Universal Home Entertainment will be introducing Blu-ray releases that contain iPhone and iPod touch enhanced features. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Universal will include their pocket BLU application with Blu-ray versions of Bruno, Public Enemies, Funny People, American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, and Inglourious Basterds.

Pocket BLU will further enhance your Blu-ray experience with the following features:

• Advanced Remote Control: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray player. Users can navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live functions with ease.
• Video Timeline: By turning the phone to landscape mode, users will bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the movie.
• Mobile-To-Go: Users can unlock a selection of exclusive bonus content with their Blu-ray discs to save to their device or to stream from anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy exclusive content on the go, anytime, anywhere.
• Browse Titles: Users will have access to a complete list of pocket BLU-enabled titles available and coming to Blu-ray Hi-Def. Free previews and more.
• Pop-Up Keyboard: Enter data into a Blu-ray player with this easy and intuitive keyboard that will facilitate such Blu-ray(TM) features as chatting with friends and sending messages via Facebook and Twitter.

The application will be a free download for your iPhone/iPod touch and should be available the day the Blu-ray titles are available. With the movie studios and Blu-Ray showing the iPhone and iPod touch some love, one would think Apple would give a little back…

[Via 9to5Mac]

BGR reports a source saying Apple is readying iTunes 9, which will include support for visually organizing apps on the iPhone, and for playing back Blu-Ray media.

iPhone 1.1.3 introduced the ability to add icons (limited to WebClips at the time, expanded to native apps with iPhone 2.0), and to move them around by tapping and holding until they began to jiggle. While this works well enough for a few icons once and a while, it makes totally re-arranging the 11 home screens made available in iPhone 3.0 a tad laborious. Suggestions for, even concept videos of, adding a more robust solution via iTunes have been floating around the web for a while now and would be a welcome addition indeed.

Steve Jobs had famously called Blu-Ray a “bag of hurt” due to licensing, but changes in those licenses and perhaps Apple’s priorities — which previously seemed to want to promote their own download service over physical media — could make it happen. Unless there’s more expansive and integrated support for the “digital copy” feature as well — where an iPhone/iPod version of the movie is included on the disk — it’s not really an iPhone friendly addition.

Also rumored were some kind of Twitter/Facebook/Last.fm social features.

Last year Apple debuted iTunes 8 at their annual iTunes and iPod music event in September (after it was heavily leaked by Kevin Rose). If there is an iTunes 9 on the roadmap, makes sense we’d see it this September along with the rumored iPod touch 3,1.

Anyone more interested in it now?

MacRumors, via a user in their forums, is reporting that iTunes 8.2 could have some Blu-Ray functionality? Check out their post for details.

Steve Jobs famously called Blu-Ray licensing a “bag of hurt” when asked about it previously, but there’s been some chatter to suggest licensing has been somewhat de-hurt-bagged recently. Still, Apple hasn’t announced any first-party Blu-Ray hardware, so we’re not sure what to make of this at the moment.

In any event, unless they start including iPhone-friendly “digital copies” for transfer directly from the BD disks, it won’t change things for our mobile devices anyway.

Ok, well you really can’t control Iron Man, but the lucky French can use their iPhone to control their soon to be released Iron Man Blu-Ray disc. This title will be the first to utilize NetBlender’s BD Touch technology that allows your Blu-ray movie to interact with your iPhone and iPod Touch.

The application, called “Remote Haxey”, will allow viewers to “download trailers, play a game that’s integrated into the movie, and use your iPhone as a remote control, among other as-yet-unrevealed “features”. Unfortunately for those of us in the USA, this will not a be a feature of our version of the Iron Man Blu-Ray disc.

(Via Blu-Ray.com)

Internet superstar Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, Pownce, and Revision3 has a… er… spotty record at best when it comes to iPhone speculation. Still, we give him full marks for getting back on that rumor horse once again. This time, Kevin’s saying he knows that sometime before the end of September we’ll see:

• Firmware 2.1, debuting on the iPod Touch (which will get a minor facelift).
• iTunes 8.0 with “new features and functionality” he can’t get into.
• Price drops along the iPod line to keep them competitive with iPhone’s $199
• Rounded wide-screen nano, back in candy-bar form factor
• Mac OS X 10.5.6 to feature Blu-Ray support.

Rose, who’s locked in a battle with Barak Obama and Leo Laporte for the crown of top Twitter’er, asks that we follow him there, or on his own platform, Pownce, for more updates.

Our take? Last year’s big pre-holiday Apple event introduced the iPod Touch, which debuted the new 1.1 firmware, including the WiFi Music Store, so that’s quite possible. iTunes 8.0 is more opaque, however. If App Store integration wasn’t a big enough marketing excuse to make the full point jump to iTunes 8.0, what would it take? (7.0, for example, added CoverFlow and iPod Games).

iPod price drops before the biggest selling season of the year make sense, as Apple dropped the iPhone $200 at last years event. Likewise a new Nano.

Blu-Ray support — if it’s to include BD movie playback — is a bigger nut to crack, however, because the short sighted industry killers in Hollywood demands HDCP DRM compliance (i.e. hardware enforced, digital rights managed copy protection) over the full path, from player, through cables and graphic cards, into the monitor — and in the OS. This caused a bit of an internet brouhaha when Microsoft “caved” for Vista. Laptops and the iMac would be far easier to implement, but is there business advantage enough for Steve Jobs to feel like doing it?

(via MacRumors)