Universal Launches New HD DVD Website

You can't do that on Blu-Ray! Maybe never will.

So it begins. Good job Universal

UPDATE: I signed up for the universal HD account. So once I get a disc with these features, I can jump right in. Thanks universal.

Does this mean we'll see the Miami Vice disc internet features activated?

I'm a Fan not a fanboy so i won't bash. But this is just to cool. I'm sitting here giddy

I am up here in Toronto Canada.... is this available to anyone with an HD DVD player, or just for American residents with a HD DVD player?

Paul

Yup. Starting with this week's Heroes...

This is my basis for Universal not even considering offers from the BDA. Maybe one day they will offer a complete system......but that appears to be well into the future. As it exists today, Blu-ray simply CANNOT accomplish what they have promised:


http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/786

Heh, pretty cool, Universal stepping up! One question though, is it taboo or some sort of industry "no no" to not say "ONLY on xxxx"???? I mean why not make it clear to folks surfing by their page, especially people new to HDM and understand there's a war of 2 formats going on, to say something like: "Heroes, ONLY on DVD and HD DVD" instead of "available now on DVD and HD DVD."

Anyway, it looks cool!

downloading content is available only for machines with built in hard drive/pc
right?

i can't see how my tosh a1 could do that.

The downloading feature works for all players thanks to the uniform HD DVD standard. I downloaded trailers to my XA2 last night. Yes, the space is currently limited to the RAM on the player. I've read that saving content to network drives is likely in the future. I imagine that's pretty trivial as all HD DVD players are network aware as it is.

Downloading features is a really nice feature, but I'm sure it helps if you've got a Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive since you have that hard drive to load everything too. Toshiba should come out with a machine with a built in storage device or allow you to use USB Memory Cards to upload the data from your machine so it can be stored indefinately. I know the A1 has USB ports on it so maybe that's a feature they will add in a new firmware.

I was crawling in my freaking attic on Monday, running an ethernet cable so I could network my theater room. I tried it out on Freedom Vol 1, and thought the whole thing was very cool. I can't wait to get a chance to play around with my copy of Heroes that just arrived.

The 2nd gen players have USB as well. I would hope these come into use at some point. Like you said, maybe transferring data or adding storage. Maybe they will even let you hook up an external HDD.

I'm sure Paramount was looking at a lot of stuff that Universal has plans for. Shoot, they wanna sell stuff while watching the movie as noted on the website. I can see why the studios like the full interactive features on HD-DVD. It is just the tip of the iceberg so far on what they can do. Unless BD changes their specs, these types of features will be optional and I'm unsure why studios would waste their time and money designing them.

No one excuse me of being an HD-DVD fanboy, I'm format neutral. Just liking what I'm seeing on the red side recently.

I don't think either blu-ray or hd-dvd wants to do that because both have their exclusive titles. It's better for both sides if J6p doesn't know they can't watch all of the movies on one player.

Actually even the HD DVD addon has the 150mb of memory built in - as do All HD DVD players.

But USB thum drive storage would be nice

Great point, makes sense.

This should be enough space for a trailer or two. Congrats to HD-DVD. Who else thinks that introducing these internet enable disc close to the holiday season is intentional?

Not all, some have 130 megs, like mine(HD-A1).

Is it just me, or is anyone else hoping this can be done without a disc at some point? Like, you know how you turn on your Xbox 360 and you're just right there at the Marketplace? They ought to try to do that for these 3rd gen HD DVD players, just have it so you can turn on the player and immediately access it. That'd be a feature I'd be willing to upgrade to a new player for!

130 or 150.. i only looked once. Its probably 130 I just thought it was weird when i saw the memory recognized on the 360 and PC

How did you do that. I have my XA2 hooked up to the net right now. But the web site (on my PC) doesn't really tell you how to do a content download. In fact, it says "coming soon" at most options.

Can anything be downloaded right now from Universal? I'd like to try it.

Is the "download trailer" feature on all Universal discs? Or is it a disc by disc basis?

Very cool, I doubt like hell I will be downloading anything other than firmware update to my player but again, very cool..

Sorry i'am a little slow can you tell me how you downloaded trailers to your player. What was the procedure. Thanks

Yeah, which discs allow you to access the download center? I was assuming it would start with the release of Knocked Up since that's the movie they show it being used with in the trailer, but it sounds like you can already access the hub.

I second that question...

I third and fourth that question. I dont see anyway to do it.

Come on HomerJay. I'm sittin' here burning up lamp hours waiting ... with an ethernet cable running halfway through my house down into my theater. How do you download a trailer?

Well OK, I'm starting to put it together in my head ... you can't do this without a "Web Enabled" disc. "Heroes" is the only one right now?

This will drive sales.

It's on a disc-by-disc basis. Heroes is the only release so far that lets you use Universal's download center. You can gain access to the download center via the second disc in the set. At this time, the trailers are very low quality.

I do expect many subsequent Universal releases to have internet enabled features. In fact, I remember Universal once saying that every one of their HD DVDs released after Heroes will allow internet access in some way.

You have to have a title that has the function existent on the disk. I'm not sure if any of the other web enabled disks have that function, but with Freedom Vol 1 you can download the Vol 1 trailer.