Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

And that's the last I'll say on this particular thread. I think the reason why I make no sense to you is because you have no experience in the media business (or any corporate business for that matter) and have no idea how it actually works. Perhaps you've never heard of "return on investment" or "shareholder value". And obviously, I'm incapable of convincing you of anything. Which either makes me an idiot or you a fanboy. Time will tell which one of those it is. (And just to be clear, let me redundantly state again that I'm actually a big fan of Blu-ray and hope it survives.)

I don't have a lot of time to post/read, but I would like to leave a couple of quick comments.

1. Even without knowing what your experience is, I am fairly certain that you don't have the type of experience I have in the film distribution business - and a lot of the points you argue really make little sense to me.

2. The market isn't going to shift in the direction you believe it will because the type of revenue that supports OD distribution (through licensing on the international markets) will take years to match by EST. And I don't mean 5-10 years. As I mentioned earlier, an-all virtual market isn't going to happen in my lifetime

3. Facts - the future of Blu-ray is most definitely not in danger because of a mid-term 10.75% growth in comparison to last year. You insist that you read properly and understand the market, but your comments here suggest otherwise. Fact for you: cumulative sale performance amongst the majors isn't analyzed until well into the Q3. In other words, book this post and let's talk numbers again in Q1 of 2012. Agreed?

4. Catalog sales are not small - it is a "they could always be better" situation. But this is the status quo for a lot of businesses in this economy, excluding a few major corporations.

5. If catalog sales were so poor, as you insinuate, then we would not see this influx of new, small/independent studios transitioning to Blu-ray.

Pro-B

p.s. Comments about accuracy - my statement was indeed accurate. Some interpretations of the lingo by other people were not. Simple.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

OK, I'm the one who usually says that people should stop posting personal opinions and anecdotal data as facts and perform some business analysis, so I accept your criticism.

But as far as TV vs. YouTube, it's not a matter of individual shows - it's a matter of how much YouTube viewing there is overall vs. how much HD viewing and I'm not seeing/hearing anything that tells me that people care about the quality of YouTube video.

As of May 2010, YouTube garnered over 2 billion views a day and had nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. networks combined. The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube (which admittedly is far less than average TV watching time, which is about 4.5 hours in the U.S.). As of that date, the most popular video on YouTube, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" was played 185 million times, which far exceeds views for any broadcast or cable network show in their original media.

And as far as Pads are concerned, according to the NPD Entertainment Trends report, 26 million BD players have been sold in the U.S. after five years. Apple sold 25 million iPads (probably a worldwide stat) in the first 14 months. By now, more iPads have been sold than BD players and that's only counting Apple's version. I can't prove what percentage of iPad users are watching videos/movies and I can't prove what percentage of those are happy/not happy with the video quality, but if one peruses the Apple forums and rumor sites, where people are just as likely to complain as they are here, I'm not seeing any groundswell of opinion that the video quality of iPads (or smartphones for that matter) is poor in the general public's mind.

A definite step in the right direction.

Taking your stats at face value, network TV use outstrips YouTube by 18 to 1. (4.5 vs 0.25 hours per person daily). Network TV audiences have been mostly stagnant for awhile; I wonder what are YouTube's prospects for growing its usage, and esp. whether, as people watch more YouTube (if indeed they will), they'll watch correspondingly less network TV. Or will the viewing time be stolen from other pursuits such as talking on the phone, reading, watching kids grow up? That's the real question, whether the comparison is meaningful -- whether YouTube is genuinely competing with network TV for its audience's viewing time.

I appreciate your candour re: conceding that the claims about iPads vs BD players are conjectural and anecotal. FWIW my intuition is that these lie in utterly incomparable product categories, notwithstanding the fact that both can output high-def video. A better comparison would have been Apple TV and Google TV vs. BD players. But both of the former have tanked.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

1. Even without knowing what your experience is, I am fairly certain that you don't have the type of experience I have in the film distribution business - and a lot of the points you argue really make little sense to me.

Ad hominem (a fallacy).

[ole geezer]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

I don't have a lot of time to post/read, but I would like to leave a couple of quick comments.

1. Even without knowing what your experience is, I am fairly certain that you don't have the type of experience I have in the film distribution business - and a lot of the points you argue really make little sense to me.

2. The market isn't going to shift in the direction you believe it will because the type of revenue that supports OD distribution (through licensing on the international markets) will take years to match by EST. And I don't mean 5-10 years. As I mentioned earlier, an-all virtual market isn't going to happen in my lifetime

3. Facts - the future of Blu-ray is most definitely not in danger because of a mid-term 10.75% growth in comparison to last year. You insist that you read properly and understand the market, but your comments here suggest otherwise. Fact for you: cumulative sale performance amongst the majors isn't analyzed until well into the Q3. In other words, book this post and let's talk numbers again in Q1 of 2012. Agreed?

4. Catalog sales are not small - it is a "they could always be better" situation. But this is the status quo for a lot of businesses in this economy, excluding a few major corporations.

5. If catalog sales were so poor, as you insinuate, then we would not see this influx of new, small/independent studios transitioning to Blu-ray.

Pro-B

p.s. Comments about accuracy - my statement was indeed accurate. Some interpretations of the lingo by other people were not. Simple.

Well now, with your experience in film distribution, maybe you're the perfect person to ask this question of.

Why would a studio sign over the exclusive distribution rights to a retailer like Walmart on a film such as The Big Country as opposed to a general release???

To a layman such as myself, this smacks of resigning oneself to getting the most revenue you can get from a catalog title which if released on a general basis, would probably do very poorly.

I think this kind of business arrangement will be happening more and more. And if the studio is simply trying to squeeze a few more drops of revenue with exclusive deals like this (what do you suppose Walmart paid for this privelige?), I think, sales of BR catalogs has reached a whole new level of desperation, imo.

[DetroitSportsFan]

Originally Posted by partridge

Blu-Ray needs to drop in price to match DVD prices.

Whats wrong with paying a little more for a premium product?

If you're patient and look for sales, you can pay DVD prices for BDs. Last week I bought newer titles Battle: LA ($13), True Grit ($10), and Drive Angry ($10) on sale.

You can't expect BDs to be priced like DVDs across the board until DVD is on it's last legs.

[Steedeel]

Exactly. It is like people who moan about trailers and forced ads before the bluray starts. So what? To watch a film in your own home that replicates cinema quality is well worth it. We are living in a sad time for home cinema when people prefer the likes of Netflix to a premium home theater experience. Personally, i will be watching blurays until i die, quality players permitting!

[FinalEvangelion]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Exactly. It is like people who moan about trailers and forced ads before the bluray starts. So what? To watch a film in your own home that replicates cinema quality is well worth it. We are living in a sad time for home cinema when people prefer the likes of Netflix to a premium home theater experience. Personally, i will be watching blurays until i die, quality players permitting!

It's more like people want to watch youtube quality, highly compressed, and upconverted stuff on their ultra expensive home theater systems because they think they are supporting a Sony proprietary format by buying Blu-ray.

[Steedeel]

i hope all the big boys do tighten their grip down the line. Streaming is a backwards technology. So what if there is loads of choice. The quality is so bad it makes it irrelevant in my opinion. Also i couldn't care less who makes a product if that product happens to be of such high quality that i can watch superb, crisp, sharp, beautifully detailed images. There will come a point when these streaming companies will have to hike their prices, it can't come soon enough for my liking.

[krazeyeyez]

Originally Posted by FinalEvangelion

It's more like people want to watch youtube quality, highly compressed, and upconverted stuff on their ultra expensive home theater systems because they think they are supporting a Sony proprietary format by buying Blu-ray.

That may be true of a small handful of remaining "red" holdouts... but the general public is not worried about "proprietary formats" or evil sony. In fact the reasons why someone would choose netflix instead of or in addition to blu-ray is very rational imo. Cost, convenience etc...

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

But I'm also realistic about Blu-ray's prospects, I've been in the industry for decades and I understand business analysis.

but you are not realistic and you don't do any real analysis you just harp on what you believe are negative numbers

People talk about the supposed success of BD without backing up their comments with sales figures. The FACTS are that through 5/28/11, BD is only 10.75% ahead of last year to date and only has a 20.3% share of physical media.

I don't know where you get your numbers from, but

It's also a very hit-driven business with the fifth best-selling title typically selling only 6-10% of the top title in any week and the 20th best-selling title selling only 2-3% of the #1 title. That's not good enough performance and does place the future of BD in danger.

this shows you don't understand anything. Like you say BD is hit driven, but if you looked you will see the exact same is true for DVd and any movie. That makes it different then the music business that you said you worked in. With movies they are advertised before they hit the market, then they are in theatre for a few weeks months, then they are advertised "soon on BD and DVD" and everyone and their dog knows if they want it fast and run out and buy them when they come out. In contrast with music, unless you read music centric sites you don't know what new stuff will be out that week and usually if you go to the store to buy something particular it is because you just happened to hear it on the radio or a friends or something and that can be when it was released or a week later or a month or a year later. The other difference is that if I am at the store (real or on-line like i-tunes), and I want to know if XXXX has something I don't own, I go to his name and see what there is and I decide to buy or not. With movies that does not exist, I can't go and see what did XXXX direct or YYYY acted in or ZZZZ wrote the screen play for, so unless someone is looking for a specific title people look at new arrivals or garbage bin. It will just take too long to go through all the movies available to pick a few to buy.

Now why do I bring this up? well you are assuming that BDs growth this year is not big enough, but look at what has come out. You admit titles make sales and good titles mean big numbers and bad titles low numbers but you fail to take that variable in your analysis, last year there where a lot of good movies that came out including the largest grossing movie of all time, while this year there where no good movies.


Since you realize that it is the top individual titles that drive sales, why don't you look at that and you will see that last year around this time BD was getting close to 50%, while now titles routinely surpass that and sometimes by a lot.

BD has to have broad-based sales and have catalog titles that sell healthily, otherwise the studios will lose interest and move on to something else that has greater returns. People on here always complain about some great classic title that hasn't been released on BD yet. But the reason why is that if the studios don't think it's going to be a top-5 title, the sales are so small, it's frequently not worth the bother as compared with other efforts.

no, the reason is that movies have a shelf life, the person that is willing to pay full price for a particular movie will buy it when it comes out, if he did not think it was worth paying full price then he will wait until it is on special or in the garbage bin. Let's say Joe goes to the store and there are 100 catalogue movies released that week, maybe he will buy 1 or 2 or 3 or even 4 but the guy probably can't buy all 100 even if they are worth getting. So what happens. The next time he is in the store he does not look at the rest of the 100 he looks at the new ones for that week, so now the other 90+ will remain until they are in the garbage bin and then the guy might get a few more, but instead of let's say 20$ the title will sell for 5$ and that is not good for the studio.

It also misses that it takes time and money and personnel to make a BD master, replicator lines to replicate it and shelf space to display it, it would be way too expensive for studios to dump titles (i.e. make 100 available for that week like the example above). With many 10's of thousands of movies it just makes sense that not all of them would be on BD already, and so there will be lists that we all hope

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by ole geezer

Well now, with your experience in film distribution, maybe you're the perfect person to ask this question of.

Why would a studio sign over the exclusive distribution rights to a retailer like Walmart on a film such as The Big Country as opposed to a general release???

To a layman such as myself, this smacks of resigning oneself to getting the most revenue you can get from a catalog title which if released on a general basis, would probably do very poorly.

I think this kind of business arrangement will be happening more and more. And if the studio is simply trying to squeeze a few more drops of revenue with exclusive deals like this (what do you suppose Walmart paid for this privelige?), I think, sales of BR catalogs has reached a whole new level of desperation, imo.

1. First of all, deep catalog is not negotiated/sold per title -- this was the case some 17-18 years ago -- and the same practice is still in place at least as far as the majors are concerned.

2. Catalog sales have improved, which is why you are seeing a wider variety of deeper catalog. If the opposite was true, as you claim, then you would have witnessed gradual decrease of catalog offerings. Thus far, there has been a proportional increase of catalog offerings in comparison to last year - plus an influx of smaller labels also entering the market.

3. This scenario that you are describing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If catalog isn't selling, why would a retailer repeatedly pay for exclusivity windows? Why are you viewing the market only from the content owner's point of view? And again, why would a content owner continue to release and increase deep catalog offerings if catalog product isn't selling?

4. Exclusivity - The big exclusivity deals have been a common practice in many European markets for years. The likes of FNAC, which rivals many of the big box stores and is as influential as far as media is concerned in France and Spain, for instance, had them for years. Only in recent years the U.S. market started seeing this practice grow, after the restructuring of various major studios (MGM, Lionsgate) and the content licensing the majors have started allowing (Image, Lionsgate, etc).

Pro-B

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Teazle

Ad hominem (a fallacy).

No it is not (though this is one of closest to the correct usage of the term I have seen on on-line forums and shows you know what it means), since the guy made a call to authority, (i.e. said that his experience makes him an authority on the subject) it is perfectly valid to question what he knows of the industry. Ad hominem is a fallacy if the characteristic of the OP is unrelated to the argument they made. Plus saying “fallacy” is meaningless, a fallacy means that it can’t help us reach an intelligent conclusion, it does not invalidate what the person said.

For example

(these don’t represent my beliefs and are just for illustration purposes)

P1: I am against gay marriage because God does not like gays

P2: You just think that because you are (______ enter the religion of P1 here____)

Since P1 brought his religion (God) as the argument P2 did not make an ad Hominem

P1: since a baby can be born a few days early and survive and a premi of a few weeks/months early can live with assistance, it is hard to determine the exact point where it is a useless embryo and a functioning human being. If society and laws protect humans then abortion should not be allowed.

P2: You just think that because you are (______ enter the religion of P1 here____)


Since P1’s argument had nothing to do with his religion, to counter his argument with his religion is an ad hominem. Yes, maybe his religion influenced the stand he took, but it is not the point he made.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ole geezer

Well now, with your experience in film distribution, maybe you're the perfect person to ask this question of.

Why would a studio sign over the exclusive distribution rights to a retailer like Walmart on a film such as The Big Country as opposed to a general release???

To a layman such as myself, this smacks of resigning oneself to getting the most revenue you can get from a catalog title which if released on a general basis, would probably do very poorly.

I think this kind of business arrangement will be happening more and more. And if the studio is simply trying to squeeze a few more drops of revenue with exclusive deals like this (what do you suppose Walmart paid for this privelige?), I think, sales of BR catalogs has reached a whole new level of desperation, imo.

this makes no sense, retailers pay for exclusives (be it packaging, extras or movies), if they did not believe it would drive people to their stores and they can sell enough to make it worth it then why would they do it?

It is the same reason there are so many 3D exclusives with manufacturers. The 3D equipment manufacturer and store think this will make you buy from them and then they will make more $$ from it.

[ole geezer]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

2. Catalog sales have improved, which is why you are seeing a wider variety of deeper catalog. If the opposite was true, as you claim, then you would have witnessed gradual decrease of catalog offerings. Thus far, there has been a proportional increase of catalog offerings in comparison to last year - plus an influx of smaller labels also entering the market.

3. This scenario that you are describing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If catalog isn't selling, why would a retailer repeatedly pay for exclusivity windows? Why are you viewing the market only from the content owner's point of view? And again, why would a content owner continue to release and increase deep catalog offerings if catalog product isn't selling?

4. Exclusivity - The big exclusivity deals have been a common practice in many European markets for years. The likes of FNAC, which rivals many of the big box stores and is as influential as far as media is concerned in France and Spain, for instance, had them for years. Only in recent years the U.S. market started seeing this practice grow, after the restructuring of various major studios (MGM, Lionsgate) and the content licensing the majors have started allowing (Image, Lionsgate, etc).

Pro-B

Exclusivity. Yes, as in what's currently happening with popular Blu ray 3D titles and I understand the reasoning behind it...accept big bucks from the 3D equipment manufacturers for exclusive distribution rights simply because there's not enough 3D equipment out there to make a general release worthwhile for the studio.

The highlighted questions are what I asked you....you're the one supposedly with a film distribution background and all I get from you is fan boy BS. With more than 20 million BR players out there, these retail exclusive packages make no sense at this point in time...UNLESS, sales from catalogs are so bad that the studios feel they have no other option available to them other than accepting whatever small fee they can get from some retailers. I mean...think about it. I bought The Big Country for $12 (title and postage). It's really cheap and I'm having it sent to my address without ever having visited Walmart. What's the deal here???

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

but you are not realistic and you don't do any real analysis you just harp on what you believe are negative numbers




I don't know where you get your numbers from, but

this shows you don't understand anything. Like you say BD is hit driven, but if you looked you will see the exact same is true for DVd and any movie. That makes it different then the music business that you said you worked in. With movies they are advertised before they hit the market, then they are in theatre for a few weeks months, then they are advertised "soon on BD and DVD" and everyone and their dog knows if they want it fast and run out and buy them when they come out. In contrast with music, unless you read music centric sites you don't know what new stuff will be out that week and usually if you go to the store to buy something particular it is because you just happened to hear it on the radio or a friends or something and that can be when it was released or a week later or a month or a year later. The other difference is that if I am at the store (real or on-line like i-tunes), and I want to know if XXXX has something I don't own, I go to his name and see what there is and I decide to buy or not. With movies that does not exist, I can't go and see what did XXXX direct or YYYY acted in or ZZZZ wrote the screen play for, so unless someone is looking for a specific title people look at new arrivals or garbage bin. It will just take too long to go through all the movies available to pick a few to buy.

Now why do I bring this up? well you are assuming that BDs growth this year is not big enough, but look at what has come out. You admit titles make sales and good titles mean big numbers and bad titles low numbers but you fail to take that variable in your analysis, last year there where a lot of good movies that came out including the largest grossing movie of all time, while this year there where no good movies.


Since you realize that it is the top individual titles that drive sales, why don't you look at that and you will see that last year around this time BD was getting close to 50%, while now titles routinely surpass that and sometimes by a lot.




no, the reason is that movies have a shelf life, the person that is willing to pay full price for a particular movie will buy it when it comes out, if he did not think it was worth paying full price then he will wait until it is on special or in the garbage bin. Let's say Joe goes to the store and there are 100 catalogue movies released that week, maybe he will buy 1 or 2 or 3 or even 4 but the guy probably can't buy all 100 even if they are worth getting. So what happens. The next time he is in the store he does not look at the rest of the 100 he looks at the new ones for that week, so now the other 90+ will remain until they are in the garbage bin and then the guy might get a few more, but instead of let's say 20$ the title will sell for 5$ and that is not good for the studio.

It also misses that it takes time and money and personnel to make a BD master, replicator lines to replicate it and shelf space to display it, it would be way too expensive for studios to dump titles (i.e. make 100 available for that week like the example above). With many 10's of thousands of movies it just makes sense that not all of them would be on BD already, and so there will be lists that we all hope

As I said in my last post, I'm not commenting on this anymore. I've provided actual numbers and sales growth rates - if you choose to ignore that or rationalize that just because you're a fanboy of the format, fine. Time will tell whether I'm correct or the BD fanboys are correct.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

As I said in my last post, I'm not commenting on this anymore. I've provided actual numbers and sales growth rates - if you choose to ignore that or rationalize that just because you're a fanboy of the format, fine. Time will tell whether I'm correct or the BD fanboys are correct.

cool, as long as I don't have to read your BS I am happy.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by ole geezer

The highlighted questions are what I asked you....you're the one supposedly with a film distribution background and all I get from you is fan boy BS. With more than 20 million BR players out there, these retail exclusive packages make no sense at this point in time...UNLESS, sales from catalogs are so bad that the studios feel they have no other option available to them other than accepting whatever small fee they can get from some retailers. I mean...think about it. I bought The Big Country for $12 (title and postage). It's really cheap and I'm having it sent to my address without ever having visited Walmart. What's the deal here???

I am afraid that you do not really understand, then, what I have described to you. If sales are so terribly low, which they are not*, the majors simply won't bother releasing at all. What is the point of investing into a product which, according to you, is misperforming so terribly - let alone investing into new HD transfers, as it is the case with The Big Country. A small exclusivity fee won't meet the production costs on a large batch of deep catalog titles spread out through various retailers.

Some fascinating logic there, which I really do not think I need to address anymore.


**Danny Kaye, Executive VP, Global Research & Technology Strategy at Twentieth Century Fox-UK:

TR: Is Blu-ray sales expectation where you think they should be at the moment?

DK: Sales are strong. Blu-ray sales are 20 per cent higher than DVD sales were four years after that format was introduced. By the end of 2011 over 159.3 million Blu-ray discs will have been sold in Western Europe with 83 million last year.

Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/video/...#ixzz1Q8AyvR00



Pro-B

[ole geezer]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

I am afraid that you do not really understand, then, what I have described to you. If sales are so terribly low, which they are not*, the majors simply won't bother releasing at all. What is the point of investing into a product which, according to you, is misperforming so terribly - let alone investing into new HD transfers, as it is the case with The Big Country. A small exclusivity fee won't meet the production costs on a large batch of deep catalog titles spread out through various retailers.

Some fascinating logic there, which I really do not think I need to address anymore.


**Danny Kaye, Executive VP, Global Research & Technology Strategy at Twentieth Century Fox-UK:

Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/video/...#ixzz1Q8AyvR00



Pro-B

Sooooo...you're implying studio was paid big bucks by Walmart for exclusive rights to a bunch of catalog titles so's Walmart could sell 'em for the clearance price of $10 a pop and have these titles available only on their web-site.

You're right. Some fascinating logic going on there.

[SlaughterX]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

i hope all the big boys do tighten their grip down the line. Streaming is a backwards technology. So what if there is loads of choice. The quality is so bad it makes it irrelevant in my opinion. Also i couldn't care less who makes a product if that product happens to be of such high quality that i can watch superb, crisp, sharp, beautifully detailed images. There will come a point when these streaming companies will have to hike their prices, it can't come soon enough for my liking.

There is a place for Netflix streaming just like there is a place for Blu-Ray. I personally love both. No, the picture or sound quality of Netflix HD streaming doesn't usually compare to a well mastered Blu-Ray disc, but to say that it doesn't look good (provided you have a good internet connection) would be lying, especially in the eyes of most people on their mid to low level HDTV. Not everyone wants to or can afford to have a large library of movies, and for those people Netflix is a good and practical choice. Hell, outside of Redbox there isn't a single video store in my town, and only one in a 20 mile radius.

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by ole geezer

Sooooo...you're implying studio was paid big bucks by Walmart for exclusive rights to a bunch of catalog titles so's Walmart could sell 'em for the clearance price of $10 a pop and have these titles available only on their web-site.

You're right. Some fascinating logic going on there.

No.

1. You wanted to know why would a studio sign exclusive distribution rights to a retailer like Walmart. The answer, which you had a difficult time understanding, is now confirmed by a clear quote - because Blu-ray sales are strong. In other words, exclusivity makes sense. Unfortunately, it does not to you.

2. Contrary to your speculations, there is a growing interest in Blu-ray catalog releases.

3. Contrary to your insistence, you do not seem to understand the reasoning behind it.

4. Contrary to your speculation that "these retail exclusive packages make no sense at this point in time", exclusivity packages do make sense. But I welcome any further speculations from you, backed by data/articles that disprove Mr. Kaye's statement, proving that you are right and he is wrong. As well as data/articles explaining why these exclusivity deals "do not make sense at this point in time".

5. And one last clarification, as quite obviously you are misinformed, the Walmart exclusivity deals are time sensitive. In other words, the titles won't be sold only on their web site. When the deals expire, they will be available elsewhere.

Pro-B