Blu-ray updates, services easier with BluTV

To be announced at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, Dreamer’s ‘BluTV’ portal aims to make Blu-ray players a simple one-stop destination for a wide array of Web services. The technology promises to simplify access to Web-based applications, making their additions transparent to consumers, who won’t be required to ever download firmware updates.

JAN. 4 | Dreamer Corp. is launching a technology that it promises will make it easier for consumers to enhance Blu-ray Disc players with streaming services, e-commerce, massive multi-player gaming and other applications.

Many Blu-ray players already offer such streaming services as Netflix and CinemaNow. But Dreamer believes its ‘BluTV’ software allows for much more streaming selection in one box. BluTV’s main content categories will be e-commerce, gaming and open market applications.

With e-commerce, users will be able to buy products with Blu-ray player remotes or have purchase links sent directly to mobile devices.

People also will have the opportunity to participate in massively multi-player online role playing games, marking more complex gaming interactivity than has been offered to this point through Web-enabled set-tops.

Plus, ‘BluTV’ will feature an area in the vein of Apple’s ‘Apps store’ that will deliver an extensive range of paid or free applications to users.

It’s not clear what programming will be available within ‘BluTV.’ To date, studios haven’t rolled out much in the way of e-commerce with their BD Live titles, but BluTV could get around their approval by the technology’s integration into the Blu-ray hardware itself.