Universal's In-movie Shopping Tries to Tip the Scales for HD DVD

Today, Universal Studios Home Entertainment said it's adding an online shopping feature to one of its popular movie releases - the upcoming Evan Almighty featuring comic Steve Carell - enabling high-def viewers to pause the movie, order something featuring or from the show, and resume.

The capability for HD DVD movies to contain programs that take advantage of Internet-driven Web services was built into that format from the beginning, and a separate-yet-equal capability was built into Blu-ray. But only now have studios begun to try these online-oriented features, now that more second-generation consoles with Internet capability have been sold.

"By accessing U-Shop during the movie watching experience, consumers will be exposed to online purchase options related to the movie - from the latest featured fashions to movie-themed collectibles," reads a statement from Universal this afternoon. "The experience from your living room is also easy to use, designed with tailored, remote control friendly navigation tools to access information. An 'above the fold' picture navigation offers pull-down menus and allows the consumer to easily descend into the subsequent pages."

The official marketing name for this is "title-centric experience." Early tests of this feature included superimposing little tags or icons over key scenes where collectible or purchasable items are featured. The viewer could then, for instance, click on the pair of eyeglasses an actor is wearing, pause the film, purchase a duplicate pair, and resume. Since that time, reportedly, the presentation aspect of that feature has been scaled down somewhat.

Universal is also promising to enable viewers to "take the first step" in participating in a "fan experience" centered around its movie and NBC television titles. Here, users would have a single U-Shop account which could be accessed from any console or computer where a title is playing. The reference to a "first step" indicates that future steps may be forthcoming, but for now, the fan experience involves finding and conversing with buddies (hopefully using some form of keyboard), trading movie clips with them, and downloading trailers from upcoming releases.

But noticeably missing from Universal's description today is any mention of mandatory managed copy (MMC) - a feature built into the AACS copy protection of both HD DVD and Blu-ray, which when utilized should enable purchasers to make limited authorized backup copies of their discs.

While the presence of the trailer download feature and the movie clips trading feature implies that downloading isn't the obstacle here, the continued absence of MMC suggests studios' persistent reluctance to embrace one of the technologies that made studios interested in blue-laser discs in the first place.

In fact - quite ironically - such a feature may be launched for standard DVD before it's ever seen by high-def DVD owners to any great degree.

Universal's first experiment with the HD DVD/Internet connection came with the earlier release of Season 1 of the NBC series Heroes.