Tech blog site Engadget has a video interview that they took with a Sony representative showing off some BD-Live features that will be coming some time this year. In the video, the rep says that the functionality will arrive in "Summer of 2008" and BD-Live features on disc will happen in "2008," so that's quite a time range!

Here is the video, hosted by YouTube:

The good news from the video is that the PlayStation 3 will be upgraded to support the functionality, while standalone owners of Sony players are out of luck. They will need to wait until the production versions of the Sapphire 3 and 4 machines being displayed are available if they want something that has a Sony nameplate and IR remote functions built-in.

The "portable copy" feature, which is a way to download a 1GB standard definition file to a memory drive for playback on a PSP (PlayStation Portable), is somewhat interesting. If they can extend that idea to other players (and maybe burning a DVD somehow?), it would solve one of Blu-rays challenges of getting people weaned off DVD by providing a way to watch the movie in alternate locations, like the DVD player in the car.

The more I read about the PlayStation 3, the more I'm convinced that it's the only Blu-ray player currently available that is worth buying. It doesn't do everything, but neither does any other player. It has that annoying Bluetooth remote problem, but there are ways around it that shouldn't be too annoying.

Its best attributes are that there are 3.5 million of them out in the marketplace so movie software programmers are surely testing their movies on the PS3, it's a really fast unit so Java-related slowdowns don't seem to be a problem, and it can be upgraded for future capabilities. On top of those things, it's also a media center and I also hear it's quite a game system, but that almost seems like an afterthought!

Click the Read link below to visit the article on Engadget related to this story.