Dang. Two worlds of hurts back to back!
I agree, though. Getting seamless branching working (thanks again, Williarob) was a challenge enough. Getting a BD-J disc authored and working would be a nightmare, as cool as those picture-in-picture features are.
I think PiP doesn’t need BD-J, since the Japanese Studio Ghibli Blu-rays have no BD-J and they have PiP features in the Storyboards (essentially watch the workprint version of the film where it’s entirely storyboards) and the discs are not BD-J.
The PiP feature in the Storyboards in the Japanese Ghibli Blu-rays is that the workprint takes up the entire screen, you can choose whether the final film can be seen in a smaller window and you can even choose which corner to put the final film’s window.
The US Ghibli Blu-rays, however, don’t have the PiP feature for the workprint storyboards.
And while most people don’t like watching the workprint feature which is a standard for most Ghibli releases, I actually love watching the storyboard versions. I love watching workprints of films, and I really love it when they include a workprint as an extra on the official Blu-ray or DVD.
But I’m getting sidetracked. What I’m saying is that if the Ghibli Blu-rays to get PiP working without BD-J, then it’s theoretically possible for most.
Sounds like true PIP then, and not just burned in? Very cool.
Yes.
And the options for the display of the final version can be brought up with the pop-up menu and you can disable the PiP altogether and just watch the storyboard workprint, but only on the Japanese Blu-rays as far as I know.
I don’t know why Disney (and later GKIDS) cut this out for the US releases.
Especially since they did the opposite with the Diamond Edition Blu-ray of Beauty and the Beast, which had the theatrical edition take up most of the screen while the WIP version was the smaller picture, and it’s actual PiP, even if it’s very disappointing that the WIP version isn’t the one in the big screen.
Then again, they also removed the WIP version in the Signature Edition Blu-ray and made it digital-only for that particular version.