Mark Booth
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 1999
- Messages
- 3,580
A group of us over at HDD watched Harry Potter: OOTP tonight via Warner's new Community Screening feature. This is, without a doubt, my favorite HD-exclusive feature to-date!
How it works: Everyone signs up for a Warner account via their Warner HD DVD and then finish the sign up via computer. One person volunteers to be a host and he/she invites others to join the screening. (The screening can be set up in advance.) When the screening time approaches, everyone simply fires up the Warner HD DVD and selects the Web-Enabled Features to activate the Community Screening. The scheduled screening appears in a menu and you click "Join". Once you've joined the group, you can use the HD DVD player's remote to send various premade comments to the group chat. Or, better yet, you can use a computer (I used my laptop) to join the chat via Warner's site. With a laptop, you simply type your comment and hit return. Each chat comment shows up at the top of everyone's TV display with the sender's nickname next to the comment.
The chat comments appear very quickly. Pretty much real time. It all works extremely well and very smoothly! You also see the nicknames of viewers announced as they join or leave the screening.
And, of course, the Community Screening host can pause all players at the same time. Or skip to a different chapter. Or scan forward or backward. It all works flawlessly!
I can't emphasize enough just how much fun this was! Going in, I was skeptical about how much real-world use I would make of this feature. Well, I'm here to say that I want to watch many many more movies this way! It brings a whole new experience to watching HD DVDs! I've already written to Warner Home Video to encourage them to include this feature on ALL future HD DVDs!
Mark
How it works: Everyone signs up for a Warner account via their Warner HD DVD and then finish the sign up via computer. One person volunteers to be a host and he/she invites others to join the screening. (The screening can be set up in advance.) When the screening time approaches, everyone simply fires up the Warner HD DVD and selects the Web-Enabled Features to activate the Community Screening. The scheduled screening appears in a menu and you click "Join". Once you've joined the group, you can use the HD DVD player's remote to send various premade comments to the group chat. Or, better yet, you can use a computer (I used my laptop) to join the chat via Warner's site. With a laptop, you simply type your comment and hit return. Each chat comment shows up at the top of everyone's TV display with the sender's nickname next to the comment.
The chat comments appear very quickly. Pretty much real time. It all works extremely well and very smoothly! You also see the nicknames of viewers announced as they join or leave the screening.
And, of course, the Community Screening host can pause all players at the same time. Or skip to a different chapter. Or scan forward or backward. It all works flawlessly!
I can't emphasize enough just how much fun this was! Going in, I was skeptical about how much real-world use I would make of this feature. Well, I'm here to say that I want to watch many many more movies this way! It brings a whole new experience to watching HD DVDs! I've already written to Warner Home Video to encourage them to include this feature on ALL future HD DVDs!
Mark