While the internet gets covered in residue from the Tomatina-esque slinging fight taking place in the war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray camps, one of the key differences between the two formats, Interactivity, is getting very little mention – which seems peculiar given its potential significance.

Blu-Ray is the only format that supports Java for its interactivity, in the form of BD-J – based on Java ME (formerly J2ME). This compares to iHD, the version used by HD-DVD that is XML and JavaScript based.

What this effectively means is that while HD-DVD’s interactivity is a slight upgrade from the DVD menu options from the past, Blu-Ray players represent an entirely new interactive platform. This means that Blu-Ray disks could deploy unique and interesting applications and entertainment software that would play on all BluRay players, not just the Playstation 3. Add on top of this the ability to connect to the internet and the fact that you can download additional live content and you have a very fertile platform. While at first I’m sure that it will be used for simple features like interactive maps and the usual DVD-style quizzes, it has the potential to be used very creatively.