Posted Mon Oct 22, 2007 at 08:00 AM PDT by
Warner has confirmed that its first IME-enhanced Blu-ray title will not use Profile 1.1 technology to deliver its picture-in-picture video commentary.
As we first reported last week, Warner's December 4th release of 'Terminator 3' will be the studio's first Blu-ray title to include an "In Movie Experience" picture-in-picture video commentary. Although Warner has included IME tracks on roughly two dozen HD DVD titles, none of the studio's Blu-ray titles have included the feature, a move that has been attributed to the format's current lack of secondary video support.
Although Warner didn't specify how it would be delivering the 'T3' IME track when it announced the disc last week, given the timing of its release, it was widely speculated that the track would utilize the secondary video support mandated by the Blu-ray Disc Association in its October 31st deadline for Profile 1.1 support.
Speaking exclusively with High-Def Digest, however, a Warner spokesman tells us that 'T3' will not, in fact, utilize Profile 1.1. Instead, Warner will be following the lead of past Blu-ray releases with PIP-like features (such as Lionsgate's 'The Descent' and Disney's 'The Guardian'), and will simply burn a PiP window onto a second high-def encode of the film itself, effectively matching the PiP experience without requiring two concurrently-streaming video sources.
The complete explanation provided to us by Warner reads as follows:
"A second PiP image (for 'Terminator 3') was created by compositing the SD [standard definition] IME [In-Movie Experience] video box into the HD video to create a separate video file, which is branched to at the various IME transition points. Ultimately, this way of programming will be replaced with the true Profile 1.1 functionality, but until then, this will appear transparent to the consumer, and will have the same benefit."
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