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Industry practitioners speak
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 HARALD GERICKE, CEO of German authoring and post-production studio, platin media productions.
DVD celebrated its 10 anniversary last year. How many more years are we going to see DVD around? Are there lessons in the development of the DVD format that could/should be applied to Blu-ray?
I cannot imagine, that the DVD will be replaced shortly by BD. Unless the installed base of DVD players haven’t been replaced by Blu-ray players, you need DVD to reach your clients. So, we will see DVDs for many more years. Perhaps DVDs will only contain the main film while any kind of bonus material and add-ons will be part of the Blu-ray release. This would support the Blu-ray as the first-class format.
The unexpectedly rapid fall in price of Blu-ray discs, so early in the commercialisation of the format, 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?
If the price of Blu-ray discs could fall further, more people could be encouraged to buy more BD disc and BD players. Consequently, more BD titles could be released. If you can optimize the utilization load of BD authoring and encoding equipment, it should become a viable business, and could lead to the possibility to per-title authoring cost reduction. Also, I don’t understand why Blu-ray has the same restrictions regarding playability of different frame rates in different countries as the case with DVD. All European players can play all possible frame rates but US and Japanese players do not have to support 25 frames. This is a shame because international releases need to be converted into 29,97i if they have been shot in 25i.
Interactivity and BD-Live, in particular, are Blu-ray's key unique selling propositions. Do you think enough publishers and studios 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?
I do not see BD-Live as a killer app if studios make content available online which could as well be placed on the disc. This includes ‘making of,’ audio comments, deleted scenes, etc. These kind of extras are interestingly enough to be produced directly for the disc, but not for BD-Live usage. BD-Live makes huge sense for all assets which will change over time like trailers, special events, artist information and others. Also dedicated fan-related extras could be interesting, especially to get the format growing. These features have interesting marketing well worth earmarking extra production resources. BD-Live will work best with the consumer if it does not try to replace an internet-connected PC!
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?
Our clients place their trust into our high quality and individual services. This is our main focus because, with more and more complex technologies and features, customers have to rely on what we know and do. Keeping with this philosophy, we will add new activities to our range of services.
Films on solid state/Flash memory, Holographic disc, 4,000-line Super high-definition, Networked TVs, 3D home entertainment are advanced technologies at varying state of development. Do you see any of them entering the consumer market and, if so, in what time frame?
Besides CD, DVD and BD I don’t see the necessity for other physical formats. I don’t know if, or when, Super high-definition or 3D will make it into the private households, but if they do I hope that this could be addressed by a downward-compatible extension to the BD spec. Nobody could make people understand why they should buy new players for new formats al over again. DVD, BD as well as TV will be complemented and/or extended by online services for home use and especially for use on mobile devices. Therefore, networked TVs or set-top boxes have started entering the consumer market. So, we will see multiple delivery formats in the future for the consumer to choose from.
Contact: www.platin-media-productions.de
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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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