HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray
What is to be the future format for watching movies?
As I'm sure you must have not heard by now... The HD war is over, and the winner is Blu-Ray!
Hmmm the bad thing is nobody cared...
And that got me thinking into the future for distribution, obviously being an independent filmmaker I'm affected by this.
Well let's quickly talk about the past and the present state of distributing feature films.
Ever since its introduction the feature film has been enjoyed the most at a movie theatre. It is easy to get sucked into a great story told by a huge screen and loud speakers...
A movie could last months or even years in theatres... No one could take the movies home, so it was natural that movies would last for months in theatres...
Later on with the advent of Home Video (VHS) Hollywood became very nervous of this newfound technology. They thought people would never go to the movies again.
Video rental stores devoured the film business, but later found out people still went to see the latest movies... And that was only because for a movie to come out on VHS, you would have to wait more than 8 months to even a year until it came out for rental (and forget about buying a film, since it would cost 80 to 100 dollars to purchase a VHS copy!)
DVD came along and shook the film business again, only this time it was for the better, economically at least.
Almost 80% of Hollywood's profits are from DVD's today. For a big budget movie that is only going to stay at the local theatre for two months (at the most) it will barely break even... After the 2 months they would release the film on DVD and really rake in the profits.
You see DVD's are cheap to produce and now people could buy their favorite film on high quality AND receive bonus features for a super low bargain prices (there are DVD's at the dollar store!!!).
So everyone wins...
So along comes Blu-Ray HD, and is promising to replace the DVD... Don't get me wrong, the quality is jawdropping, but I am not paying 30-40 bucks for quality...
I honestly think that Blu-Ray is not competing against HD-DVD, it's real competitor will be online download video rentals and purchase sites... (iTunes, Jaman, are great examples)
With the advent of high-quality screens on phones such as the iPhone, the new nokia phones, and other smartphones this will also be an important factor in the consumption of media...
These next 2 years will be very interesting to see where everything is going...
Staying Independent
It is very exciting to see this as an independent filmmaker because of the wealth of opportunities this creates.
I can't wait for the revolution...
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References:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/16/toshiba-pulling-the-plug-on-hd-dvd-already/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/15/wal-mart-to-officially-discontinue-hd-dvd-sales-by-june/
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