DVD and the Web: In search of a single solution
It's hard to come up with a better 'best-of-both-worlds'scenario than combining DVD-Video with the World Wide Web. DVD's high-bandwidth MPEG-2 video and high-fidelity surround sound offer a rich, enveloping media experience. And the Web allows up-to-the-minute information, flexible navigation, and real-time interaction with other users.
BY PHILIP DELANCIE
Artfully integrated, the combination of these two media - each enjoying enormous success in their respective realms - should theoretically be in high demand for both entertainment and corporate applications. But the reality is that it's no easy task to reliably combine these two highly complex technologies across a wide variety of playback platforms. And that makes the picture for Web-enabled DVD less clear than it might first have seemed.
At its simplest, a Web-enabled DVD may simply mean that an HTML page is stored in the DVD Others zone (outside the VIDEO_TS directory) on a DVD disc, ready to link the user to a Web site when the disc is played in a computer-hosted DVD-ROM drive. "A DVD disc may contain not only DVD-Video formatted content, but also DVD-ROM formatted content that is intended to be used via a Web browser," explains Jason Causey, DVD developer with IBM Business Innovation Services in Atlanta, Georgia. "But the two types of data on the disc might be completely independent of one another. For example, a DVD with a feature film can also include an HTML page with a Web link to the movie studio's website."
There's a big leap, however, between mere coexistence on the same disc and actual integration. "A second type of Web-integrated DVD," Causey continues, "would again contain both DVD-Video and DVD-ROM formatted data, but the DVD-Video data would be accessed and/or utilized by the DVD-ROM portion. In the 'local' case, the HTML files used to access the DVD-Video data would be located on the user's hard drive or the DVD itself; right now, most DVDs that you could call 'Web-integrated' actually fall into this category. For a 'live' disc, the HTML files would be located on a Web site. I think this kind of disc has the greatest potential because, theoretically, the content is never-ending."
One example
of the kind of 'live' disc that Causey refers to is Mars: The Red Planet,
created by Ralph LaBarge at Alpha DVD in Gambrills, Maryland. (LaBarge is
also chairman of the Software Publishers Association DVD-ROM Technical
Working Group.) The associated Website (www.marsdvd.com) includes areas
specifically developed to be visited while the title is in the DVD-ROM
drive, using an approach called WebDVD that is based on Microsoft's
ActiveX-based Windows Media Player.
"The Mars DVD is the only consumer title I know of that has a functional WebDVD site associated with it," LaBarge says. "I think a Web-integrated DVD should do more than just link the end-user to one or more Web sites. It should offer a different way to interact with the content stored on the disc from their web browser. I try to offer the end-user a much broader and deeper experience when they are connected to the WebDVD site than they would get from just watching the DVD-Video portion of the disc."
Jon Bender, senior producer at Maus Haus in San Mateo, California, points out that the kind of integration LaBarge is talking about is rare. "We are mostly seeing movie studios just put a Web link on the disc to point viewers to their web site," he says. "That may be good to get things started but it is only scratching the surface of what can and should be done. DVD-Video offers great-quality video and audio, but has a limited feature set and is hard to update. Web content has a broad feature set and can deliver up-to-the-minute information. What would make Web-integrated DVD unique is using the advantages of DVD-Video along with the advantages of the Web. Web-enhanced DVD will become successful when the user no longer knows what material is coming from the Web and what is on the DVD."
Entertaining links
New Line Home Video is one of those movie studios that has been most aggressive in exploiting the possibilities of hybrid DVDs (Video and ROM content), including Web connectivity. "We try and use the Web for most of our current and future DVDs," says Donald Evans, executive director of Internet & DVD marketing. "In essence, a Web-connected DVD provides a broadband experience in a narrowband world."
Evans says that New Line has no set formula for how connectivity is used on its DVDs. "Each title has its own themes," he says, "and thus every title should utilize the Internet differently." For the recent release of The Bachelor, for instance, New Line incorporated "e-greeting cards," while Lost In Space included a Web-based "Create Your Own Planet" game as well as threaded discussion groups built around the Penny Robinson and Dr. Smith characters.
According to Randy Berg, business development manager at Rainmaker New
Media in Burbank, California, the main purpose for using Web connections
on movie titles is to "drive traffic to the client's site, where
additional opportunities for entertainment and commerce lie in wait. The
key is to create a reason for the consumer to go to the site repeatedly,
so you can market products to them directly. You can make them want to
come back for more with refreshed Web material that supplements the DVD
content."
As an example of an integrated approach to marketing, Berg points to a recent project where Rainmaker embedded a "buy" button in a video trailer. "Selecting the button during playback on a PC," he says, "will launch a browser to connect to an order site for that specific product. On a set-top player, the same hot-spot takes you to a graphic listing instructions for going to the same site."
Berg sees significant growth in interest for such integrated features among his movie-oriented client base. "Requests for information on how to combine DVD and the Web has been strong for two years," he says. "And the demand for implementation has soared in the past year, to the point where we had to have solutions in place to meet client needs."
Evans sees similar trends. "With the huge number of DVD-ROM drives in the marketplace," he says, "the demand is overwhelming. We currently estimate that 20 percent of all our Web-enabled DVDs are being used in a computer."
The positive assessment, however, is not unanimous. "There is little or no demand from consumers for Web-enabled DVD titles," LaBarge says. "In fact, there are actually some negative feelings from DVD-Video users that some DVD discs have DVD-ROM content on them - Web or otherwise. Some of them feel cheated that they cannot access all the content on a disc that they paid for."
Bender predicts that the demand for more sophisticated integration won't really take off until settop DVD-Video players are introduced with built-in Web connectivity. "Most people do not watch movies on their computers," he says, "they watch them on their consumer DVD players. To enjoy both the movie and the Web features, the viewer has to take the disc from the DVD player to the computer, in most cases in a different room. So for now you have two different experiences on two completely different platforms, without much integration."
Corporate solution
While Bender is ambivalent about the current utility of Web-enhancement for consumer titles, he is optimistic about prospects in the corporate market. "Corporate Web-integrated DVD could become a very valuable tool for a number of companies," he says. "Many companies already produce CD-ROMs with corporate materials such as a video clips, marketing materials and links to their Internet site, and they currently have to put up with CD-ROM's small, jerky movies that always seem to choke at the wrong times in a sales meeting. These companies love what DVD has to offer in terms of video quality, but they hate the format's restrictions.
"Web-integrated DVD can solve a lot of those problems, because what DVD-Video can't do, the Web can. If a client wants to produce a disc for their sales force with corporate videos, marketing materials and up-to-date information, they can combine all of the elements into one seamless user experience."
As attractive as this idea is, Bender says that corporate clients have yet to dive in en masse. In part, he says, that's because "DVD ROM is not prevalent enough in the corporate environment; most companies still have computers with CD-ROM drives, and are still waiting for more DVD computers." But he also says that "the clients are not fully aware of the capabilities" of Web-enhanced DVDs.
"There is basically no knowledge of the capabilities of Web-integrated DVD," agrees Blaine Graboyes, COO and creative director of Zuma Digital in New York City. "The first step is education, at which point potential clients become very excited. But because it has not been a part of their development or marketing plans to date, it takes a considerable amount of time and energy to shift the focus of new projects toward Web/DVD integration."
Causey sees
the situation similarly at IBM. "Right now, our demand is very, very
limited for Web-integrated DVDs," he says. "I think this is because the
DVD projects our clients are generally asking for are things like demo
reels, conference auto-loop videos, and standalone kiosks. And
unfortunately, their budget is cut to the bone as it is, which doesn't
really allow them to do anything 'special' with their discs that is not
mission-critical."
Multiple methods
While assessments of current activity are mixed, observers agree that Web integration will be an increasingly important aspect of DVD title design. Chris Brown, co-founder and evangelist at InterActual Technologies in San Jose, California, offers a capsule summary of five stages in the process: "Preproduction: storyboard the user experience. Discovery: determine the best technological solution to issues that arise in preproduction. Design: map specific features to corresponding details in the project, including DVD-Video layout, bit budget, and detailed descriptions of how the video content and Web/ROM content will work together. Production: create the content as defined. Testing: create a test plan and have several people test on a wide variety of platforms."
As for the details of how the integration is enabled, in some cases that turns out to be more of a Web development issue than a DVD-Video authoring issue. And the process varies depending on which route you take to integration. InterActual's PCFriendly is a software shell offering a standardized TV-like interface through which users experience all the ROM content on a title (including Web pages). InterActual offers development tools (including templates) for integrating content into the PCFriendly context.
PCFriendly, which is not currently available for playing DVDs on Mac OS machines, also checks the user's PC to ensure that all required DVD playback components are present and up to date. If not, the software automatically takes the user to the appropriate Web site for information on updating DVD drivers or other aspects of the PC's setup. Taking on this technical support burden for title publishers who use PCFriendly has won the company customers such as movie studios who want to steer clear of offering support themselves.
Another route is the approach LaBarge took with Mars: The Red Planet. "My preference is to use Microsoft's WebDVD," he says. "That way, I don't need to do anything special or different in the DVD authoring process, since WebDVD does not use any proprietary extensions to the DVD-Video spec. All I have to do is add some VBScript or JavaScript code to a Web page and I have a Web-integrated title."
Windows Media Player (version 6.1 or higher) implements the full set of DVD-Video features, and because it is an ActiveX control it may be embedded directly into a Web page (using the HTML "object" tag). With the addition of a user interface (created in JavaScript or VBScript), you've got DVD-Video playback on the page with full user control.
LaBarge concedes
that the Media Player approach has its limits. First, he says, during the
development of the WebDVD pages for the Mars site he "found numerous bugs
in the current release of Media Player and DirectShow that prevent access
from the WebDVD page to all the content stored on the disc. This will
hopefully be fixed by the middle of 2000." And even when working properly,
he says, "it will only work for Windows 98 users who have DirectShow
decoders and Internet Explorer 5," he says. That leaves Windows 95 users,
Netscape users, and all Mac OS users behind (a growing concern now that
Apple seems to have resuscitated the Macintosh).
The right road?
A third approach to integration comes from the DVD tools vendors that have started to build support for Web enhancement into their authoring packages. "Spruce, Sonic Solutions and Daikin all now make tools for this integration," Bender says. But Causey wonders whether this is the right road for DVD tools to go down. "Most of the DVD authoring companies are selling or are planning to sell development kits that help create HTML pages that can access DVD-Video," he says. "But that's really not their strength, and I don't think they should be the ones doing it. I think it's up to the Web authoring tools to support DVD-Video as a media type."
LaBarge shares Causey's concerns. "Each of these companies has come up with a proprietary extension to the DVD-Video specification in combination with a custom .dll that needs to be loaded onto the end-users PC. The playback .dll file can trap certain events and force a web browser to launch and jump to a specific web site. But proprietary extensions to industry-wide specifications almost always lead to compatibility problems. And the end-user experience with a custom .dll is often negative. It often does not work on their system and they cannot get good technical support to resolve the problem."
The worst case scenario for these compatibility problems is when a title not only does not function as anticipated, but actually disables the computer on which it has been mounted. "One Web-integrated title - I won't mention the name - completely crashed my wife's new laptop from work," Bender recalls. "The DVD installed something on the system that made it unbootable. The laptop had to be completely reformatted and all the information was lost. Although this is perhaps an extreme case, it does bring up the fact that we are dealing with a new and relatively unstable technology."
Graboyes acknowledges the problems, but doesn't see them as paralysing. "Playing back a DVD on a PC is a world unto itself," he says. "There are thousands of complications that can and will arise. The goal is to produce and test for the highest level of compatibility, and to be ready to offer advanced technical support to your clients, like the resources provided by InterActual."
New
Line's VP of content development, Mike Mulvihill, also gives the nod to
PCFriendly as a solution for technical difficulties. "Our Web-enabled DVDs
are provided with full technical support for the PC by InterActual
Technologies," he says. "That ensures full compatibility when our discs
are played back on PCs. And we are actively working with them to extend
this support to Mac users."
Causey, however, remains concerned that Web integration is far from foolproof, no matter which route the developer chooses. "InterActual has tried to account for as many playback solutions as possible," he says, "but a DVD developer still can't count on 100% compliance. As for Windows Media Player, there is a very strict set of requirements for that solution to work. And even if you've met all those requirements, you still may run into compatibility issues with some user's DVD playback solutions."
Bender agrees, saying he is "still waiting for Web-integrated DVD to be as plug-and-play reliable as a VHS player. When that happens, I think you will find that there will be a lot more demand for Web integration than we presently have. But this will not happen overnight. I think as developers we should push the companies developing these technologies to make the tools more usable, more stable and more integrated. The technology has a wealth of potential, but we are not there yet."
Ironically, then, DVD-ROM developers who wish to take advantage of DVD-Video and the Web now find themselves in much the same boat as CD-ROM developers who wanted to enhance CD-Audio discs with multimedia for playback on computers. Everybody wanted to see it happen, but no universally agreeable solution was ever found, leaving enhanced CD to die on the vine. Similarly - as with any match that seems made in heaven - the marriage of DVD and the Web will require more than good intentions to thrive in the long term. As LaBarge puts it, what's needed is for the DVD industry to "come together and agree on a single, common way of adding Web features to a DVD-Video title."