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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.
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