DAve wrote:I don't think Java is needed for Bonus View (though I could be wrong - I believe it is needed for BD Live though).
Bonus view has a secondary video stream (or two or three) that is standard definition and can be turned on and off.
Some titles had two complete HD encodes, one clean and one with the PiP hard coded into the picture.
These can be viewed on Profile 1.0 players, and are not counted as Bonus View titles.
I believe that Cars and The Descent fall into that category.
Thanks, DAve!
I wasn't reckoning with the possibility of a separate encode with PIP hard-coded into the picture.
However, I think you may be incorrect about BD-Java not being needed for Bonus View. According to the Wikipedia article on "BD-J" (short for BD-Java),
BD-J allows bonus content on Blu-ray Disc titles to be far more sophisticated than bonus content provided by standard DVD, including network access, picture-in-picture and access to expanded local storage. Collectively, these features (other than internet access) are referred to as "Bonus View", and the addition of internet access is called "BD Live."
That seems to imply that any Blu-ray Disc that has
secondary-stream PIP (i.e., not hard-coded) has to use Java.
DAve wrote:The Java tag simply means that the disc was authored with BD-Java - it is fairly obvious from the file structure on the disc.
A good point, and one that I missed.
Am I correct in saying that you yourself may have the ability to look at the file structure on a disc? How do you do that?
DAve wrote:BD Live, Digital Copy and menu features like Bookmarks fall into this category - they are difficult to maintain an accurate listing for.
I gather that the difficulty arises when you personally don't own the disc, or rent it from Netflix, etc., so that you can inspect it yourself. You are relying (mostly? entirely?) on review sites like High Def Digest, posts to enthusiast forums, and corrections your users post to you, correct?
Anyway, thanks again for a useful site. I particularly like the way you have it set up to show disc prices at Amazon, and also at other online sources through pop-ups that appear when the mouse cursor is over the appropriate icon.