Blu Discs and Players "Remembering" Where Movie Stopped - Why Don't They Do This? (1 Viewer)

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by ShowsOn
This is just my speculation, but I wonder if it has something to do with the idiotic advanced copy protection? Blu-rays play back inside of a Java Virtual Machine, it is possible that there is a set series of steps that the Blu-ray needs to load in that can't be saved in memory.

I doubt that unless it also prevents them from implementing general bookmarking features. Basically, they just need to use whatever underlying feature/functionality they use to implement bookmarks to automatically do what we want for this, eg. whenever the movie is stopped via the stop button, etc.


Near as I can tell, Disney was probably the first to do auto-bookmarking on some of their titles (as I noticed back in 2009, IIRC). Some of the TV series BD sets also implement some sort of auto-bookmarking, eg. the Lost series seemed to do that.


However, if you're talking about having the player itself automatically handle it rather than the disc's BD-J software, then yeah, I guess that could possibly be part the reason w/ the current spec at this point. Maybe they need to add to the BD spec in order to properly allow players to automatically do this w/out somehow creating a hole in their copy protection scheme -- I really don't know, but am just hypothesizing based on what I do know about hardware/software design/engineering in general.


Without changing the spec, maybe what player makers *might* be able to do is piggy-back a bookmark command onto the playback stop command if the spec allows that and if the disc's software doesn't somehow prevent the use of bookmarking -- this latter part might be regardless of whether the disc software explicitly implements the usual UI-accessable bookmarking or not. Really hard to know w/out solid knowledge of the spec...


_Man_

 

[Brandon Conway]

Nuts-and-bolts BD-J programming cannot provide for a stop/resume feature inherently, so there needs to be an additional programming on the disc for it. However, for such additional program the player needs enough storage space to store the auto-bookmark. The first few waves of players in 2006-2007, with a few exceptions, did not have enough storage space for this in their memory. During this era the studios either programmed with Basic HDMV instead of BD-J, which would allow for stop/resume, or they had an optional bookmark feature on the disc. However, since most players couldn't store the bookmarks without additional external memory (USB sticks, SD cards), they abandoned the optional bookmarks and simply didn't have this function. Then around 2008-2009, once players started having larger internal storage, some studios began having the auto-bookmark feature added to their discs that had BD-J programming. As things currently stand most of the new releases with BD-J programming from most of the studios have the auto-bookmarking feature, but usually it is only for the feature content/episodes and not for the bonus. Of course, if you still have an older player with little-to-no storage space it still may not work.


So, there you have it.

 

[CraigF]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway

As things currently stand most of the new releases with BD-J programming from most of the studios have the auto-bookmarking feature, but usually it is only for the feature content/episodes and not for the bonus.

Don't go to any trouble, but if you offhand know of some titles with this feature, could you please mention them? I will somehow send kudos to these studios, even though they are compensating for a problem they created themselves IMO. I've never found this feature (or noticed it at least) yet, except on some ABC/Disney stuff that Man referred to. Mostly I don't care for 2hr movies, it's BDs with 4-5hrs of feature content where I'd like it. These BDs are taking longer and longer to start up than they did a couple years ago with BD-Live even, so it's even more desirable to avoid repeating the startup nonsense. (My BD-Live players have 8GB min.)


Edit: seriously, don't go looking, maybe just remember the thread and post back the next time you encounter the auto feature...in the meantime I will sacrifice some of my "valuable" leisure time and test the new BDs for it when I watch them.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway

Nuts-and-bolts BD-J programming cannot provide for a stop/resume feature inherently, so there needs to be an additional programming on the disc for it. However, for such additional program the player needs enough storage space to store the auto-bookmark. The first few waves of players in 2006-2007, with a few exceptions, did not have enough storage space for this in their memory. During this era the studios either programmed with Basic HDMV instead of BD-J, which would allow for stop/resume, or they had an optional bookmark feature on the disc. However, since most players couldn't store the bookmarks without additional external memory (USB sticks, SD cards), they abandoned the optional bookmarks and simply didn't have this function. Then around 2008-2009, once players started having larger internal storage, some studios began having the auto-bookmark feature added to their discs that had BD-J programming. As things currently stand most of the new releases with BD-J programming from most of the studios have the auto-bookmarking feature, but usually it is only for the feature content/episodes and not for the bonus. Of course, if you still have an older player with little-to-no storage space it still may not work.


So, there you have it.

First, the stop/resume could have been part of the spec to be BD-J certified so while it may have been part of the disc, it could have been required.


Second, just how much memory does a bookmark take up that anyone would ever say something doesn't have enough memory? Seriously, does a bookmark take up megabytes of space? It should take way less than 1K (more on the order of bytes) and that is just peanuts. A player not having enough NVRAM built-in to save disc id, title and time-stamp for effectively an unlimited number of discs?

 

[CraigF]

^ I think it's all the software needed to implement the bookmarking feature, not so much the actual space taken up by a single bookmark, that is causing the memory limitation for some early players. I think that's what Brandon meant there... If a disc has the bookmarking feature, you certainly can save a helluva lot of them.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by CraigF
^ I think it's all the software needed to implement the bookmarking feature, not so much the actual space taken up by a single bookmark, that is causing the memory limitation for some early players. I think that's what Brandon meant there... If a disc has the bookmarking feature, you certainly can save a helluva lot of them.

Not too sure what Brandon meant, but yeah, basically, it really depends on how it's implemented. If it's part of the spec, etc., the storage space of a bookmark could be inconsequential -- kinda like the storage of a phone number for a contact on your cellphone. If it's part of the disc's software, it can also be inconsequential *or* big depending on how it's implemented wrt the spec.


But if a player maker is trying to work w/in the existing spec, which doesn't require auto-bookmarking (both from the hardware *and* software perspective), in order to implement their own custom auto-bookmarking feature, it probably needs to deal w/ more variables and save more to handle each bookmark. In the worst case scenario, the player might need to save the entire context/state of the BD-J VM's current state when the stop (or eject) button is hit and then restore that when you hit play (or pop the disc in again for auto-start). IOW, it could work like how your laptop/PC goes into standby or hibernate mode in the worst case, and that's a whole heck of a lot more than just a simple bookmark. This is where something like the PS3 can realistically/feasibly do something like that even when it's close to that worst case scenario, but a typical standalone player probably cannot.


So it really depends on what is actually going on w/ the spec -- and how tight that spec, which will dictate what kind of scenarios and variables such an after-the-fact auto-bookmarking feature must handle...


_Man_

 

[CraigF]

 

 

IOW, it could work like how your laptop/PC goes into standby or hibernate mode in the worst case, and that's a whole heck of a lot more than just a simple bookmark.

 

_Man_

 

 

That's a good point, if it works like that (may do in some cases). But the typical bookmark save/goto on a Uni BD doesn't work this way. It goes to them really quickly, and you can save hundreds (lol, I tried once). Lionsgate seems similarly quick. As far as I can see, no reason to save more than the disc location, just like they do for non-Java resume. I may be going on way too much about this, but it is by far the worst thing about BDs for me. I watch a lot of TV on BD, and it is generally very poor about bookmarking, and it's probably where you need it most (not for 20min. sitcom eps though).

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Originally Posted by CraigF
IOW, it could work like how your laptop/PC goes into standby or hibernate mode in the worst case, and that's a whole heck of a lot more than just a simple bookmark.


_Man_

That's a good point, if it works like that (may do in some cases). But the typical bookmark save/goto on a Uni BD doesn't work this way. It goes to them really quickly, and you can save hundreds (lol, I tried once). Lionsgate seems similarly quick. As far as I can see, no reason to save more than the disc location, just like they do for non-Java resume.

I may be going on way too much about this, but it is by far the worst thing about BDs for me. I watch a lot of TV on BD, and it is generally very poor about bookmarking, and it's probably where you need it most (not for 20min. sitcom eps though).[/QUOTE]

Yeah, what I said there would basically be the worst case scenario where the player maker (rather than the disc software authoring) tries to add some sort of all-encompassing, auto-bookmarking feature w/out the additional support from the spec. That *might* become necessary because the hardware might need to treat the playback situation as a black box of sorts, if it were to try to handle all possibilities.


If the auto-bookmarking is implemented in the disc software rather than in the player's system software that runs that disc software, then it'd probably work more like how you think/expect. And I suspect that's pretty much how it's done by Disney and some others. Certainly, whatever they've been doing works fine on my lowly Panny BD60, which probably only has the minimum memory to support Profile 2.0 and not to store hundreds of BD-J VM context/states on top of whatever else needed. I can't even seem to find out how much actual built-in memory this player has when I last googled to check (when trying to figure out why it was having trouble loading my copy of Kick-Ass last week) -- I suspect Panasonic would advertise the memory size if it was notably larger than the minimum required, and I'd probably never experience what seems like layer change pauses for some of my BDs either.


Anyhoo...


_Man_

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by CraigF


Don't go to any trouble, but if you offhand know of some titles with this feature, could you please mention them?

Most of Warner's new releases in the last year or so have such a feature. Off the top of my head, Harry Potter 7 Part 1, for example. Someone else mentioned Criterion earlier.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool



Not too sure what Brandon meant, but yeah, basically, it really depends on how it's implemented.

You guys are better at the technical jargon, but yes, this is essentially what I was saying.


An example of a poor implementation is a handful of Warner titles from 2007-2008. V for Vendetta has a bookmark feature, and you can have 100 or so of them... but if you have a player from 2006-2007 it basically doesn't remember them.