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 news and trends, “Agent DVD Insider” talks fanboy entertainment, “IndieFile” delivers independent film news, “Steph Sums It Up” offers pithy opinions on the state of the industry, and “Mike’s Picks” offers bite-sized recommendations of the latest DVD and Blu-ray releases.
TK's MORNING BUZZ: By Switching to DVD, Blockbuster Is Doing What the Market Leader Should Be Doing -- Forging Ahead and Not Looking Back
Good move, Blockbuster.
The world's biggest video rental chain yesterday announced it would startselling DVD players in its stores and also spend an estimated $450 million toreplace about a quarter of its VHS cassette inventory with DVDs.
An analyst quoted in the AP wire story said the move was "inevitable" but praised Blockbuster for making it "proactively," adding, "They're a littlebit ahead of the DVD growth curve."
That's smart, and that's what Blockbuster should be doing as the market leader -- forging ahead, not looking back.
DVD is the hot baby of the moment, and everything points to continued explosive growth. I believe Blockbuster made a mistake several years ago when it was slow to react to DVD; you might remember that chief John Antioco keptpromising a chainwide rollout, but that didn't happen until relatively latein the game -- and after Big Blue toyed with investing in Divx, the ill-fated (and ill-conceived) pay-per-play DVD variant primarily backed by the Circuit City consumer electronics chain.
At the time, a very respected industry figure told me he couldn't figure outBlockbuster's reticence in regard to DVD. "If you're the leader in your market, which Blockbuster certainly is, you're supposed to be on theforefront of new technologies," he said.
Obviously, Blockbuster has spent the past year or so trying to make up for lost time, pushing DVD rentals in a well-orchestrated billboard and advertising campaign and then including DVD in its "guaranteed availability"programs.
I'm certain DVD played no small part in Blockbuster's decision to seek a strategic alliance with Radio Shack, the mall electronics chain, in which Radio Shack "kiosks" will start to appear in Blockbuster stores.
This is the logical next step. Consumers will soon be able to step into a Blockbuster store and buy a DVD, rent a DVD, and even buy a DVD player. They'll be able to buy a satellite dish and subscribe to satellite service. They'll be able to buy snack foods and, for the folks behind the technologycurve, there will still be plenty of VHS cassettes to rent or buy.
And, oh yes, while the VOD deal with Enron is dead, rest assured that when the studios start selling or renting their movies over the Internet, Blockbuster will be there in some way, shape or form, no doubt front andcenter.
I hope other retailers are learning something. In the late 1980s, Blockbuster was the role model for many independent rentailers, showing them how to buy, how to merchandise, how to compete. Then came Bill Fields and, after that, the VHS revenue-sharing era.
Now, it appears there's a new chapter unfolding. Let's call it "The Prodigal Son Returns."
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
TK's MORNING BUZZ: Retailers Should Benefit from the Expansion of Home Entertainment Because This Revolution Is Televised
I have a theory that all forms of home entertainment will expand by leaps and bounds in the coming years. This is good news for everyone involved in, or on the periphery of, our business -- from video retailers to satellitesellers -- and, if proven true, should provide hope for even those who are not now sharing in what many are already calling a boom.
My theory is based on one principle: TVs are getting better and better, and that induces more watching. I see it in my own family -- I never have time for anything, but ever since I got rid of the 1986 27-inch Trinitron, replaced it with a 36-incher and added a cheap little home theater sound system ($399 foreverything), I am watching more movies than I ever have in the past.
My theory helps explain why DVD caught on as quickly, and as solidly, as it has; why the falloff in VHS sales hasn't been as dramatic as one might think; why small rentailers in some markets are reporting significant gains, year-over-year, in rental activity; and why the studios are scrambling allover themselves for a piece of the VOD pie-in-the-sky. No question, after years of talk, talk and more talk, the oven's finally warming up.
If my theory holds true, then things can only improve. We've got HDTV less than five years away, which means better broadcast quality. We're seeing a wealth of hot new flat-screen TVs come onto the market, and prices arestarting to tumble. And the widescreen market is also expected to blossom asconsumers embrace the new wider configuration so conducive to widescreen DVDsthat faithfully reproduce a movie the way it was intended to be seen.
Sure, certain elements feed off each other. TVs are getting better, in part,because people are switching from VHS cassettes to DVDs; and people are switching from VHS cassettes to DVDs, in part, because TVs are getting better.
But if you step back and look at the whole picture -- pun intended -- I think you'll share my view. It's a good time to be in this business.
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
APAR's WORKING WEEKEND: The DVD Connection
When The DVD Awards administered by Video Store Magazine saw fit a couple weeks ago to recognize the unique accomplishments of VM Labs’ Nuon and New Line Home Entertainment’s Infinifilm with special honors, it was not without a tinge or irony.
Both of those cutting-edge companies radically rewrote the lingua franca of DVD with innovations that, in fact, fulfilled what was the original promise of the digital multimedia format in the first place. That is to say, the uber-friendly [sic], enhanced interactivities [sic sequel] available on Nuon movies like Fox’s Bedazzled and New Line Infinifilms like 15 Days, 13 Minutes and newest addition Blow are what movies on DVDs should be all about: building an organic dimension into the passive, linear experience of watching a feature-length narrative that wasn’t part of the theatrical experience.
As next week’s Video Store reports exclusively in a page 1 scoop by our new media senior editor John Gaudiosi, Star Wars creator George Lucas has completed production on an additional seven scenes strictly for the DVD release of Phantom Menace. You think George is jazzed about DVD? (Personally, we hope at least some of them there scenes [sic, seriously] feature our Phantom phavorite [obviously sic] Jar Jar Binks, arguably the most maliciously maligned figment of imagination ever to appear in a live-action film. To all those who complained about Binks’ hijinks behavior and clever patois, I urge you to rush out right now to the local mall and get a life. If you do, I will too.)
Oddly enough, but fittingly too, I appreciated New Line’s Infinifilm concept as never before while I was fully engaged in the excellent extras on Fox’s 30th anniversary edition of The French Connection. On at least one occasion while watching a documentary in the supplement, on a separate disc than the movie, I reflexively expected to be able to go back to the movie itself, an Infinifilm feature I have used extensively on all three aforementioned New Line titles. (Thanks, New Line, for spoiling me when I watch non-Infinifilms.)
(Oh, and thanks, Fox, for reminding this ex-graybeard it’s been three decades -- ouch! -- since a callow college student sat in the Syracuse Daily Orange newspaper offices interviewing Connection producer Philip D’Antoni as part of his publicity tour to tout the new release.)
Since I first saw it, TFC, as nobody I know calls it, has been one of my favorite films. The French new wave cinematic flavor infused by Friedkin (The Exorcist) is wonderfully emulated on the DVD’s menu design, the landmark car chase is still breathless and the digital image reproduction is tres magnifique. I doubt the film has ever looked this good outside a theater.
There are some juicy sound bites from the rambunctiously talented director William Friedkin (who can be obnoxious in a charming sort of way), whose recollections from the production sometimes clash with those of other participants, notably Sonny Grosso, half of the legendary New York City police detective duo whose celebrated narcotics collars inspired the book and the film adaptation.
And it’s a minor coup, in this movie lover’s book anyhow, for Fox to snare a star of Gene Hackman’s stature for one of the commentary tracks -- along with costar Roy Scheider. Hackman’s self-admitted uncomfortable fit in his lead role, coming to light for the casual viewer 30 years later, makes his Best Actor Oscar all the more impressive. (TFC’s five Oscars include Picture and Director.) Over the years, Hackman has painted an understated, intelligent and exciting palette of portrayals that puts him in the pantheon of film actors, if not the best of his generation, so it’s quite a treat to have him as a viewing companion on a classic movie.
Special mention must be made, too, of a latter-day true tale of an international narcotics ring, New Line’s Blow. Suffice it to say that the array of extra information on the DVD of this true story of a colorful Seventies’ cocaine trafficker, George Jung (played by the very talented Johnny Depp), held me in a trance. After watching the screen for well over an hour, continuously clicking on the onscreen cutaway clips that serve to amplify the narrative with real-life interviews, I was incredulous to discover that the elapsed running time displayed on the DVD player was only 35 minutes. I somehow had managed to spend more time watching the interstitial materials woven into the film, and the other supplements, than the film itself.
Becoming a devotee of Infinifilm and Nuon features makes it easy to understand what hot young filmmaker John Herzfeld (15 Minutes) meant when he told Leonard Maltin at the IRMA and Medialine DVD Entertainment Conference that “I learn more watching a DVD than going to a film school. I wish I had DVDs when I was learning to make movies. Today, you can do anything on DVD.”
Maltin’s other guest during the same session, Rush Hour 1 & 2 and Family Man director Bret Ratner, chimed in, “I went to NYU film school and the Criterion Collection film school, because I bought every movie on laserdisc in the Criterion Collection. Watching movies is how I learned to make movies.”
That’s an exciting revelation for anyone involved in the home video industry to revel in, and, thanks to DVD and the yeoman work of studios like New Line and companies like Nuon, leading filmmakers from George Lucas to Bret Ratner aren’t afraid to say, in so many words -- and images -- “I want my DVD.”
Comments? Contact Bruce directly at:bapar@advanstar.com
By: Bruce Apar
TK's MORNING BUZZ: Video Stores Should Honor Their Own Breed of Movie Stars -- the Actors and Actresses of Direct-to-Video
Video killed the radio star, the Buggles sang at the height of the post-punk power-pop explosion of the late 1970s.
Yes, but what about the video star? To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, they just don't get no respect.
You know who I'm talking about. The video stars, the actors and actresses to whom the Big Screen is a far-off (or, in many cases, fading) dream, but who are well known to myriad retailers and consumers for their prolific body of direct-to-video work.
These are the other heroes of Hollywood, the 'B' movie stars who probably work harder, and more frequently, than any thespian outside of television.
They have film credits up the yin-yang, and you'd know most of them if you saw them.
And yet you hardly ever see their names in the tabloids, in the celebrity magazines, in the Entertainment Weeklys and Rolling Stones. The cameras aren't on them when they arrive at awards shows -- if they're even invited.
Michael Pare. Rutger Hauer. Dedee Pfeiffer. Ron Perlman. Luke Perry and Roger Moore, two famous names of past ("Beverly Hills 90210" and James Bond), teamed together in The Enemy, coming soon to a video store near you courtesy of Avalanche Home Entertainment, which bills the film as being "in the tradition of Mission Impossible."
I've always felt it would be fitting and right for video stores to in some way honor their own breed of movie stars, the actors and actresses whose films appear on video right off the bat, whose premieres attract not a red carpet lined with TV cameras, but eager fingers poised on the pause, fastforward and rewind buttons.
Displays. Trivia contests ("How many action thrillers has Michael Pare appeared in where something blows up within the first 20 seconds?") Maybe even personal appearances or autograph-signing sessions.
Let Hollywood honor the A-list stars. Video retailers owe it to themselves to give these also-rans their moment in the sun.
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
TK's MORNING BUZZ: If the Biggest Obstacle to Internet VOD is Getting the Movie Onto the TV, Then Sonicblue's Reborn ReplayTV is Onto Something Big
Big news day, eh?
The business and entertainment press yesterday was beside itself with the latest VOD bombshell: Disney and Fox had confirmed speculation that the two studios were forming a joint venture, Movies.com, to deliver video-on-demand over the Internet -- just weeks after five other studios had announced a similar joint venture.
Another big story: Boffo advance sales for Microsoft's Xbox. Although the much-ballyhooed new video game console isn't scheduled to arrive in stores until Nov. 8, the Reuters news service reported yesterday that Amazon and Toys "R" Us, through their online partnership, presold their initial batch of Xbox game players in 30 minutes. Consoles were only available bundled with games and accessories for $499, $200 above what the player alone will sell for.
Lost in the shuffle was what I consider a very significant announcement: the reborn Replay TV, through its new SONICblue Inc. owner, announced the launch of a series of new digital video recorders with broadband connectivity. While the old model of these personal video recorders allowed users to tape stuff off their TV without using a videocassette, this new generation also allows users to download video from the Internet -- digitally, of course -- and play it on their television sets.
The four models are quite pricey, ranging from $660 for a stripped-down model with up to 40 hours of storage to $1,999 for the top-of-the-line model with up to 320 hours of storage.
But think of the potential: pristine, digital copies of your favorites movies or programs, watchable whenever you want them, on your TV set, just a mouse click or two away.
Awhile back, I was talking to a key player in the VOD-Internet camp, and he privately expressed his biggest concern was whether people would want to watch a movie on their computer. "That's our biggest obstacle," he told me. "We can get the movie onto their computer. The problem is getting it onto their TV."
No longer, I guess. SONICblue certainly is onto something -- something very, very big.
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
TK's MORNING BUZZ: With Online Connections Getting Faster, Hollywood Fears of Unlicensed Movie Downloading May Yet Be Realized
I read with interest yesterday's report from the Reuters news service thatwhile Napster may have gone down in flames, a variety of other online music file-swapping services are thriving -- including a new breed of free-for-alls,like Kazaa and Morpheus, that offer more than just music, including video.
Unlike Napster, Reuters says, these services are decentralized, which makesthem a lot harder to monitor, much less shut down.
The recent multi-studio action against Aimster was a shrewd pre-emptive strike, but Hollywood fears of unlicensed movie downloading hitting the movie industry as hard as unlicensed music downloading hit the music industry may yet be realized.
Simply put, advances in technology are running far ahead of advances in enforcement, and as long as there is an audience out there willing to takecopyrighted material -- someone else's hard work -- for their enjoyment, withoutpaying for it, these services will thrive.
Blame it on the economy, blame it on a moral decay in society, blame it on whatever -- it's getting tougher and tougher to control copyrighted material,and I really don't see a solution in sight.
It would be one thing if the public wouldn't settle for anything less than top-notch quality. But if they're getting it for free, gobs of people don't care what it sounds like or looks like.
As long as it's a reasonable facsimile of the original, and it's free, people just don't give a damn.
Granted, relatively few people share full-length feature films over theInternet. Mostly people simply don't have the computer set-up to allow for afast, easy transfer.
But that's not to say no one does. Morever, as technology continues to advance, as our computers get mightier and our online connections, faster, you can bet your bottom dollar that the number of people engaged in thisillicit sharing of movies will soar -- regardless of legislation or legalintimidation.
I honestly don't know what the solution is, and the truth is, I don't thinkanyone does. All we can do is keep packaged media as exciting, as appealing, as possible and hope for the best.
If anyone has a different perspective, I'd love to hear from you. Selectedresponses may be published in this space on a later date, so please tell me who you are and what you do!
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
TK's MORNING BUZZ: Why Do Retailers Labor Harder Than Anyone on Labor Day?
Why is it that on Labor Day, when much of America is at rest, retailers work harder than anyone?
I hit a few shops yesterday between barbecues, kids' birthday parties and building an outdoor turtle enclosure (don't ask). At Best Buy, the clerks looked like they did the day after Thanksgiving; at Wal-Mart, the checkout clerks seemed unusually surly and detached.
The pages of my newspaper were filled with Labor Day specials -- 50% off this, 30% off that, buy two of this and get one of that free.
But that's business, I guess -- and if any retailers weren't working hard yesterday, well, they either don't take their businesses very seriously, or they know some secret to profit and wealth that doesn't entail hard work.
More power to them.
I haven't heard from regular correspondents like Tom Hannah of Video Quest in Joliet, Ill., but I'll be they worked their tails off yesterday.
I also bet their revenues for the year are up from last year, despite a southbound economy and continuing sagas of woe among many home video dealers.
Something about that old work ethic...
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
APAR's WORKING WEEKEND: No News Not Good News for Retailers
The news this past week out of Washington, D.C., from the U.S. Copyright Office that digital downloads (of movies, for example) are not necessarily covered by the First Sale Doctrine — which protects a retailer from a vendor’s undue interference in the merchant’s transactions with customers — was not really news at all for those who’ve been paying attention.
It didn’t just happen yesterday that, as a distributor of copyrightable content, the Internet exhibits fundamental and functional differences from the storefront "space" of physically distributed goods. This World Wide Web of a delivery mechanism cannot in every instance be held to the same precise rules as brick-and-mortar commerce simply because it is not the same. If nothing else, Napster should have convinced everyone of that naked truth.
Before that music file-sharing service bopped onto the scene, it’s safe to say there were not millions of consumers routinely shoplifting their favorite songs and CDs from record stores. That’s a high-risk proposition requiring a seasoned sense of subterfuge. Napster was a no-risk proposition requiring nothing more than the foremost commodity of the still-new millennium — Internet access.
The Internet is a self-contained supply chain of content. Put more squarely into digital-domain terms, it is the content chain and the customer channel rolled into one. Content can be produced, distributed, transacted and consumed in the singular, ethereal space of a display device.
It is all too easy to get hold of a copyrightable work in cyberspace without paying for it to have a 20th Century, analog construct like First Sale apply absolutely to a 21st century, digital realm like digital content.
As the Copyright Office report says, "…ease of distribution and the lessened deterrent effect of the law … could promote piracy…."
Of course, sophisticated digital rights management technologies — which will become the lingua franca of entertainment companies living in a tangled web — could be abused by copyright owners, who overcharge or invade privacy in the name of preventing piracy; but where and when that might occur, the marketplace of consumer opinion and behavior will deal with it accordingly, presumably by not shaking the hand that slaps it in the face.
Comments? Contact Bruce directly at:bapar@advanstar.com
By: Bruce Apar
TK's MORNING BUZZ: Talk of New Methods to Deliver Movies Into the Home Reinforces Wall Street Analysts' Inherent Bias Against Traditional Video Retailers
What a way to end the month.
Yesterday the Dow fell below 10,000 for the first time in nearly five months, after a string of gloomy economic reports of sagging corporate earnings and more job cuts.
This follows the grand announcement that five major studios are gearing up for the digital delivery of their movies over the Internet through a joint-venture video-on-demand service.
Video stocks took an expected beating, and I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet. A southbound economy and talk of new methods to deliver movies into the home has a way of reinforcing Wall Street analysts' inherent biasagainst traditional video retailers, and I fully expect, in the coming weeks,to find at least one analyst referring to video retailers as "dinosaurs" on the path to extinction.
We've been through it all before, haven't we? I remember in the fall of 1993,when Video Store Magazine had just transitioned into a tabloid-size newsweekly, there was a flurry of news about telco mergers and grand schemesof an information superhighway driving movies into consumer homes.
The press smelled blood and we saw a rash of stories about how video was doomed -- this, despite the fact that video retailing was on a decided upswing, finally emerging from a deadly recession that triggered the first real wave of retail consolidation.
Then, in 1996, we saw another "scare." By this time, the telcos' visions ofvideo-on-demand had crumbled apart, but there was a new catalyst: the Internet was now available to the masses.
Another round of video-bashing by the financial community, including Forbes,which ran a series of negative articles about the video trade. Stocks fell;independent retailers found it harder and harder to get bank loans because bankers felt certain the video industry was doomed.
Ironically, the industry was just poised to recover when, a year later, a weak slate of theatrical product did lead to a decline in video's fortunes, at least on the rental side of the business. This time it was the studiosthat panicked, and the rest, as they, say, is history, with copy-depth and revenue-sharing and all the other "lifesavers" Hollywood tossed retailers leading to the biggest retail shakeout in history.
The big guys were affected as well, and it was only in the beginning of this year that retail stocks began to recover. Thanks in large part to DVD, video retail's financial reports were good, and stocks of such big chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood soared to their highest levels in years.
Now this. Where will it lead? Only time will tell.
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
TK's MORNING BUZZ: Confusion Reigns for Software Dealers as All-Out War in Video Game Land is About to Begin
It's about to be all-out war in video game land.
Two new video game consoles, Nintendo's GameCube and new-to-gaming Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox, will soon join Sony's still-hot PlayStation 2. A recent survey released earlier this month by the Ziff-Davis Media Game Group found 58% of all active video game players plan on buying at least one new console this coming holiday season.
The survey found that 62% of these new console-buying gamers will pick the PlayStation 2, 34% want the Xbox and 33% will buy the GameCube.
For software dealers, that amounts to confusion, confusion, confusion. It's already hard keeping up with all the new games coming out; now you've got three versions to buy, none of them -- to the best of my knowledge, at least -- compatible.
Add to that the still-breathing PlayStation One and various other consoles the game software makers are supporting and retailers could end up spending well north of $100 for a single copy of a hot title in three or more formats.
Just think if this were happening in the home video industry. You'd have VHS, Beta and DVD, plus eight-millimeter still hanging in there. It would be a juggling act, every month, figuring out not just what to buy and in what quantity, but having to do so for each format.
Software dealers are probably saying a silent prayer that a clear market leader emerges, either PlayStation 2, which already holds a commanding lead (due in part to its one-year head start), or one of the other newbies.
All of this reminds me of the music industry, which has seen two three-way fights in the last few decades: the vinyl LP, the audio cassette and the eight-track tape, and then, years later, the CD, the vinyl LP and the audio cassette.
In each case, one format was promptly vanquished, while another took a clear lead.
When it comes to home entertainment software, three's definitely a crowd.
Comments? Contact TK directly at:TKArnold@aol.com
By: Thomas K. Arnold
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