Sounds REALLY FUCKING BAD.
The new Iron Man Blu Ray apparently does a big download when you first put it in your player, and won't play until it finishes. And the servers were down on release day.
http://securityandthe.net/2008....service
No sir, don't like this shit. Stinks of DRM.
BD-Live
User commetnary:
Paramount decided that every BD-Live player should automatically connect to their servers as soon as it was played. With every PS3 offering BD-Live it meant they were deluged with requests. On top of that, they never bothered to make the disks indicate progress or gracefully handle timeouts so lots of people thought their disks had frozen.
There is nothing in the spec that requires this. If they had wanted they could have tested if the player supported networking and added a new menu which allowed users to manually connect to their servers for extra content.
Frankly this is all Paramount's own fault. Aside from the technical fuckup, I have to question the whole ethic of a disk that automatically "phones home" just by inserting it. For starters it means Paramount are tracking usage of this title. It also means the experience could change every time its loaded. Could we see adverts or new trailers being inserted onto disk? Or studios prominently promoting their own online stores or other content? What happens in 10 years if the website bitrots? Will the disk even play any more or will it hang like it did here?
I think it's very telling that the first prominent user of BD-Live immediately abuses it. BD-Live is IMO a waste of time and will continue to be while it used in such superficial and intrusive ways. Every 2.0 player should have the option to disable internet on a global and per-disk basis. Maybe some day a disk will produce a compelling use for it but nothing comes close yet.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."