What are the costs of releasing a Blu-ray (compared to DVD)? - Blu-ray Forum

VarHyid · 01-11-2020, 12:55 PM

I hope someone here has some insight in the industry to shed some light on the costs of releasing something on Blu-ray vs DVD. To be clear, I'm talking about a situation where the content is already fully mastered in HD incl. all special effects etc.

The reason I'm asking is because multiple times I've been in a situation where something I was looking for wasn't available on Blu-ray even though I know for a fact that it exists in HD.

One such example would be the second season of "Stargate Universe". Recently during the whole Black Friday and other holiday sales, I finally decided to buy all the Stargate shows. SG-1 is only on DVD and it's unlikely that'll change - fine. Stargate Atlantis in on Blu-ray - good. Stargate Universe, well... kind of. There were two seasons and only the first one is on Blu-ray. IMO this is ridiculous. I understand that the show didn't make a lot of money, but how much would it cost them to release it on Blu-ray since it already aired in HD?

Another example would be an older show called "Numb3rs". I loved it, wanted to buy it recently and it turns out it's only available on DVD... yet it's available in HD on the US iTunes Store so an HD copy exists. Any costs associated with preparing it in HD are already spent so now it only comes down to just authoring the content for the disc and physically printing it on the disc. Is this really so expensive that the studios would only "risk" it if it sells millions of copies?

Swtws6 · 01-13-2020, 02:12 PM

I dont know the exact answer to your question and Ive also thought it through myself, I would assume, even though the content exists in HD digital form, the cost of having it produced onto a disc format, with the cover artwork, packaging etc.....there is probably a minimum # of discs they need to fullfill an order, at least to keep costs down, and they have to analyse what is the potential market for peopl to buy these discs in physical format. Will we sell 100K of them, 1 million of them? only 10K of them? If its an obscure show or movie and has a limited market, there might be no upside to actually producing the physical disc, as it would actually lose money in some cases. Where as releasing it didgitally has nearly literally zero overhead costs. Just probably some royalties to pay to whatever platform carries it. SO it doesnt really matter how many times its sold digitally, it makes some money no matter what each time.

01-11-2020, 12:55 PM	#1
VarHyid Member Member since:Aug 2010 Blu-ray collection:1	What are the costs of releasing a Blu-ray (compared to DVD)? I hope someone here has some insight in the industry to shed some light on the costs of releasing something on Blu-ray vs DVD. To be clear, I'm talking about a situation where the content is already fully mastered in HD incl. all special effects etc. The reason I'm asking is because multiple times I've been in a situation where something I was looking for wasn't available on Blu-ray even though I know for a fact that it exists in HD. One such example would be the second season of "Stargate Universe". Recently during the whole Black Friday and other holiday sales, I finally decided to buy all the Stargate shows. SG-1 is only on DVD and it's unlikely that'll change - fine. Stargate Atlantis in on Blu-ray - good. Stargate Universe, well... kind of. There were two seasons and only the first one is on Blu-ray. IMO this is ridiculous. I understand that the show didn't make a lot of money, but how much would it cost them to release it on Blu-ray since it already aired in HD? Another example would be an older show called "Numb3rs". I loved it, wanted to buy it recently and it turns out it's only available on DVD... yet it's available in HD on the US iTunes Store so an HD copy exists. Any costs associated with preparing it in HD are already spent so now it only comes down to just authoring the content for the disc and physically printing it on the disc. Is this really so expensive that the studios would only "risk" it if it sells millions of copies?

01-13-2020, 02:12 PM	#2
Swtws6 New Member Member since:Jan 2020 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:443 DVD collection:156	I dont know the exact answer to your question and Ive also thought it through myself, I would assume, even though the content exists in HD digital form, the cost of having it produced onto a disc format, with the cover artwork, packaging etc.....there is probably a minimum # of discs they need to fullfill an order, at least to keep costs down, and they have to analyse what is the potential market for peopl to buy these discs in physical format. Will we sell 100K of them, 1 million of them? only 10K of them? If its an obscure show or movie and has a limited market, there might be no upside to actually producing the physical disc, as it would actually lose money in some cases. Where as releasing it didgitally has nearly literally zero overhead costs. Just probably some royalties to pay to whatever platform carries it. SO it doesnt really matter how many times its sold digitally, it makes some money no matter what each time.

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