PSU.com has recently had the chance to venture to Seattle, Washington and attend Disney’s Magical Blu-ray Tour, and we are back to tell you of our adventures.
Disney has been touring the United States with the help of Panasonic, and other companies such as Monster Cables, and Sony. There are several stops in major cities across the US, in which a Blu-ray demonstration booth is set up. This booth is loaded with several of Panasonics flat screen HDTV’s each hooked up to a Blu-ray player. We spotted two PlayStation 3 consoles hooked up in addition to several Panasonic players.
The tour’s target audience is families, with a strong promotion of family friendly titles such as Cars, Ratatouille, and Pirates of the Caribbean being displayed. The tour is not just for children though, a spoken presentation with video integration gives a brief history describing Disney’s strive to stay on top of the technology and dedication to entertainment is actually quite entertaining and informative. It is a great way to show the benefits of Blu-ray to people who do not know. However, anyone who already owns Blu-ray will not likely benefit as much from this presentation.
Presentations aside, the displays they have set up are very nice to say the least. Shown at our stop were looping videos promoting Blu-ray showing various titles that are already out or are soon to be released. The most amazing video shown was Ratatouille. This movie is going to be nothing short of a must buy for any Blu-ray owner. The picture quality was simply stunning. Cars was also shown, along with a preview of an in movie game where the viewers play a “Where’s Waldo” like game in which you must find certain cars throughout the movie. This looks to be an entertaining game to add some spice to a movie you’ve seen several times. At the end of the movie, you will be given a total to how many cars you found, which ones they were, and a quick bio on each one. These games are a cool new feature that Blu-ray can provide over DVD’s.
Other games that were playable at the booth were “Liar’s Dice” from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and an asteroid clone that is on Chicken Little. While neither of these are new titles or games, they give a good example of what Blu-ray can do.
A brief description of a Blu-ray network service was also mentioned, and while nothing has been confirmed yet, it sounds like online features could be in the pipeline fairly soon, with features such as downloadable content, and possibly even a chat application.
Bottom line, while not overly informative to current owners, this tour is nothing but good news to the Blu-ray side of this next-gen format war. Anything that Disney supports is likely to gain tremendous momentum as families are a large demographic who can easily decide the winner between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Stay tuned for more updates as well as the latest news here at PSU.

Glad to see that they (Sony, Disney, Paramount) are promoting the Blu-Ray format, but that ain't gonna sell loads more ps3's, maybe Blu-Ray players, but not ps3's!
juicyd,its panasonic not paramount.Paramount is HD-DVD exclusive now.Anyways,its great to see such support from Disney
Sounds real light weight. Why dont they do a global roadshow for PS3 with demo's of MGS 4, and a race competition on GT5?
psn id: gingo.... sony should be doing some of these tours themselves as they need to show what their console can do and how popular the blu ray format is
i hope they release bambi on blu ray so i can watch his mum get shot in Hi-Def.............yeah i got problems lol
Good to see some actual advertisment.
@Alfie-UHE
LMAO
8th post!!
this is very good news.... im not into disney at all since i was 7...lol... but they have always been on top of converting, upconverting, upsacle, remastering etc..... i honestly never see other companies take each generation and every past generation, and bring it to new age, over and over again....
I think it's smart that Sony is only HELPING and not actually running this thing themselves with a bunch of PS3's as it could -- once again -- send the wrong signal as to what the PS3 is actually geared for.
But this is all good news. Anything that can help the surge of Blu-Ray is good thing as it will obviously spill over into the PS3 as the format becomes more and more dominant.
I can't wait to see what happens on the next generation of conoles. Does MS try and usher in the idea that ALL games should be downloadable only, subsequently taking possibly billions of dollars out of brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop and Best Buy? Or will they bite the bullet and pack a Blu-Ray player into their next system because the format wins the war (something I'm very confident will happen)? How pwned will 360 fans -- who renounce the Blu-Ray format -- feel if that happens!