With booming sales, Blu-ray players next step is internet tv integration. Sales of the hd dvd players were up 13% during the first 9 months of 2009, so says industry trade group Digital Entertainment group.

Videon Central who are one of the biggest manufacturers of Blu-ray players have revealed that they are looking to make some improvments to the players including turning them into set-top boxes that can be used to watch internet tv.

Videon are partnering with Related Content Database (RCDb), an open Blu-ray software shop, to include interactive TV client software for every player. Another partnership with ActiveVideo Networks will improve the ability to access cloud-based video services delivered over the Web that support both linear and broadband programming.

“The Blu-ray platform is not a movie platform; it is a software platform that can play movies,” RCDb President Herve Utheza said. “It supports the same underlying technology as tru2way….This will allow content providers and service operators to leverage the same content and applications.”

The RCDb client enables a Blu-ray player to load and unload applications and connect with a flexible, updateable set of third-party services and content offerings controlled by the player manufacturers and their retail partners.

These developments could see Blu-ray emerge as a universal client for Internet TV, allowing users to view movies and TV shows from their player without the need to purchase extra hardware.

Utheza even went as far as to say they could replace existing Internet TV set-top like Apple TV, VUDU and Roku players.

“More devices are getting connected to the Internet, but the standards for interactive content are still immature,” he said. “A lot of these have their own way of presenting data and information.”

Currently nearly all content providers like Netflix and Amazon have to develop service integration using code written in C which is complicated to use. Utheza believes that the use of the standards built into Blu-ray and Java could help accelerate the creation of new services that can work across equipment from different providers.

In early November, RCDb provided a concrete example. It announced that it had entered a licensing agreement with Netflix to develop a Blu-Ray disc enabling Netflix members to watch movies and TV episodes on their PS3 consoles. (A partnership launched in July 2008 between Netflix and Microsoft Xbox has generated 1 million users.)

The Videon Central deal will mean that thousands of Blu-ray players can show on demand services either in competition or collaboration with cable operators.

“It is hard to see a Blu-ray player and the set-top box coming together right now,” Park Associates Research Analyst Jayant Dasari said. “Blu-ray is more of a mainstream CE device, while the set-top box is an extension of the service provider into the home.”

Costs are playing a part in the reluctance shown. “Including Blu-ray is only going to raise the cost of the set-top box and indirectly increase the cost for each home,” he said. Then there are potential operational expenses.

“Cable players are reticent to support third-party devices because of the additional service calls it could generate,” Dasari said. As an object lesson, he pointed to TiVo, another popular CE device with a cable-ready version that nonetheless posed obstacles for subscribers.

Of course what we all want is a single box that offers HD, Blu-ray content, streaming, digital tv and internet browsing built in. We are just waiting to see which technology comes out on top.

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