Home Media Magazine - April 13-19, 2008 - (Page 40) NEWS By Erik Gruenwedel nline offerings, not brick-and-mortar stores, will spearhead the rental market by 2010, according to a new study. The report, by The Convergence Consulting Group Limited in Toronto, said 44% of movie rentals will originate from stores in 2010, compared to 71% in 2007. Online rental, including Netflix and Blockbuster Online, will generate 37% of revenue, up from 25% in 2007. Third-party rental kiosks will represent 11% of revenue, compared to 4% last year; online rental www.homemediamagazine.com Online to Lead Movie, TV Rental Business by 2010 O streams will generate 7% of revenue, compared to 1% in 2007. Convergence said Apple, Amazon, Blockbuster’s Web-based Movielink and Microsoft will spearhead rental streaming. It made no mention of Netflix’s PC-based streaming service. Electronic sellthrough, however, won’t prove as popular, the study said. The report said download-to-own sales of films and TV shows will increase 1% to 3% in 2010, from 2% in 2007. Indeed, the report said Apple sold 10,000 movie downloads in 2007, down from 13,000 in 2006. Convergence said Apple continued to have problems procuring content outside of Disney fare, which it said represented 60% of all Apple movies sold. The report said for movie sales, packaged media still trumped online by a landslide. “DVD sales, with their high margin split (80-to-20), are the largest single source of operating income for the studios. Hence there is little incentive to disrupt the traditional distribution channel,” the report said. Convergence president Brahm Eiley said on- going tests with studios and cable companies analyzing same-day movie releases with videoon-demand (VOD) will become more significant with greater title selections. He said cable VOD would supplant all other rental by 2010. “We believe that if Comcast and other cable companies are able to obtain more movies in the day-and-date window, then cable will see a big improvement in VOD take-rates and revenue,” Eiley said. “Although cable pays higher splits for day-and-date to the studios, it will be worth it for them.” HD Bloggers Talk About Blu Continued from page 1 BD Live) upgradable, more studios are testing the limits of bonus features. HD DVD from the start had the ability to connect users to the Internet, download new content and connect with other users. Blu-ray is just getting started. “The rush to compete with HD DVD brought Blu-ray to market more quickly than it would otherwise have been released, and thus with fewer than all possible capabilities out of the gate,” said HollywoodinHiDef.com’s Scott Hettrick. He added that not worrying about Web-enabled features let Blu-ray producers refine pop-up menus and picture-inpicture capabilities. Xiao Fang, webmaster of Digital-Digest.com, agreed, saying most of his readers weren’t focused on Web features at first. “I have to say that from a survey of Blu-ray and HD DVD owners, the title which they felt represented the best in terms of presentation and special features has been the Blade Runner five-disc collector’s edition, which featured multiple versions of the movie, including a rare workprint version,” he said. But now that BD Live is becoming more of a standard, studios are being more bold with their bonuses. “A good example of this was the ‘Alien vs. Predator vs. You’ demonstration that Fox showed at this year’s [Consumer Electronics Show],” said Andy Parsons, SVP of product planning for the home entertainment group at Pioneer Electronics and marketing director of the Blu-ray Disc Association. The feature lets two BD Live players anywhere in the world play a game superimposed on top of the film “In fact you will find many HD DVD editions of movies available in both formats to be superior in terms of interactivity — Harry Potter and the as it runs on both players. Lionsgate also has rolled out its Order of the Phoenix, for example. Movie Blog feature (MoLog) on Blu- BD Live is now here, so studios have ray Discs, letting viewers chat with much more freedom to work with, each other about the movie during and might have to re-release certain or after the film. Sony Pictures’ titles with enhanced features.” But for all the bonus features on BD, April 8 BD releases Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and The 6th Day both the film is the main thing consumers want, high-def experts agreed. include downloadable content. “I don’t think [bonus feaHarry Potter tures] help motivate people and the Order of the Phoenix to upgrade to Blu-ray, but I do think it’ll help them decide to buy a movie instead of rent,” said Ben Drawbaugh, a high-def reporter for Engadget.com. “This is the exciting part about Web content: It holds the promise of adding more value to a title down the road.” Van Ling, a freelance DVD and BluBut Bill Hunt, editor of TheDigitalBits.com, said the studios should ray producer and visual effects sulook beyond what HD DVD started. pervisor who worked on the Blu-ray “My fear is that all the new interac- special features for Independence Day, tive capabilities on Blu-ray are going said the industry is still learning about to tend to be used simply as window- the possibilities of the format. “There are so many cool ideas being dressing, but they’re not really going to add anything of value,” Hunt said. tried with Blu-ray right now, and no “I’d like to see new ways to interact single feature has made me say, ‘Stop with the content, more immersion, the presses, that’s it!’ It’s more along etc. I don’t want screensavers and U- the lines of, ‘Wow, if you were to take Store links. I liked what Bandai tried the underlying concept of that special to do with Freedom Vol. 1, for example. feature and apply it to this other idea,’” Being able to download new subtitle he said. For all the features Blu-ray owners sets, new trailers and menu schemes. find on their discs, it may pale in That’s potentially very cool.” Hunt said studios might be hard- comparison to what’s down the road. pressed to convince consumers to What’s coming after the “Telestrator” replace DVDs with Blu-rays, based commentary on Men in Black and the on special features. But Fang thinks “living menus” on Sleeping Beauty? “When the studios turn their crestudios may take a second shot at titles ative people loose with powerful new they released on high-def already. “We have heard from studios that features, they will almost certainly they have so far been limited to develop something very cool that what they can produce on Blu-ray as even the format’s designers did not compared to HD DVD,” Fang said. imagine,” Parsons said. BD Touch to Enhance BD Live Continued from page 1 Blu-ray movie, including bonus features, GPS tracking, trivia and games. BD Touch allows for the transfer of video, audio, text and player commands to an iPhone or iPod. The technology also allows playback of a digital copy of a Blu-ray movie on the portable devices. Some studios have included digital files on select DVDs. Lionsgate May 27 will include a digital file with the Blu-ray and DVD releases of Rambo, which is playable on an iPod. The first Blu-ray Disc with a digital copy was Hitman, released March 11 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. In January, Fox became the first studio to include an iTunescompatible digital copy with the Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest DVD. The studio said it will include digital copies on all future special-edition DVDs. Sony Pictures, which last week bowed its first Blu-ray title with BD Live, is said to be working on a digital file for playback on the PS3. Denny Breitenfeld, chief technology officer with NetBlender, said the company isn’t of- ficially working with Apple but that it is working within the user and license agreements Apple established for third-party vendors. He said the technology was separate from what Sony was developing. Breitenfeld said BD Touch also has been incorporated in the company’s commercially available Blu-ray Disc authoring software, DoStudio. Richard Doherty, media analyst with The Envisioneering Group, said the concept has great market potential once the Blu-ray Disc Association and studios come aboard. “I’m not aware of there being a managed copy of a BD movie available anywhere,” he said. Doherty said the idea makes sense in a mobile society. “Convenience, not content, is king right now,” Doherty said. “If you were an American Airlines passenger this week, you had lots of time — at the airport.” A Blu-ray Disc Association representative was not available for comment by press time. L A T E FL A SH ES I RETAILERS GET FINED Federal regulators imposed fines totaling $3.3 million against several major retailers and two TV manufacturers for selling TV units that will not function when broadcasters switch from analog to digital transmissions. The Federal Communications Commission said retailers Wal-Mart Stores, Sears Holding Corp., Circuit City Stores, Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. failed to properly mark analog TVs with consumer warnings. I GREENWALD GETS $785K Image Entertainment founder Martin Greenwald, who announced his retirement as president and CEO April 1, will receive $785,000 in salary, health care, personal and car expenses over the next 12 months, the distributor said in a regulatory filing. Greenwald is continuing as chairman of the board. I HDTV HOMES NEAR 44M Declining prices for HDTVs and digital set-top boxes, including digital video recorders, will contribute to nearly 44 million homes having HDTVs by the end of the year, according to a report from Informa – Erik Gruenwedel Telecoms & Media. I IMAGE INKS JAGUAR Image Entertainment signed a two-year agreement with Jaguar Distribution Corp. for in-flight and maritime industries. HOME MEDIA MAGAZINE (ISSN 1934-9882) is published weekly 51 times per year (weekly except for one week at the end of December) by Questex Media Group, Inc., 306 West Michigan Street, Suite 200, Duluth, MN 55802. Subscription rates: $49.99 for one year in the United States and Poss http://www.homemediamagazine.com http://HollywoodinHiDef.com http://HollywoodinHiDef.com http://www.engadget.com http://www.engadget.com
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