Sony authors first Blu-ray disc
Studio calls it example that high-definition system is real
By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 11/18/2005
NOV. 18 | Sony Pictures said late Friday that it had authored and encoded the first full-length movie in the Blu-ray Disc format, a milestone that will allow hardware makers to begin testing their Blu-ray players for software compatibility.
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was encoded in MPEG-2 at Sony’s Digital Authoring Center in full 1920 x 1080 resolution.
The 25GB disc also features full-resolution graphics and animation and dynamic menus.
“We are confident this achievement will help everyone understand that Blu-ray is real and poised to enter the marketplace,” Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president Benjamin Feingold said. “Blu-ray will bring the highest quality high-def experience possible to the home.”
Added Don Eklund, senior VP advanced technologies, “We are extremely proud to deliver on the promise of Blu-ray. This is an important step for our industry in order to begin mass production of high-definition movies in the Blu-ray format.”
Not all of Blu-ray’s promised features are ready for testing, however.
The Full Throttle disc was created using HDMV, the format’s basic interactive layer, rather than the more sophisticated BD-Java system included in the Blu-ray spec.
The movie also is encoded in the older MPEG-2 format used for standard DVDs, rather than the more advanced VC-1 and MPEG-4 AVC codecs included in the spec.
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