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Insights from home entertainment industry experts. Home Media blogs give you the inside scoop on entertainment news, DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases, and the happenings at key studios and entertainment retailers. TK's Take analyzes and comments on home entertainment industry news and trends, Agent DVD Insider talks comic adaptations, and IndieFile delivers independent film news.

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October 21, 2009
Media Missing the Point About Disc Decline

I sympathize with President Obama’s frustration with Fox News over what he perceives to be the network’s not-so-hidden agenda to “get” him.

Our industry has been fighting similar battles for years, but in recent months the rhetoric has been stepped up by such big mainstream media outlets as the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, both of which seem to consider it a preordained destiny that packaged media is on life support and will soon disappear altogether.
 
The Wall Street Journal, for example, just published a story on the Walt Disney Co.’s latest venture into electronic delivery, a quasi-secret project (dubbed “Keychest”) that would allow consumers to pay one price for permanent access to a movie across several different digital platforms or devices. The headline: “Disney Touts a Way to Ditch the DVD,” which paved the way for the writer to proclaim, “the decline in DVD revenue has undermined the business model Hollywood has relied on for more than a decade.”

Reality check: We’re in the midst of a format transition, and it’s going to take a little while for Blu-ray Disc to fully compensate for the decline in DVD. Blu-ray is, however, making significant gains, particularly in light of the troubled economy, and remains the only way for consumers to watch movies and other programs in true high-definition on their expensive new HDTVs, which are now in nearly half of all U.S. homes.

Moreover, Disney and the other studios that are aggressively going after digital delivery options aren’t trying to “ditch the DVD,” but, rather, broaden the home entertainment market to include on-the-go users armed with iPods, laptops and smart phones. Convenience is the primary selling point; the quality just isn’t there for proper viewing in the home, especially now that everyone and his brother is getting a high-def TV and snazzy home theater system. 
 
Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Times took a decidedly negative spin on third-quarter home entertainment numbers issued by DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, maintaining that “Hollywood’s biggest and most profitable business shrank a little slower in the third quarter than in the first half of the year, thanks entirely to rentals.” As for the dramatic gains in Blu-ray Disc sales that were duly noted in reports in our magazine and other publications, the Times had this snotty reaction: “In its news release with the data, DEG attempted to highlight sales of Blu-ray disc sales, which rose an impressive 66.3% in the quarter. That’s a substantial slowdown, however, from the category’s 91% growth in the first half of the year.”
 
Reality check No. 2: Blu-ray’s first-half growth rate was bigger because HD DVD only gave up six weeks into the first half of 2008, which held back sales. So it’s really an unfair comparison. What the Times should have noted is that in an economic climate where everything is down, Blu-ray is one of the few products that’s selling better than it did a year ago — and that’s a significant accomplishment, by any measure.
 
The Times also failed to even mention what I consider the key point in the DEG release: That the number of consumer transactions to bring entertainment into the home rose 6.6%. That tells me that consumers have hardly lost interest in home entertainment; indeed, they’re snapping up more discs than ever, which translates into a tremendous vote of confidence for packaged media.
 
But then again, that’s apparently not the sort of analysis the Times wants to hear.
 

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October 19, 2009
‘Transformers’ Imax Footage Comes to Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart's Exclusive "Big Screen" Editions

Before Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hit theaters, director Michael Bay told us he hoped to include the special Imax extended scenes on the Blu-ray Disc of the film.

Turns out, fans will have to buy the movie from Wal-Mart to see the footage on disc.

Wal-Mart is offering a “Big Screen” edition of the film on DVD and Blu-ray, which apparently will offer the same bonus content as the regular retail releases, but with the Imax version of the movie instead of the wide theatrical cut. We’ll know more once the discs are on shelves tomorrow.

In other retail exclusives, Best Buy is offering the Blu-ray with an Optimus Prime head replica for $44.99 ($41.99 at midnight sales). This box also includes a $50 gift card to sideshowcollectibles.com, so for hardcore collectors, it practically pays for itself.

Target will offer the two-DVD edition in an exclusive transforming Bumblebee case.

For more details and other exclusives, check out Transformers fan site Seibertron.com.

 

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October 15, 2009
Backed Into a Corner

In speaking with a well-known DVD producer the other night, I was told that the age of the DVD extra is all but over. The shame of it is that formats such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc are ideal for bonus content, which really provides added value to a movie on disc.

Wanting to cut back on producing the extras is understandable in many ways, as cash-strapped studios are hoping to improve their bottom line by cutting what they don’t see as essential expenditures. And sometimes, producing DVD extras such as behind-the-scenes documentaries and retrospectives costs a lot of money. If they don’t think the added value will translate to sales, they won’t bother. Or they don’t want to risk spending the money only to see it wasted on a rental title.

For many fans, I think, extras may be the difference between buying the movie or waiting for it on cable VOD. But instead of trumpeting the primary benefit of disc — the extra room to include good bonus material — studios seem to be bypassing this key selling point in favor of cost-cutting measures that I think ultimately might devalue their product in the long run. And this is after spending millions to get the Blu-ray format off the ground.

Without the bonus content, the studios might as well just release the movies online or through VOD. And that just opens the door for more piracy.

Then again, a lot of people I talk to don’t care about the extras. This underscores the fact that, ultimately, the primary selling point of any disc is the movie or show itself. If people don’t want to make that investment because the quality of the films isn’t as good, maybe studios need to start looking there.
 

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September 14, 2009
DVD, Blu-ray and the Vanishing Extra

Once upon a time, with DVD was shiny and new, the prospect of bonus features was more than enough incentive to pick up a title, especially one a potential buyer might already have owned on VHS.

The extras weren’t too fancy back then. The basics included a commentary, deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes featurette. A lot of discs had little text-based biographies about the cast, and some even used these text screens to describe the making of the movie.

Back then, listening to the filmmakers dish on their movie was a fun add-on, and for a lot of people provided not only new insight into the world of filmmaking but inspiration to want to be a filmmaker.

Commentaries had been included on Laserdiscs, of course, but who really bought those? No, DVD made the concept of bonus features widespread, and, eventually, kinda tiresome.

Nowadays commentaries are routine, behind-the-scenes extras are usually done on the cheap and deleted scenes are expected, if not already incorporated into a longer “director’s cut” or whatever.

When people started growing apathetic toward extras a few years ago, studios began separating the value-add. With a lot of films, consumers could choose between a bare-bones movie-only disc or a single-DVD version with just a few extras, or they could get a two-disc set that had even more extras on it. Batman Begins comes to mind. The idea made sense from a business perspective. Just take the movie disc, throw it in a package with more features and call it a “Limited Edition” for $5 more. Collectors would go for that.

Now with Blu-ray, we are seeing the same kind of strategy. A number of current titles, such as Observe and Report, are being put out as movie-only single-DVD versions or on Blu-ray with a ton of extras. Again, this seems to make sense, as the collectors who are interested in bonus material have probably upgraded their systems to Blu-ray. And those that haven’t upgraded, well, the obsessive personality type that drives one to want so many extra features (most of which probably aren’t watched anyway) will nag at them to get that Blu-ray player.

It also fits with the combo-disc concept. You can get a DVD with just the movie and the Blu-ray with the movie and all the extras when you want to watch those.

Personally, I think every disc should have some kind of option for the viewer to glean some insights from the filmmaker, be it through a commentary or featurette. Even BD Live could be useful in this area.

I lament what seems like the loss of good DVD extras in lieu of making them exclusive to Blu-ray. But if Blu-ray is the future of packaged media, studios had better figure out how to get consumers to adopt it, and saving the extras for BD makes sense for now.

Unfortunately, if widespread apathy toward extras keeps up, and studios don’t want to invest in them, it won’t matter which disc they’re on.
 

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September 10, 2009
The Salvation of a ‘Terminator’ Flick

So, Warner Home Video is releasing an ‘R’-rated director’s cut of Terminator: Salvation on Blu-ray Dec. 1. The ‘PG-13’ version released in theaters didn’t exactly get the warmest of reception from fans, but maybe on disc the fourth installment of the franchise will find its second wind.

I thought the film did a decent job of depicting the post-apocalyptic world of the Skynet war, only hinted at in the previous films. And the film isn’t lacking for action, even if the story takes a beating for it.

It’s too early to guess what’s in the extended cut, but the MPAA blurb cites “some violence and brief nudity” as reasons for the ‘R’ rating. This probably means actress Moon Bloodgood’s much ballyhooed nude scene has been reinserted into the movie.

I’d also be curious to see what remains of the rumored original intended (and ill-conceived) ending, in which John Connor is killed and replaced by a Terminator altered to resemble him. While that would qualify as reinventing the franchise, I don’t think audiences would have accepted that much of a change to the storyline. As it was, the ending we got was pretty weak, but serviceable.
 

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