a look into the state of bd-j

There are definitely problems in terms of access to the development tools and APIs. I am an anti-Microsoft kind of guy by default but I must admit they have been much more pro-active in terms of getting developers into the bandwagon. This won't make any difference in the long-term (I already am seeing defections of HDi developers to BD-J), but you gotta give kudos where kudos gotta go.

However, I expect things to change going forward as new (and more inexpensive) tools come into the market and hopefully the BDA realizes it is in their interest to release the BD-J API info. I also know of a book or two coming out about BD-J that should enable beginners to quickly ramp up to speed on it.

JavaOne in May will have an entire day devoted to Java on Blu-ray and Cable, and I am hoping some big announcements come up, and not simply the usual marketing blurbs.

Pretty much.

Sources please?

Personal experience only....I've had i think 3 guys over the last couple months who emailed and said they did HDi (including one guy who I know posts at MSDN forums) but wanted to learn BD-J, and how do they go about doing that...

There is quite a difference between defection and simply wanting to know all of the current API's. I would actually be surprised if developers who like having high employability didn't want to know both HDi and BD-j, because if our current situation is any indicator then they will both be around for quite some time.

Sure, that's true, developers go where the money is and where they think the money will be. However, I never saw this before until Blu-ray usage accelerated and has started taking a commanding lead this year.

Because of the larger number of manufacturers and studios doing blu-ray, the job demand for BD-J has also seemed to accelerate this year, at least based on my personal experience (# of emails I get from employers wondering whether I know such developers)...i did not get any requests last year....

Is that a "defection", or somebody who wants to expand his skill-set? Have these folks told you they intend to no-longer code HDi projects?

I would guess that anyone who has worked on and has a high level of knowledge regarding HDi has signed an NDA form of some type stating that they will not "defect" to a competitor for X amount of time after working with HDi. It's part of the business.

HDi is not a "company"....it's a bunch of independent people working for companies or as contractors....they could do whatever they wished to do....

As to the word "defect", I should not have used that word as of course they may continue to work on HDi projects as well....

"It" should have been complete at the format launch, but we all know "it" was rushed out into the markeplace, incomplete and prelimenary. The limited feature set capability of players was not dislosed to unknowing consumers who were duped into buying an expensive incomplete alpha stage product.

Huh? Why would you think that? Do you also think that people with extensive knowledge of Mac OS X APIs can't program for Windows at the same time?

My point is: a person who wishes to begin working with a specific technology does not automatically imply he wishes to desist in working with another technology he may already be skilled in.

For example, a C++ developer wanting to learn Java does not imply he is defecting, and intends to no longer use C++ where appropriate.

Once again you find yourself saying things as fact.

Blu-ray is not taking "A COMMANDING LEAD"

Stop the FUD.

But I will agree with you, your inbox is not a reliable source.

This is much more due to HDi being a lot easier and a lot more similar to technologies designers know. There's a much bigger pool of folks who can do HTML/Javascript and design than who can do Java programming and design .

And for the sake of a little balance, from the Digital Leisure interview at gamingbits...


As a software developer and manager who has worked extensively with Java and HTML/Javascript/XML UIs, the conclusions these guys come to isn't exactly surprising. Java is more powerful, but it's not a declarative scripting environment. And for all of Java's past issues with compatibility 10 years ago, it's a lot more consistent than scripting environments. Developing against a work-in-progress like BD-J can't be easy, but it wil probably mature quickly.

And most Java programmers can do Javascript/XML, whereas most Javascript guys can't do Java.

Current sales leads ranging from 2:1 to 5:1 is NOT a commanding lead?

Should get better over time. Right now, the chipsets and coding environments still aren't settled or well known, and there's a lot of variance in processing power. Once the coders get used to the limitations of each system and establish the resource boundaries they can work within, we should see significantly streamlined production.

IMHO, based on experience from mobile it'll get better...the reason being that the specs for 1.0,1.1, LIVE, etc were agreed upon awhile back, so that won't really be changing that much (ie. the "goals" won't be changing over time), it's the IMPLEMENTATION that's trying to catch up. The more time you give manufacturers to create good implementations, the better the products....

7:3 in favour of Blu-ray in the last three months during the HD DVD release drought (despite the large number of PS3s out there), and 6:5 in favour of Blu-ray since inception.

Note that when he started the Dragon's Lair developer didn't even know Java - he bought a book to learn it. How challenging must the HDi development have looked for him to decide that a completely different platform requiring a programming language he didn't even know looked more attractive?!? Further, he created the disc without even accessing the BD-J specification. It's pretty impressive that he was able to release a well-known title starting with no knowledge in writing Java code and without consulting the specification. The platform can't be nearly as brain-dead as some of you make it out to be.

- Talk

That certainly is another way of looking at it.

Perhaps they were from neutral studios and are just pissed off and looking for help because there is so little documentation for BDJ?

Sure then subtract the last 3 months where HD DVD had almost zero releases and were right back where we started, on level ground with this war being closer than most people like to admit. The fact that Sony declared this war as over could be the most ridiculous and premature statement I have ever heard from a corporate body.

It's not that BDJ/Java is brain-dead. Far from it, it is a functional virtual machine. It is however heavyweight for relatively simple stuff like overlays and menuing systems.

This same debate goes on and on in the computing world. On the client side, Soap/Ajax-based apps vs Java, on the server-side, PHP apps vs Java, in next generation media, HDi vs BD-J.

Personally I would say both can get the job done. Which platform is "better" really depends on your target application and the "support" that is given through libraries for common tasks.

I do see though that there a lot more HTML/Scripting-type programmers out there than there are Java programmers. I think anybody with C/C++ programming experience can pick up new programming languages pretty easily, so for them, I don't think the platforms are really a barrier to entry. However I also do think that for people that are more media-oriented with less programming experiencing, scripting is easier to pick up, especially if someone like Microsoft has built (or helped develop) a lot of existing libraries and common functions for you along with authoring tools.

If I had to port some larger complex app that was written in C, I would probably choose BD-J also. However if I needed to do some menus for the disc with some PiP commentary, I would probably use HDi. However that isn't really a choice here, if the disc is for BluRay, one must use BD-J and for HD-DVD, one must use HDi.

As I mentioned earlier, both can get the job done for the common tasks used in next-gen media, however I think the BD-J folks are finding lots of primitives, libraries, and authoring tools are either not mature or not written yet so they end up implementing much themselves. This will change over time of course, but there will probably always be the debate of whether HDi or BD-J is "better" and to some extent I think it will just depend on your background and what you are more used to using, scripting or Java. I guess it is just par for the course with this "format war", to choose programming methods that add further to the polarization.

Actually, the studios are BDA members, so they have all the documentation they need. It's the little guy who don't ahve the money to get access to these.

And there is a definite surge in interest in BD-J as more and more titles come out with it and as manufacturers have to incorporate it into their hardware.

Must be why Blu-ray also has HDMV for simple authoring

being consistently outsold by an average of 2:1 is NOT close