PS3 BD-Live Test Drive
A few weeks back, the PS3 got a Blu-Ray firmware shot in the arm with BD-Live support. The first disc to show off what the big deal is all about came out yesterday - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. What's the initial impression?
Man, that's an unnecessarily long load time! It takes about a minute (it just feels longer) to reach the BD-Live Menu. From there, you'll get a pane full of downloadable previews (available in SD and HD, of course). In the window to the left, a couple extra scenes not in the film - or in the deleted scenes section of the disc, for that matter. Just click and you can watch a clip.
Eventually. Well, that's because it's downloading content to the PS3's hard drive. So while the extra content is nice (in this case three standard-def deleted / extended scenes), the wait isn't. It's a question of whether or not you can get past the instant gratification of streaming video from the Internet or, y'know, the disc you just bought.
With a quick Internet connection, it's not a huge problem, but if I can stream a video off YouTube in the blink of an eye, it'd be nice to get these extra clips streamed as well. Maybe that'll happen with future iterations.
Another side effect of this download approach is that after dropping in a bunch of BD-Live enabled discs, you'll eventually need to start scouring the PS3's hard drive for excess files to delete. Great so now I need to clear the cache on yet another device! On the bright side, all that content is sorted in an easy-to-flush BD content folder.
So, the tech's maiden voyage is a little shaky - and not too different from what HD-DVDs were doing (God rest their silicon souls). That said, I do recall it taking longer to load HD-DVD online menus.
The good news here is that Walk Hard also happens to be funny and the Blu-Ray version comes stacked with all sorts of bonus features, documentaries, and full song versions for your own concert disc of Dewey Cox's greatest hits.
The BD-Live features that sound really intriguing such as gaming and social networking are nowhere to be found here. That honor goes to next week's release, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. By all rights, it's a horrible movie, but it promises to come packed with a BD-Live game, "Aliens vs. Predators vs. You." (There's also a playable online version you can check out now). Maybe AvPvY should be a game to see how long you can sit through the movie.
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is it just me or is this whole blu-ray thing just a lot of promises about what it will be someday? i'm tired of promises and would like to see some actual results.
I ask myself "What do I gain with BD-Live"? As mentioned in the article youtube is instant video, Blue-ray discs have plenty of storage for extras and my PS3 can both access the internet for youtube and play Blue-ray. After the first BD-Live disc I play with I don't see myself really using it again.