and applications, plus media monitoring and other data services to the recording industry, making it an integral part of the digital media economy. Gracenote powers leading services including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, Winamp; home and automotive products from Alpine, Panasonic, Philips and Sony; and mobile music applications from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musiwave (Europe), and others. Gracenote is headquartered in Emeryville, California. www.gracenote.com/corporate/.

Sony is said to be releasing their previously-spied 400-disc ES Series Blu-ray “Ultra Player” soon, meaning that even the most well-heeled home theatre enthusiasts will have a big enough changer for their expansive movie collections.

Of course, somewhere between three and five people on the face of the planet own anywhere near 400 Blu-ray discs, but lots have old, huge collections that span a few generations of disc technology. Having a giant changer like this would eliminate the need to own a separate BD changer, and if it matches or improves on its predecessor’s 500GB HDD and DLNA via Ethernet streaming abilities, could make a solid video control centre for a high-end home entertainment system.

Prices are expected to fall well north of two grand, according to a leaked Swiss product page. [SonyInsider via Engadget]

There’s 1080p upscaling for your DVDs, an included iPod dock, and DivX playback via USB. Perhaps one disappointing spec is that there’s only two HDMI inputs, and in todays world of HD games consoles and media streamers, that’s just not going to cut it.

But as far as specs and design goes, this looks like a tasty little package, given the $1,599 RRP. They’ll hit stores in April, if you’re after an all in one HD home theatre solution.

[LG]

The Blu-ray players (DMP-BD60 and DMP-BD80) Bring BD Profile 2.0 to the range, something that’s been sadly missing from Panny’s lineup (although BD-Live is still somewhat inadequate). The BD80 also has DivX playback, and both feature Viera Cast. They have, howvere, been hit by the financiapocalypse and the crappy Aussie dollar, with the BD60 going for $549, and the BD80 for $719.

The portable Blu-ray player (DMP-B15) has an 8.9-inch screen, doubles as a digital photo frame, and is also BD Profile 2.0 (although that’s through a wired LAN connection, sadly). It comes with a HDMI socket so you can use it as a standalone player. It’s fairly pricey though, at $1,319.

All the players and recorders will hit stores in April, except the portable Blu-ray player which lands in June. We’ll be getting out hands on the Portable unit as soon as we can to give it a thorough going over as well.

[Panasonic]

Even so, it was June when the first movie capable of BD-Live was released in Australia. The movie was Men In Black, and the bonus, digital content was in the form of “a BD-Live multi-player Interactive Trivia Game, as well as exclusive downloadable theatrical and home entertainment previews and a FAQ about BD-Live functionality”. In other words, nothing very exciting. In fact, plugging in the movie today, there’s no BD-Live trivia game, the exclusive trailers are for movies like Monster House and Open Season and the previews all seem old and out of date as well.

But in the scheme of things, Men In Black was small fry. A testing of the waters, if you will. The first major new release Blu-ray release featuring BD-Live was Iron Man, and it proved so popular that it crashed Paramount’s servers. On offer: An Iron Man quiz. Or more precisely, a selection of quizzes testing your knowledge of various aspects of the film. But the catch for this seemingly interesting approach to live online content is in the menu – alongside the option for knowledge quizzes are the unselectable options of creating your own quizzes, selecting the highest rated quizzes and other user-generated content themes. And that’s disappointing, especially considering that there’s been no update to the bonus content since the film was released last year.

Of course, here in Australia, we’re lucky if we even get the BD-Live content at all. Warner Bros, in particular have shunned BD-Live in Australia so far. Even their crowning glory of 2008, The Dark Knight, lacked any BD-Live content for the Australian release. Of course, the US release featured an online discussion with Christopher Nolan, which ultimately proved how much the technology is struggling to find its feet.

Perhaps the problems stem from the fact that unlike the Blu-ray format itself, BD-Live has no standard, no rules on what it can or cannot be. That leaves each studio to come up with their version of how BD-Live should be implemented, and that creates problems. Disney, for example, has jumped on the BD-Live bandwagon, announcing that all their classic releases will feature the online component. The first release to feature it was Sleeping Beauty, and it was in the form of online chat while watching the film, online trivia and the ability to embed a short video from a webcam into the film.

Sony, on the other hand, have tried a few different tacts. Starship Troopers 3 lets you insert a still photo of yourself into certain scenes of the film, which are poorly animated and distracting. 21, on the other hand, lets you play interactive Blackjack with other viewers around the world.

Universal pictures sees BD-Live as a jack of all trades. Cindy McCulloch, marketing director at NBC Universal believes that BD-Live content could be anything, including “deleted scenes, movie trailers or on-set interviews; Interactive features such as polls and games will be available to play or save on your player for later; setting up a buddy list and share your favourite clips and content with your friends; or create your own video, audio and text commentary and chat live while you watch the film.”

But not everyone looks at BD-Live as a worthwhile feature. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks doesn’t believe BD-Live is something can enhance their films, considering their target audience is generally too young: “It’s not our audience – if you think about our movies, they’re mostly films for the family. In particular they’re films that parents purchase for children.”

Perhaps the best implementation of BD-Live so far comes not from a movie, but from John Mayer’s Where The Light Is Blu-ray concert release. Instead of a gimmicky implementation like live chat with John Mayer, or a game, or being able to put your photo on stage with the singer himself, the BD-Live content is a backstage recording of one of his songs. Of course, once you’ve downloaded the song, there’s little incentive to use BD-Live again, but expanding on that idea (exclusive video blogs from the tour, more backstage clips) could be the shot in the arm BD-Live needs.

Still, the majority of studios are committed to providing discs with BD-Live content. And while its current implementation may not be all that desirable, well-maintained or even entertaining, it’s important to remember that the technology is still in its infancy. The real question is whether or not one we’ll see the studios create a truly engaging way of offering bonus content online for the Blu-ray format at all. Obviously we’re hoping that they do – as the default high-definition medium now, Blu-ray’s success hinges on the extra value it can offer consumers.

[BD-Live on Gizmodo]

We love to talk about calibration, but soon, our TVs and disc players will calibrate themselves. Pioneer’s new sub-$US400 BDP-320 and the $US600 BDP-23FD sense the picture settings when it’s connected to a 9G Kuro plasma, and adjusts the video output. If you want to tweak it yourself, the disc players have 13 different video adjustment options. (Most Blu-ray players have like three or four.) And if you don’t have a Kuro 9G, not to worry: The same technology at work here will soon be able to sense what TV you do have, and—assuming you have the TV in some default or preset configuration—will be able to make adjustments there too. That same “Kuro Link” also lets you control Blu-ray, TV and Pioneer A/V receiver with one remote.

That’s not all these higher-end models can do. When paired with a soon-to-be-announced Pioneer Elite receiver, it will also stream perfectly jitter-free surround sound audio including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. It uses the same Precision Quartz Lock System that makes Pioneer’s current flagship Blu-ray player one of the greatest CD players ever made, only now it can sync up multichannel, too, so that every packet of sound data that leaves the disc player is accounted for on the receiver end before it’s played.

The $US250 BDP-120 player is no slouch, with BD-Live, a 1GB flash drive, fast disc loading, USB expandable memory that includes bus-powered hard drives.

You may notice that there’s no Netflix or any other video-on-demand capability like the Korean Blu-ray players have; Pioneer noticed that too, telling us only to stay tuned, and that features like that are “definitely coming” later this year. I went so far as to ask for wi-fi, and was surprised to hear that even that may happen soon. But probably for way more than $US250. [Pioneer]

To refresh, BD-Live is the Blu-ray technology that allows for more interactive special features on your disc, like being able to arrange “screenings” with your friends or record commentary tracks yourself.

It all comes down to the technology. Instead of having director Chris Nolan talk into a mic and answer questions as they were asked via the website, Nolan had to do all his own typing. Or, we assume it was Nolan and not some designated typist, since the answers were slow going and contained a bunch of typos. The largest problem was that the text, displayed IRC-style with a white overlay behind it, was too small (on my PS3, at least), forcing me to sit closer than I normally would.

Smaller issues included Chris Nolan connecting and disconnecting every two minutes for the first 1/3 of the movie, which lead to the unfulfilling situation where questions were displayed but his answers were dropped. He also intentionally stayed silent or deftly evaded when certain questions on sensitive topics chosen by the moderator, such as piracy, making a third movie and any talk of money.

There were some enjoyable moments, such as when he took not one, but two pee breaks, explaining that he needed to make a shorter film next time. Fortunately, the BD-Live format let him pause everyone’s movie simultaneously. He also reused the same joke three times in different formats, thanking an actor or a contributor by name when someone asked how awesome it was working with said person.

Here’s how to fix the experience. Give Chris Nolan a microphone. Make whatever adjustments you have to make to the BD-Live technology to allow a low-bandwidth audio stream to reach however many players were signed on last night. Then, record the “podcast”, and let people who were still at work (it was on at 6PM PST) watch it after the fact whenever they like. I stare at chatrooms all day at work, don’t make me stare at another one when I’m watching Batman tearing around Gotham City.