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An industry practitioner speaks
In a series of Q&As, professionals in all facets of the packaged media industry share their views of things past, present and yet to come. It’s the turn of IAN BRENCHLEY, Managing Director of authoring and post-production studio Metropolis in London.
DVD celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. How many more years are we going to see DVD around? Are there lessons in the development of DVD that could/should be applied to Blu-ray?
I can’t see DVD leaving us for the next 3 or more years. I’m sure the market has dipped because of market saturation, the prices crashing through the floor, and also all iconic catalogue releases are now available on DVD. New content are still seen as good value on that format. I think DVD will co-exist with Blu-ray and digital downloads for some time as consumers are probably reluctant to jump in both feet with converting to an HD format given the current economic climate.
Do you think Blu-ray discs will eventually replace completely DVDs or will they only partially replace them, becoming a niche, albeit big?
My belief is that BD discs will not completely replace DVDs. Not all of the standard-definition audiovisual catalogue will be converted to BD. I do believe BD will become the main audiovisual format for the next 3 to 5 years until digital downloads or streaming takes over.
The rapid fall in price of Blu-ray discs, so early in their commercialisation, makes the economics of BD authoring and replication very challenging especially given the heavy investment required. What needs to happen to make it a viable, long-term business for independents?
I believe marketing is a key factor in the success of Blu-ray. There needs to be a big consolidated marketing push by everyone in the industry to educate the consumers about what BD is, what it does, and to remind those who have a PlayStation 3 that they already have a BD player!
Interactivity and BD-Live, in particular, are Blu-ray’s key unique selling propositions. Do you think enough publishers will commit extra production resources to spread its usage? Which feature do you think may become a killer app? Or will consumers be mostly interested in no-frill ‘vanilla’ film-only – and cheaper – BD discs?
Downloadable updates are a really strong marketing hook for Blu-ray, which I do not think have been nearly exploited enough yet. The ability to continually add content to a title that can be downloaded (at a price) after the consumer has bought the disc, must surely be a marketing executive’s dream.
It is said that diversification is the best way of staying afloat in the face of market uncertainty. How to you see your company’s range of services evolving over the next 2 to 5 years? And do you see opportunities, if any?
Absolutely, diversification is our middle name! We have added new services over the last 6 months to make us a true one-stop shop facility, and we now offer services from inception of a product right through to its exploitation. We are also adding more services in tandem with our 20th anniversary celebrations, like i-Mixing and online low-cost mixing service for up and coming artists. We also launched Waxopolis, a vinyl mastering, cutting, manufacturing, packaging service with a heavy touch of quality control. The development of i-Phone apps is becoming increasingly popular. Diversification is the key to our long-term success.
Fundamentally, I think there are numerous opportunities in the current marketplace for audiovisual content to generate a substantial amount of revenue. There is so much content that is still sitting in vaults around the world unexploited. Companies are seemingly being cautious with their release schedules at the time, but music especially has always tended to thrive in a recession as more consumers spend more time at home. Surely releasing more content will generate more sales in the current climate.
Films on solid state/Flash memory, Holographic discs, 4,000-line Super high-definition, Networked TVs, 3D home entertainment are advanced technologies at varying stages of development. Do you see any of them entering the consumer market and, if so, in what time frame?
I see 3D being the next big leap forward, but only if a format war can be avoided. It’s exciting, but I don’t see it taking off for at least 5 years. It’s hard enough convincing people to buy HD hardware at the moment.
Contact: www.metropolis-group.co.uk...
On predicting the future
Predicting the future, let alone the future of packaged media, is a perilous exercise, and possibly counter-productive, as the exercise closes doors rather than keep them open, argues JEAN-LUC RENAUD, DVD Intelligence publisher. Consider that: Apple was left nearly for dead 15 years ago. Today, it became the world's most valuable technology company, topping Microsoft.
Le cinéma est une invention sans avenir (the cinema is an invention without any future) famously claimed the Lumière Brothers some 120 years ago. Well. The cinématographe grew into a big business, even bigger in times of economic crisis when people have little money to spend on any other business.
The advent of radio, then television, was to kill the cinema. With a plethora of digital TV channels, a huge DVD market, a wealth of online delivery options, a massive counterfeit underworld and illegal downloading on a large scale, cinema box office last year broke records!
The telephone was said to have no future when it came about. Today, 5 billion handsets are in use worldwide. People prioritize mobile phones over drinking water in many Third World countries.
No-one predicted the arrival of the iPod only one year before it broke loose in an unsuspecting market. Even fewer predicted it was going to revolutionise the economics of music distribution. Likewise, no-one saw the iPhone coming and even fewer forecast the birth of the developers' industry it ignited. And it changed the concept of mobile phone.
Make no mistake, the iPad will have a profound impact on the publishing world. It will bring new players, and smaller, perhaps more creative content creators.
And who predicted the revival of vinyl?
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