Us 24-7ers are suffering a little in these cold times and so some of us have decided to get on the bike again and make a renewed commit to the training they promised themselves they would be doing on Jan 1st…

So in the spirit of a new year and new adventure I thought it would be a great idea to showcase one of our smaller but ever so cooool releases by presenting Fallen Idol and their recent Blu-ray/DVD release Alliance: A free running film. Lovingly shot and edited over two years with thrilling free running footage and a pumping soundtrack.

We authored the simultaneous Blu-ray & DVD production and some of the High Definition action had our techies oohing and ahhing at the sheer audacity of some of these guys – it’s one way to get the blood pumping – if you don’t fancy the more sedate bike ride…

This month we have been working on a special release from Marillion which is a collectors set in more ways than one.  The ‘Holidays in Zelande’ DVD is a five DVD deluxe set presented in a high quality digi pack and slip case.  It is delivered with the first disc and fans can collect the other discs as they are released during 2012.

The sets are available in PAL and NTSC to the band’s worldwide fan base and are available to purchase from their web site http://www.marillion.com/

Also by Jim Taylor, this book offers an honest look at the high definition format, along with it’s strengths and weaknesses as well as ‘myth busting’ some of the perceptions which have cropped up over the years.

This book covers everything you need to know when going into Blu-ray, from the technology, it’s features and applications to essential information on Blu-ray disc production.

Unlike with DVD, copy protection was always an integral part of the Blu-ray format, and this book has a comprehensive section covering this.

Like it’s predecessor DVD Demystified, now in it’s third revision, we expect that this book will be updated regularly and become the cornerstone text within the industry – more required reading for people joining 24-7dvd!

In a study of 9,500 respondents commissioned by the BVA, many viewers – over 55% of UK households – revealed that they have spent hundreds or even thousands of pounds on the latest High-Definition TV technology without seemingly having appreciated the experience high definition screens are meant to deliver, even though, in the vast majority of cases, the extra equipment they need is relatively cheap and widely available.

The most surprising finding is that 6.5 million people (1 in 10 of the population) think they are watching high definition content when actually they are not. In the survey 28% of people think they can watch movies in high definition with a DVD player when actually a Blu-ray player or a high definition set-top box is needed to do so, and a further 27% believe that an HDTV shows everything in high definition when in fact they need a Blu-ray player to actually view content in the best possible quality.

Broken down further, 30% of respondents (14.6 million people across Great Britain) think they can watch Blu-ray discs or high definition broadcasts at home, while only 58% of that group have an HDTV with a high definition source connected. This means only 8.1 million people can in fact access high definition content, hence the 6.5 million of us who are very confused.

Simon Heller, from the British Video Association, comments: “In the run up to the World Cup even more people will be looking to invest in an HDTV, but they need to be aware that an HDTV alone does not mean that they are watching content in high definition. You are only getting a high definition experience if you are watching content via a bolt-on high definition set top box, a Blu-ray player, or a PS3 console.”

“With bolt-on technology such as a Blu-ray player at a fraction of the cost of the HDTV itself, it seems a shame to miss out on the ultimate high definition experience – with five times the picture quality and improved sound – that your HDTV is designed for.”

Source DVD intelligence – reproduced with permission

This is especially significant given the achievement of Quantum of Solace (20th Century Fox) last March, which sold 1.2 million units. The healthy increase was also due in part to Easter falling a week earlier than in 2009.

Growth in Q1 was particularly seen in the music genre (up 42% against last year), driven by Michael Jackson’s This Is It (Sony Pictures), and in children’s titles (up 38%) due to strong sales of Up (Walt Disney).

Sales of Blu-ray are up 69.5% (up 50% in value) on the same period in 2009, reaching 2.7m units in the first three months of the year, taking the total number of Blu-ray Discs sold to 15.6m units since launch.

The top three best-selling Blu-ray titles of the quarter saw their Blu-ray performance average at 20% of the total disc sales with The Hurt Locker at 24% (Elevation Sales), Up at 17% (Walt Disney) and 2012 at 20%(Sony Pictures).

Why Not?

DVD was not designed to interact with the internet.  Although DVD has been an incredibly popular format, it is easy to forget how ‘old’ it is.   Web connectivity never was part of the DVD Specification.  The blueprint to which all DVD players must follow was set in stone in 1995, and there is no real way to change that without breaking every DVD player that has come before it.

But what about products like Spruce Convergence, DVD@ccess and eDVD?

Three major industry players in DVD authoring have come up with products that attempted to offer web usability to DVD:

In August 1999 Spruce Technologies introduced a product called Spruce Convergence, an add-on for their Authoring Applications to add “full-duplex communication between DVD-based video and the Web, allowing web pages to be invoked directly by button clicks on the DVD title, as well as letting the internet browser control the DVD video.”  Spruce were later bought out by Apple, who went on to release it as DVD Studio Pro Version 2.

By 2002, Apple’s DVD Studio Pro 1.5 had a feature known as DVD@CCESS Web.  This functionality continued through later versions based on Apple’s aquisition of Spruce, but did not offer the same flexibility.   Like Spruce, this offered the ability to add a huperlink to a button on a DVD Page, but only if the disc was played back in Apple’s DVD Software.  This made the function inaccessible for PC users and therefore, arguably, the majority of corporate DVD creators.

At the same time, Hollywood also experimented with the concept of Web enabled DVDs, using InterActual’s PC Friendly Software.  A number high profile titles were produced over the years, including the early Harry Potter chapters and The Matrix.  Features included script viewers, storyboard comparisons, Image Galleries and QucktimeVR viewers.

Today, when viewing the InterActual website, it appears that no major titles have been announced since 2007.

Sonic Solutions, the company behind the Scenarist Professional DVD Authoring product, bought InterActual in 2004, and went on to release a number of versions of it’s eDVD software, which was designed to allow the easy addition of weblinks to DVD VIDEO discs.  Again, there was a requirement to install a compatible DVD software player on your PC or Mac, but at least the rationale was that more users would already have this installed as it had been used on so many high profile Hollywood titles.

Unfortunately, the InterActual player was never upgraded to support Windows Vista (and now Windows 7), and no option on the market dealt with the set-top box environment of the home.

So what are my options?

There are various other ways to direct your viewers to your web site:

1. Include your web address on the screen and it can be copied into a browser  on your laptop, PC or phone.  (It sounds old fashioned, it is old fashioned).  This is ideal if your web address is short or memorable.
2. Include a local web page on the DVD as ROM content.  This will not be accessible from a DVD player but PC users can find the file in the route of the disc and be re-directed from there.  This is not a retail solution as this method might be too complicated for ‘average’ users.
3. For some projects a two disc set featuring a CD Rom and a DVD would provide the solution.  The DVD for the high quality video files and the CDROM for any supporting documents including PDFs, links and Office documents for download.

How about Blu-ray?

Well, you can have Internet connected discs, marketed as “BD Live”, which when used in conjunction with an internet-connected “BD Live” compatible Blu-ray player will access online content…

But …This content is stored and distributed by the content owner, in the form of trailers and “BD-J” java applications.  This is NOT a web browser to link to any website you wish.  BD Live allows access to Blu-ray specific online content, and nothing more.

This means you can include your target URL to be copied down and typed into a browser, your PC must have a Blu-ray drive to acces BD-Live content or you can include a CD Rom in the package.

Blu-ray 3D also specifically calls for PlayStation 3 consoles to have full BD 3D content playback. According to CDRinfo:  “Additionally, the specification supports playback of 2D discs in forthcoming 3D players and can enable 2D playback of Blu-ray 3D discs on the large installed base of Blu-ray Disc players currently in homes around the world.”

“The Blu-ray 3D specification calls for encoding 3D video using the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec, an extension to the ITU-T H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec currently supported by all Blu-ray Disc players. MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players,” CDRinfo adds.

The specification also incorporates enhanced graphic features for 3D. These features provide a new experience for users, enabling navigation using 3D graphic menus and displaying 3D subtitles positioned in 3D video.

Catalogue pricing has also fallen, but not by such a significant amount. From an average price of £16.87 in February, this dropped to £14.25 in August, representing a decline of 15%. When looking at the average catalogue price across the three largest etailers, (Amazon, Play and HMV), the price drop is far more significant, with the average catalogue price hitting £11.22.

Back in Q4 2008, both in the USA and the UK the premium for purchasing a new release title on Blu-ray compared to DVD was between 30% and 80%. However, for catalogue BD titles this premium was considerably higher, and in some instances was as much as 300%. Although it has never been disputed that consumers will pay more for Blu-ray, the premium in the market in 2008 was clearly not sustainable.

“Pricing is becoming an increasing area of focus for Blu-ray,” says Alison Casey, Head of Global Content at Futuresource Consulting. “Although a number of new BD releases are beginning to achieve healthy sales volumes, catalogue titles continue to disappoint. The retail price of Blu-ray titles, particularly when compared to DVD, is a key factor in holding back sales. Research shows that Blu-ray player owners are making a value judgement call when deciding whether or not to pay the Blu-ray premium; often continuing to buy some titles in standard definition.”

With more than 1,100 BD titles to choose from, combined with growing retail support and increased promotional activity, the rise of Blu-ray will help to offset declining sales of standard DVD product. European sales of BD movie titles are expected to top 31m by the end of 2009 – a more than three-fold increase on the 9m sales recorded in 2008. By 2012, around 35 percent of Western European video disc retail sale volumes will be Blu-ray (the US figure will be 50 percent).

Focusing on the UK, this year Futuresource expects both BD player and BD disc sales to more than treble. UK disc sales could hit 12 million given the strong release schedule for Q4.

On the hardware side, Futuresource’s quarterly BD hardware tracker shows European BD player sales, excluding PS3, are running at close to 300 percent up on the equivalent period last year.

The analysts expect to see players at or below €100 by the Christmas selling season. They reckon BD players will approach impulse purchase level very soon and at these levels people will be increasingly tempted to replace DVD players with the newer format. They expect that over 20% of European homes will be BD enabled by the end of 2011.

Source DVD intelligence – reproduced with permission

DVD sales are down a steep 9.5% year-on-year bringing the total number of discs sold in 2009 to 100 million. The BVA argues this fall is partly the result of consumers upgrading to Blu-ray.

More than 3.1 million Blu-ray Discs have sold in 2009 to date, a rise of 231% on the same period last year. There are now almost 1500 Blu-ray releases.

The outlook for the second half of the year is more promising, the BVA reckons. Its 2009 Yearbook shows that 30% of all sales take place in the last two months of the year and some of this year’s big pre-Christmas releases including ‘Bruno’ (Universal Pictures), ‘Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince’ (Warner Home Video), ‘Ice Age 3′ (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment), ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), ‘Tinker Bell’ (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) and ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ (Paramount Home Entertainment) are expected to perform extremely well on DVD and Blu-ray.

The BVA points to industry research conducted at the end of last year by TNS, indicating that, while 72% of consumers felt that they would have significantly less disposable income in 2009, with 31% strongly agreeing, most respondents (98%) said they would be actively seeking out promotions and offers.

Source - DVD Intelligence – reproduced with permission

The most significant savings are for low volume and first-time publishers. For example, the AACS costs for a first-time Blu-ray Disc publisher, say, for a run of 2,000 titles, has dropped from $4,300 to just $1,000 – a saving of over 75%.

For an existing BD publisher, the AACS fees have dropped from $1,300 to $500. “That’s over 60% off the cost of your clients getting their BD content on disc,” says Sonic who broke the news.

AACS has made the license fee payable in annual $500 increments instead of requiring $3,000 at the time of signing the Content Provider Agreement, and the agreement can be terminated at anytime. “This one change makes it possible for first-time and low volume content holders to get going with BD with a much lower start-up investment and at affordable per title costs,” comments Sonic.

(Source DVD intelligence – reproduced with permission)