HD Delivery this year

[Bryan Daugherty]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

...Imation Memorex 25GB BLU-RAY Disc ($5.31 each)
Memorex BLU-RAY 4X 25GB BD-R ($6.57 each)
Verbatim 96769 25GB 4X Blu-Ray Disc ($7.49 each)

Perrone - I have been offerring BD sells for a yr now but had no takers. I have been watching suppliers for pro grade BD-r media (not just data media) and am having difficulty finding them. I do not want to go back to labels and find labels very tacky. Have you (or anyone else) found any blank BD-r media that is the BD-r cousin of the Taiyo Yuden Watershield inkjet hub printable? The few printables I have found were in the $30 range, and I have yet to see any with watershield or scratch resistance on the printable surface. Maybe I am not looking in the right places... Also what about the issue of player compatibility? When you deliver to a client how do you account for player compatibility? Putting it all on the end user seems like a dead end with the client's I have that are best candidates for BD...

[Perrone Ford]

At what premium are you offering Blu-Ray? Maybe that has something to do with it?

As for pro-grade media, I don't think you are going to get closer than Sony. There just aren't that many producers of Blu-Ray media yet, and a HUGE portion of that supply is going to commercial pressers for Hollywood releases. Many studios are converting their entire back catalogs and bringing them forward. Blu-Ray will be in short supply for us for quite some time.

Look how many years it took Taiyo Yuden to get to us. We are still in Blu-Ray infancy by comparison.

Player compatibility right now is pretty good. Far ahead of where DVD was at this stage. Remember the dvd-r / dvd+r / dvd-ram wars? Encore seems to have ut's issues, but Sonic, Architect, Nero, etc. all seem to be doing fine. The first gen players were problematic, just like with DVD, but things seem to be sorting out.

If I was doing this for business, I'd have 5-10 BDRE test discs to let clients try at home first. If they work, cut a real one and get the rewitable back.

No one is saying that this is a panacea. It's not. But it's good, and it's the best we will have for some time. We will likely see 6-10 layer disks in 3 years or so. And by that time, these single and double layer disks will be dirt cheap.

As mentioned, I made the jump to Blu-Ray for archival reasons, not delivery. Delivery is a nice byproduct. I just didn't want the issues of tape any more.

-P

Originally Posted by Bryan Daugherty

Perrone - I have been offerring BD sells for a yr now but had no takers. I have been watching suppliers for pro grade BD-r media (not just data media) and am having difficulty finding them. I do not want to go back to labels and find labels very tacky. Have you (or anyone else) found any blank BD-r media that is the BD-r cousin of the Taiyo Yuden Watershield inkjet hub printable? The few printables I have found were in the $30 range, and I have yet to see any with watershield or scratch resistance on the printable surface. Maybe I am not looking in the right places... Also what about the issue of player compatibility? When you deliver to a client how do you account for player compatibility? Putting it all on the end user seems like a dead end with the client's I have that are best candidates for BD...

[Bryan Daugherty]

Don't get me wrong, i am supper excited about the BD revolution and predicted it killing HD-DVD long before HD-DVD died. I have not been pushing BD because I am shooting HD with the 1000u, but I am advertising BD. I don't offer a price point for it because I have had no inquiries yet. This market area is very slow to adopt new tech except at the very high end market and that is not where I am competing right now.

By pro-grade media, I was more referring to the imaging surface rather than the burning surface. So far i am only finding BD-r media sub $30 with a data printed surface (read as write on with a sharpie) and to get inkjet printable surfaces I am finding prices in the $30+ range for 25GB BD-r.

I m with you full-bore on the rapid rollout and am blown away how the prices are coming down-especially compared to how DVD came around.

I love your archival and data mangement solution and I applaud you here, i was just hoping that since you are in deep you might know where to get the printables at a better rate. (I really hate labels.)

The main market segment I am working with that will have bluray interest soon is my dance segment. And for my main client, this means 350-400 discs. (4 nts with 75-125 dancers per nt) With that many clients in one push I am really worried about player compatibility. Again, i know we are lightyrs ahead of where we were with DVD at this point but I was wondering if you knew of a good solution.

[Lukas Siewior]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Exactly. Tell the customer, that a Blu-Ray copy costs an extra $10 oor $20, take 100-200% profit off the top, and as prices fall, your margin gets bigger. How can you lose?

I do something like that when customer wants extra sets of DVD's. Normally I include 3 sets (I write "sets" because Polish weddings are like "Titanic" movie - loooooooooooooooong). Anything over this is $20 per set extra. Each set has 3 dvd's, so this way I can cover my costs of printing and labeling.

[Philip Gioja]

Bryan, I was discussing media with a client of mine and he did a little searching for me.

BD-R 25GB 2X DataLifePlus White Inkjet Printable 25pk Spindle at Wholesale - Americal.com -- inkjet printable, $11.59/disc

TDK Blu Ray Disc 25GB 4x Inkjet Printable, Hub Printable - Recordable BD-R - Increments of 25 at Discount Prices, -- inkjet printable, $10.70/disc

I used TDK exclusively for my inkjet printable DVD-Rs, so I'm going with that when I make the jump.

[Bryan Daugherty]

Phillip- thanks for the link. Those are much better prices than i was seeing in my searches. I also am a fan of TDK dvd-r media. i particularly like the silver inkjet hub printables, but find the surface a little fragile (I know this is a little off topic) but have you used these and had similar experience? If you know a fix or comparable disc that is scratch/water resistant please PM me?

And now we return you to the thread in progress....

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Bryan,

What's your thoughts on the new JVC? Bringing XDCam into the $3500 price range on SDHC?

Let me first say that I have not had any hands on with this camera and so the following statements are impressions but are not grounded with personal experience. I spent the last couple days looking at reviews on this product and I am a little underwhelmed with it for my needs. It does look like an awesome cam. The best review (IMHO) was at this link http://www.thedvshow.com/first-look-...-jvc-gy-hm100/ and here in the forums. It is a strong entry into the XDCAM market especially if you are a FCP user. Obviously to deliver XDCAM at the $3500-$4000 price point some sacrifices had to be made. From what I can tell, the sacrifices were made in the glass and chips. Like the HD1000U, it only has one ring on the lens, and it has smaller sensors than the SONY XDCAM EX cameras. The XLR inputs are nice but it looks like the inputs are a hard-mounted adapter that plugs into the camera via a mini plug would be a little hesitant there too. Don't get me wrong it has some really nice capabilities but i would be a little hesitant to make it my a-roll. I also wonder about battery life given the cam is CCD based.

For me, I am heavily invested in the Sony line of cams and the FX1000/Z5U would mesh nicely with my batteries chargers and other equip and make a nice lead to my HD1000U. Keeping within the same brand is always a good idea when possible. My hope at this point is really to run this year with HD1000U as b-roll and Z5u as lead cam. Save and sell my HDV kit next year and replace with 2 ex cams.

I would imagine the JVC offering would complement well with someone who is shooting JVC HDV already, especially if there are shooting the 200 or 250 versions since they can do 1080...but for me it would mean investing in 2 of them and a boatload of new accessories. So that is my thoughts on this cam for my needs.

[Philip Gioja]

I did use the silver ones one time, but I actually decided to go with the white - not sure why, I guess I just felt that the colors stood out better or something. I haven't found a Blu-Ray disc yet with that, but I would guess TDK either already does or will, since they did for their DVD-Rs.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Originally Posted by Philip Gioja

Bryan, I was discussing media with a client of mine and he did a little searching for me.

I also use Taiyo Yuden Watershield DVD's and the BD disc's mentioned still does not offer watersheild technology, there is no way I can deliver a product to a client if it does not offer this. As for my acceptable price range, I have no limit as the customer ultimately pays, I would personally like to see 30-40% price reductions before I switch. I invested a lot of money into DVD back in the day and prices plummeted a year after, I'm waiting for that and it will happen pretty soon, early adopters always pay for the development of technology, not to mention slow speeds.

When I can buy Watershield or Thermal BD disc's locally I'll go right ahead. I'm giving Blu-Ray till end off this year to mature after that I'll be forced to invest no matter the cost.

[Joel Peregrine]

Very sage advice. Thats been said before but not quite so well.

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

I think the answer of HD delivery is going to be different for everyone. I firmly believe it's bad business to just "give away" the technology. If you build the extra costs into your packages, then that's great, but if you're throwing it in as a freebie then I think that's probably a bad idea and just sets a bad precedent. Half the problem in our industry is we have newbies popping up all the time who give practically everything away, and it stunts the growth of the industry. It also conditions brides to think that many things aren't of high value, since so many of the upstarts are just giving those things away.

When I first started out, I mostly charged for what I provided. I made mistakes, though, like anyone else. One of the first of these was in travel. I didn't charge a penny for travel. I thought it was a great idea to get a leg up on my competition. The trouble is, when you start doing destination weddings and you aren't charging for travel, you're losing money. I might have booked more destination weddings than my competition, but I wasn't making as much as I needed to since I was spending so much money on travel. I would have been better off just booking local weddings and turning a better profit.

So whether or not you decide to offer an HD solution, I would encourage everyone to look at how you offer it carefully. Avoid the temptation to just give it away for free, because that only hurts your own business and the rest of the industry.

As for me, I switched to HD this past year, fully expecting to have some interest from couples. More than 6 months later and I haven't had a single couple interested in HD. In fact, roughly 50-75% of the couples I meet with don't even own an HDTV. That absolutely shocked me. So make sure you know your market when you're making this decision.