Rich Fiscus
26 Nov 2007 17:13
Thomson, owner of companies including RCA and Technicolor, is working ot develop a Blu-ray Authoring environment that allows DVD authors to take advantage of the format's advanced programmabillity without learning Java first. They're calling their authoring product BD-JIVE, which stands for Blu-ray Disc-Java Interpreted Visual Expression.
Unlike HD DVD, which uses a much simple scripting language (ECMA Script) to replace DVD's relatively crude selection of virtual machine (VM) commands, Blu-ray features a version of Java known as BD-Java. While this opens up a nearly unlimited range of potential features for a BD-MV (Blu-ray Movie) disc, it also presents a challenge for authoring houses, which typically aren't staffed with a large number of (or any) Java developers.
Arguably what this software really does is use Java to produce a framework that resemble's ECMA Script, which is essentially an implementation of Javascript. While ECMA Script is more complex than DVD-VM language, the learning curve is certainly not as steep as Java. On the other hand, as authoring tools continue to be written vendors may take advantage of BD-Java to add an arry of features that just aren't possible with any other standalone player format.
Thomson hopes BD-JIVE will be able to bridge the gap between DVD authors and Blu-ray capabilities. At a company hosted forum the company showed off Pixar Shorts, a BD-MV disc authored by Thomson owned Technicolor Creative Services for Walt Disney. Other BD-JIVE titles are apparently already scheduled for release in the near future.
Source: Video Business