Gosling: Blu-ray victory to spur Java creativity

"Father of Java" James Gosling says he sees Blu-ray's victory over HD DVD as a catalyst for more interesting forms of entertainment for the disc format.

Speaking at the Sun Tech Day in Sydney, Gosling told ZDNet Australia's Builder AU that he hopes that Blu-ray Disc win--combined with the possibility of having Java's new graphical framework, JavaFX, within the Blu-ray specification--would enable a graphical user experience beyond solely playing Blu-ray discs.

"There's actually this Profile 2.0 spec for Blu-ray, which almost all of the Blu-ray players out now don't implement...that adds all this networking ability. So you can actually use a Blu-ray box to do things other than play Blu-ray discs," Gosling said. "You can do things that are hybrids between playing discs and content over the network."

Gosling cited the primitive nature of many current Blu-ray players as a reason for holding back the Blu-ray experience.

"The Blu-ray spec right now has really primitive graphics, which is kind of surprising for a spec that should be all about compelling visual experiences. But the folks in the consumer electronics industry tend to be really conservative--I mean, they want to be able to sell Blu-ray players for 50 bucks," he said.

"So they really cut down on some of the levels of aspiration," he said.

The mentality of developers was also in Gosling's sights for criticism.

"I think that a lot of the software development community--which I find really, really frustrating--is fixated on Web apps. They write their stuff on the server, it generates HTML, and there is this really big piece of the community that thinks that that is the universe," Gosling said.

"There's a lot more to it," he said. "Blu-ray is a pretty interesting corner of it."

Java forms part of the BD-J (Blu-ray Disc Java) platform for delivering bonus content to users of Blu-ray.

Chris Duckett of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[MadLyb]

Just what I need...

...another device that does more than it needs to.

Getting really tired of this trend.

[webdev511]

Still wearing wooden shoes are we?

You may not think that these capabilities are important now, but odds are someone will think of a feature that you'll wonder how you lived without it. As long as the extras do not detract from what a player is supposed to do, then fine. If they make the movie watching experiance better, then great!

Just in case you missed it, the #1 selling Blu-Ray player (PS3) does a lot more than just play Blu-Ray.

[JasonAtThirty]

BD-J Authoring White Paper

There is a white paper on this, using the Sun open source project and the IDE Eclipse. (http://dostudio.netblender.com/wikipapers/hdcookbookwitheclipse.asp) I'm excited for Blu-Ray Java I think this time next year we'll see some cool stuff. Maybe some it will by me!!

[MaxAgent86]

PS3 you have it the wrong way

The PS3 is not a Blue-Ray player uit is a game console to wich Sony included a Blue-Ray player (most likely because the supported the format and wnated to boost sales figures)

And what did I read Network access, Java ? not another device prone to virus attacks ????