Memoirs of a DVD virgin

When DVD appeared in UK high street stores in 1998, MARK SAXE was Production Director of BBC Video, responsible for the end-to-end creation of all video products. So the task fell to him and his team to fast become the in-house DVD expert. Here is his kiss-and-tell account...

Whilst the arrival of a new packaged medium and the dawn of a new era in home entertainment were hugely exciting prospects, they were also quite daunting. There was a lot to quickly grasp and the implications for content, production, packaging and budget were immense.

How fortunate then, that authoring houses, subtitlers and the like were more than eager to secure some new business from the Beeb! I had never been so hotly pursued in my life and it’s incredible that I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning, jet lag, or general hospitality overdose!

Yes, the early days of DVD created a feeding frenzy and anyone with a related service to sell was in pole position at the feast. I can remember being horrified by the funds required to compress and author one of our first BBC releases.

Today, that same five-figure sum would buy a pretty decent C&A platform and you would still have sufficient change to finance an ‘extras’ shoot and up-grade to super-clear packaging. In those days replicating a DVD9 would cost a Pound a pop, and English subtitles came in at around £15 per minute. It’s quite a miracle that consumers swallowed the software RRP, but they did, thank goodness.

Those were heady days, and we all benefitted greatly from the scope that the new format offered us as VHS gracefully moved over. New businesses sprang up to fulfil demand – particularly in the production sector – and in no time at all there was a wonderful community of DVD professionals, who would converge on quiet unsuspecting European towns with ever-increasing regularity to discuss latest developments at the numerous industry conferences that were borne out of DVD.

Technically speaking, everything suddenly became very different and much more complicated than ever before. Whereas the more worthy of our number would have previously dropped the odd word like ‘pancake‘ or “grain” into a conversation, we were now all talking about ‘injection moulding,‘ ‘DLTs,‘ ‘fathers‘ and ‘mothers‘ and ‘VOBs‘ and would feverishly discuss metadata and the temperature at which polycarbonate melted. I can also recall the more irreverent conference-goers sniggering in the back row at the mention of ‘groove jitter‘ and in particular ‘bottom wobble‘– and I should know because I was one of them.

But on a more serious note, one of the most far-reaching impacts of optical disc replacing tape was due to interactivity, and the immediate effect it had on content rights was enormous.

With the arrival of DVD, content most definitely became king and a new era of ‘schmoozing‘ the talent commenced. Contracts had to be re-written with new definitions added, and of course like all other consumer publishing business, we wanted to make sure that we could exploit DVD fully.

On the downside, negotiating for reasonably priced (if not gratis on the basis that extras would greatly increase sell-through) use of out-takes, commentaries and such like was tough, but in addition to sales uplift the other positive result of this was the whole-hearted involvement of the talent in the products, and this greatly enhanced and cemented relationships which had previously all too often been based solely on size of advance and/or royalty payments.

Oh, and there was one other obvious downside: spending far too much time pretending to fulfil the often outrageous demands of said talent. “Yes we can certainly package the disc in a tactile cowhide-covered box, and would you like a scratch-and-sniff disc scent too, sir?” and “yes of course we can press the discs in lime green with a pink inner rim!” You really wouldn’t believe some of the other genuine requests if I shared them with you, and although we won our fair share of awards for BBC DVDs, once or twice I reckoned there should be a category entitled ‘The Best Sucking-Up Oh Dear We’ve Blown the Budget‘ Award.

I’ve already mentioned the wonderful DVD community we had – and still do have – but back then it really was a golden time and today’s insecurity surrounding the take-up of new DVD and other ‘hostile‘ formats was then nowhere to be seen. Everybody was mad keen to master this new medium and to put it through its paces, but perhaps above all everybody seemed to have the same common goal in mind, and that was to make the best quality products.

Whilst in pursuit of quality and in an effort to fully understand the workings of DVD, we used to spend hours if not days at the authoring houses, attending emulations and checking subtitle timing and chapter points. I vividly remember sitting through an 8 x 50-minute science series, not once, not twice, but no fewer than six times, because it was the first of our releases that carried six subtitled languages. (My Suomi’s still rubbish by the way). How many DVD producers would do that now I wonder?

And what about DLT testing? For the first couple of years we used to ship out every DLT to be independently tested for fatal errors and functionality problems, and each resulting test disc would be compatibility checked on a number of high street players. It used to take so long to produce each release but it was worth the time and trouble. I think we only ever had a couple of angry letters due to playback problems – and these were from BBC colleagues!

In no time at all price erosion had begun in the USA, whereas in Europe we were still very much on the up, and there was a stronger than ever desire to make each and every release special in some way or other – budget and time permitting of course. I think that arguably this is one of the reasons why customer satisfaction was always at peak level, whereas now, ten years on, more often than not I personally find myself feeling that quality hangs in the balance.

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and business needs must, so at a time when margins have become so dangerously thin for many, it’s no wonder that BOGOFs (buy one get one free) and budget ranges cram the shelves. Much more so than now, there was a remarkable openness between competitors, and information and know-how were shared readily.
I also think that’s partly why London very quickly established itself as a DVD centre of excellence – from the studios to the authoring houses – and the continuous sharp upward trend in sales could only have benefitted from this inclusive culture and great sense of pride.

Aside from the obvious consumer carrots of superb multi-channel audio and crisper visual quality of DVD, we increased consumer perception of value for money by including all sorts of so-called ‘Value Added Material‘ (VAM) too. Bad luck VHS – well done DVD.

At BBC Video we shot all of our own extra footage if it wasn’t already available in the form of out-takes or archive. My DVD producers had a field day and some strong relationships were forged between them and talent which were of great benefit to business then, and still are today. Needless to say, some of the extra interview footage that was shot with certain pre-eminent comedians never saw the light of day because it would have taken the BBFC certificate through the roof!

The European DVD community was constantly being reminded that the USA was two years ahead in terms of take-up, production, technical prowess etc, and this was a great source of irritation to many! However, it did make us all a tad hungrier and more competitive in the UK and was probably key in egging us on to venture into authoring techniques like seamless branching, picture-in-picture and “follow the white rabbit” type interactivity.

But short of satisfying our own egos and those of our friendly trade publication reviewers, I wonder if Joe Public truly appreciated the effort that went into producing some of the more complex and interactive features?

It was often extremely difficult to forecast accurate sales numbers in a market that was growing exponentially. DVD take-up was several times faster than any previous format, hardware prices were plummeting, and even after two or three years of huge year-on-year growth no-one was predicting that our Heaven-sent format would plateau much earlier that VHS had done.

Sell-through volumes and premium price points ensured that extremely healthy margins prevailed for a long time and at last, chunky annual bonuses became more easily achievable. But in retrospect I now wonder if standard definition DVD was simply plundering advance sales from new optical disc formats yet to come? Will consumers continue to up-grade their home entertainment systems many more times in the next decade?
If I could turn back the clock ten years I think my (albeit Draconian) tongue-in-cheek strategy would be to halve the release schedule, halve headcount, forcibly maintain premium price-points, adopt a very firm VMI stance, ban all manner of internet technological development and thus double the life expectancy of DVD!

I am of course talking as if the game’s up for packaged media, but I can’t yet hear the large female warming-up her vocal cords so I guess we will all be fine for a while longer. But will we ever again see the same fantastic margins we enjoyed four or five years ago? How long will it take for a healthy Blu-ray Disc consumer base to become established? And will we get the opportunity to really get into the heightened interactivity that new formats afford us?

I am certain that another of Jean-Luc’s colleagues will answer these questions on another page and there are bound to be numerous bar charts predicting the landscape for the next few years, but I suspect that even when the analogue channels are switched-off, high definition broadcasting will do little to change the behaviour of UK consumers when it comes to packaged media.

I for one will not be buying my entire DVD collection all over again on a new format, and I’ll probably limit my new format DVD expenditure to major new releases only.

I am not averse to change and I do welcome new technology with open arms, but being asked to reflect upon what has without doubt been the most enjoyable, educational, fulfilling and successful decade in my career has understandably made me feel rather nostalgic.

When I started writing this I commented that the advent of a new format had been extremely challenging, but I am certain now that what lies ahead today will be the real challenge. Download-to-Own, IPTV, Mobile and VOD are all gathering pace and at the very time when economically the UK is in mire and there is less disposable income sloshing around, the HD format war is over and Blu-ray unequivocally needs consumer support if it is to fight packaged media’s corner successfully.

Jokingly I used to frequently say to my BBC colleagues in a pompous voice: “When you’ve been in the game of telly as long as I have....” just to annoy them. It was a very versatile catch-phrase as I could replace “telly” with “trout fishing” or anything else I thought would annoy them! So, in case any of them are reading this I feel it appropriate to say “When you’ve been in the game of technological diversification as long as I have, you know when to buckle up”.

In conclusion, there are so many more thoughts, experiences and occurrences that I could write about, but the bottom line is that it has been a rich decade in every respect and one never to be repeated. I am very happy to have played my part and consider myself extremely fortunate to have been involved with UK DVD from the word ‘go.‘ ...

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