So how profitable has it been for BDA?

[Chaka]

The Hollywood reporter article stated that Toshiba's loss for each player sold is in the several hundreds of dollars.

Has BDA made a profit yet with all the incentives they gave out and the cost of winning this format war?

I still question how profitable it is right now for the studios to release some titles in blu-ray or hd-dvd for that matter with the consumer market the way it is currently. It was enlightening to watch the restoration process for Bladerunner and to see how much effort and time was put into that release. I know that majority of the catalog titles don't come near that kind of work but someone has to encode and remaster majority of what comes out right? Having worked in retail while going to school I know that with some of these prices the distributers are the ones eating the promo prices to offer bogos. Are we in for a major price hike to come or are they gambling on the fact there will just be more adopters to share in the cost of producing? Even with the HD-dvd buyers turning to Blu-ray is that enough?

[Iron Man]

Originally Posted by Chaka

Has BDA made a profit yet with all the incentives they gave out and the cost of winning this format war?

Blu-ray is not a short-term investment. They will make money from it eventually.

[Clark Kent]

Major studios don't break even on a BD title unless it sells 10,000 to 20,000 copies. They are making money on the big sellers but lots of catalog titles aren't really paying for themselves. The BD player manufacturers are selling things at slightly above cost. For them BD was always a more attractive platform. Who could compete with Toshiba selling below actual cost. Of course this analysis changes when BD becomes a mass market and replaces dvd.

[LordGamer]

Originally Posted by Iron Man

Blu-ray is not a short-term investment. They will make money from it eventually.

Agreed.

Blu-ray (while it won't be the successor to DVD) is a long-term plan. At the moment, I highly doubt the Blu industry as a whole, is making much of a profit.

Which is in part, why I wouldn't have a problem with studio titles raising slightly or hardware stabilizing (around $300).

[Neo65]

Blade Runner as part of Warner's archive is a valuable title for lots of reasons. The reason why they spend so much on the restoration is that they see that it will likely continue to sell as BD continues selling.

Noone believes that they can make that money back in a couple of months, and that's not why they did it. I'm actually very happy that studios like Warner treat their best movies with that amount of respect.

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by Chaka

The Hollywood reporter article stated that Toshiba's loss for each player sold is in the several hundreds of dollars.

Has BDA made a profit yet with all the incentives they gave out and the cost of winning this format war?

Since the BDA is a standards and licensing group and not a corporation, I'd say, NO... they haven't made any money and never will (membership dues, etc, aside).

As for the individual CE companies and movie studios, it really depends on how you want to define "profit." Blu-ray players sell for more than their cost to manufacture... so, in theory they turn a profit. However, there was substantial R&D costs that went into the development of the format. But you can't easily quantify those costs, as much of the research led to multiple products, and the patents are held by multiple companies. Also, they haven't finalized the patent portfolio yet, so the companies aren't really sure what they'll end up owing for the players already produced. But, player prices aren't ridiculously subsidized like Toshiba's are... so, sure, they make a profit.

From a studio perspective, it's equally difficult to define. The discs sell for more than the replication cost, so again, they're technically profitable. However, sunk costs involving mastering for Blu-ray have to be recouped... and older titles may require substantial restoration work to produce an acceptable looking master. Once all of that is factored in, then low volume titles haven't been profitable... but, the discs don't "go bad," so many will become profitable as the format expands its userbase.

Keep in mind, though, that for the studios the restoration work was likely going to be necessary anyway to produce a new DVD (or an HD master for broadcast, etc)... so "charging" all of those costs against Blu-ray's bottom line doesn't produce a fair figure.

[Anthony P]

You are mixing some stuff together.

1) Yes Toshiba has been losing money on each player sold. But BD players are higher in price and I think they have been making money on each player sold.

2) Once we get past the simple player equation, you have the full cost issue. It takes a lot of money up front to create a format and more money to make a player. A format will never make the R&D back in a couple of years. As for players, that is more dificult to say, but I am guessing that the first few models did not

3) movies, replication is very low compared to sales and wholesale price. In that sense BD or HD DVD the studios are making a lot. With DVD a movie will sell many copies so replication is the major cost. But HDM is an emerging market and so taking the movie, restoring it, scanning it, getting everything read and creating the replication master tends to be a big relative cost at this time. What I mean is that let’s say a movie costs 300k in fix cost, if you make and sell 1k movies then it costs you 300$/movie, if you sell 3M it becomes 10 cents. So some movies make some money while other are losing.