Thanks for the great recap! I guess I don't have to start my own thread now.
I'll just add a few things based on some notes I took that first day.
Nickerson's presentation covered interactive features of the HD DVD format, looking first at the branching or "navigational cinema" of the 10/19/07 release of "Return to House on Haunted Hill." Those of us in our 30s will remember when "choose your own adventure" books were all the rage when we were kids and navigational cinema is essentially the same thing. At certain points in the film the viewer is presented with two options; the viewer's choice will determine the fate of the character in the scene. I don't recall the number of possible variations on the plot for "Return" but I believe it was somewhere in the 90s! Though my initial impression was "gimmick," the more I learned about it the more willing I became to give it a look when it gets released. It helped to learn that the navigational feature is entirely optional and viewers can simply watch the original cut of the film without the variants if they so choose.
The rest of Nickerson's presentation looked at the web interactivity of releases like "Blood Diamond" and "The 300." What Nickerson emphasized with "Blood Diamond" was that special feature information - for example, about the political situation in Africa's countries - needn't become dated if that information is located on a website that can be updated regularly. Of course this raises the question of whether these sites WILL be maintained even if traffic to or demand for the data is low. Warner Brothers is a business and not a nonprofit or educational agency. So sustainability of the web resources created for the release seemed like the biggest issue.
The web interactive component presented with "The 300" had a lot to do with commerce - purchase of cell phone wallpapers, ring tones, etc. I was less impressed by this feature set, simply because it was just about buying more stuff. On the plus side, entering the store is entirely optional. Or as Kevin Collins, HD DVD Evangelist, would later say, "No one's making you push the button."
After the presentation on the interactive features I couldn't help but be a bit puzzled about why interactivity is being pushed so hard? Hasn't research about people's Internet and TV watching habits confirmed that they simply prefer to do one or the other, not both at once or in the same setting? All the talk about this convergence of Internet with TV has died down since a couple years ago, but it's like the HD DVD creators never got the message. Ultimately it seems like both HD format groups have given up on trying to sell the consumer on the improved video and audio quality that HD offers, instead focusing on things that are certainly distinctive from DVD but that ultimately seem rather superficial or unsustainable.