Blu-Ray & Indie Film Distribution, 4K Coming Soon

A conversation I had today with a filmmaker made me write this blog and it's a question I get asked a lot. Should we go to Blu-Ray & DVD or just DVD with our movie? Blu-Ray is a great format with awesome possibilities, but is a very tough market especially for the indie filmmaker. The manufacturing process to replicate Blu-Ray's in a factory is much more costly than DVD, because of the licensing fees and unlock codes you have to pay to the BDA (Blu-Ray Disc Association). Who's the BDA you ask? Mostly Sony I'm pretty sure...

So you've got much higher startup costs, currently around $2,500.00 per title, then you have the actual manufacturing costs. But it gets worse from there, because the bigger studios have been trying to push Blu-Ray on the consumers, they keep lowering the price of the discs to try and get people to splurge on the expensive HDTV setups. It's tough for an indie movie to enter the marketplace at $24.95, with virtually no advertising supporting them, and compete with a large studio release for $5.99 and national advertising. I was in Fry's a couple of weeks ago and saw a kiosk on Blu-Ray discs for $5.99 each. They weren't brand new releases, but studio catalog titles from about five years ago.

The Blu-Ray market is also much smaller than DVDs. Last I read Blu-Ray was doing about 18% of the business DVDs are doing as a whole.

There was an indie retro-label that launched and was planning to do nothing but Blu-Ray's with fully restored transfers of old cult horror films. They folded after their initial release.

So I say enter the Blu-Ray market with trepidation. I always suggest selling direct to customers with BD-R's if you want to offer Blu-Ray's of a small indie movie.

Interestingly enough as slow as Blu-Ray has been growing, but it is growing, Sony & LG announced the arrival of 4K resolution Blu-Ray Discs.

"Sony and LG are gearing up for new Blu-Ray discs that offer 'Ultra HD' definitions far higher than normal Full HD, such as 4K - four times higher than normal HD, and near the resolutions offered in Imax theatres.

'We're expecting the arrival of 4K Blu-rays in 2013,' said John Taylor, LG's Vice President of Communications told website Pocket-Lint."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2084665/New-Blu-Ray-discs-offering-times-hi-def-2013.html#ixzz2F63TrlGh

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