Great article on the growth of Blu-ray, and how the format is impacting work/test schedules.

According to data from The DVD Release Report, 2009 is on its way to being the fourth straight year of decline for total DVD releases, and data from Futuresource Consulting shows total DVD units released at retail down 10% this year from 2008.

With the slowdown in DVD, you’d think the producers of bonus content would be worried.

But thanks to an uptick in the number of Blu-ray Discs being released, the number of companies releasing them and the added work involved with Blu-ray, they’re working harder than ever. Paul Scott, EVP of Sony DADC, said at the recent Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference that Blu-ray Disc sales are expected to be up 212% this year.

“From a content-creation standpoint, the decline of DVD hasn’t changed things much at all,” he said. “People and studios still want the content. It’s just a matter of what formats they want them delivered in and how they plan to use them.”

“Studios have gotten used to paying less money for DVD product, and they’re trying to translate that over to Blu-ray,” Pellerin said. “By its nature, Blu-ray needs more capital investment.”

In terms of quality control, a DVD takes a few hours. Making sure a Blu-ray goes out the door without major hiccups can take upwards of 100 hours. Blu-ray is less a video format than it is a software format, they noted.

“DVD content can be very generic,” Pellerin said. “Blu-ray isn’t cut-and-paste, rubberstamped product. All other sorts of opportunities have popped up. Blu-ray is the potential gateway to extend the lives of home video units because it starts to break away from the physical media and gets into the [electronic delivery].”

Ling said that new ideas for Blu-ray bonuses, especially for BD Live, may be stifled if studios worry too much about quantity of discs getting out the door.

“I firmly believe that the only way Blu-ray is going to succeed is if we take advantage of its unique strengths and capabilities beyond just the presentation quality,” he said. “We have to try new things with it, both utilizing BD Live connectivity and creating compelling on-disc experiences. The studios and the consumers will need to take a leap of faith.”

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/dvd-producers/disc-producers-work-grows-16332

bickering removed.

Here are some of the positive statements in that article that I found interesting:

“The workload is unbelievable,” said Paulette Pantoja, CEO and founder of BluFocus, a Blu-ray production and quality control company. “The ramp-up is especially huge this summer because it’s not just the top tier-titles any more.”

Last year, the customers were mainly the major studios, she said.

“This year, non-studios like the smaller ones are jumping on the Blu-ray wagon,” she said. “So, they are going through the learning process of what the studios went through when Blu-ray first went into production.”
...
Kennedy said that the coding for Blu-ray bonuses has become established, “whereas last year and the year before, people were still looking for feedback on what works, this year is more involved and creative.”

“If you wanted to do a trivia on a disc, you had to do it from scratch,” he explained. “Now that code is out there. The investment has already been made.”