First Picture in Picture Blu-ray title next year

Fox will release "Sunshine" on Blu-ray which will be the first "Picture in Picture" release on the format the company said at a Blu-ray press event held yesterday.

This feature allows for a second video source to lay on top of the main film. This can be used for various special features including video commentaries and making offs.

Other Blu-ray titles has had a similar feature before. However, this was done by creating an entire new video with the second video stream hard encoded into the other. This method works on todays blu-ray players but takes up a lot of storage space.

The "Sunshine" release will be the first to do it with two separate streams on Blu-ray. However, this method is only compatible with profile 1.1 players. None, is currently available on the market but Samsung's upcoming $1000 Duo player will support this and it is believed that the Playstation 3 console will be able to support it in the future. Regular blu-ray players sold so far will not be upgradeable.

In contrast HD DVD has supported this feature from the start. Even the sub $200 players being sold right now is fully compatible with this.

Fox also used the press event to confirm its support of Blu-ray. The company hope to release as many as 100 blu-ray titles in 2008.