Life is what happens to you

when you're busy making other plans - John Lennon.

Well this weekend I was supposed to get the review of Magic Bullet's Frames done and posted this weekend but instead I spent the weekend doing VO work for a documentary. So the Frames review is postponed until next weekend.

In other news, with the demise of HD-DVD, one of my fears with HD disk delivery mediums has been that whoever won would now have ZERO competition. They would have this market all to themselves. Guess what? This is exactly what is happening. Consider this quote from the DP Buzz with Larry Jordan:

"In a recent conversation with Bruce Nazarian, president of the DVD Association, during The BuZZ podcast, we were discussing the sudden shift toward Blu-Ray HD DVDs. While Blu-Ray may be good for Hollywood, it won't be good for small independent producers.

This is due to all the hidden fees tacked on to replicating a Blu-Ray DVD.For example, producers of industrial and non-broadcast content are required to pay a $2,500 licensing fee to author and distribute Blu-Ray.Then, each producer is required to pay a $3,000 one-time AACS license fee, plus a per-title fee for EACH replicated Blu-Ray disc. Currently, Sony DADC is quoting that fee at $1,585 per title (per complete Blu-ray disc project).

Then there's the per disc replication cost, which varies by quantity, and finally, there's a $0.04 per disc fee for AACS and $0.01 per disc if you want SONY DADC to administer the payments to AACS on your behalf.

As Bruce indicates, we may be standardizing on Blu-Ray, but the prices won't be cheap."

My fears, realized. *sigh*.

Well, on a positive note, Brad Bird got an Oscar as did Daniel Day Lewis. On the DD Lewis front, I thought this was a great choice. I have not yet seen "There will be Blood" but I had heard about it and heard that DDL was starring in it. So I watched the trailer and got about half way through before it dawned on me what role DDL was playing. It was absolutely jaw dropping.

And finally, two of my favorite filmmakers, The Cohen Brothers, walked away with 3 oscars - Best Screenplay adaptation, Best director and Best picture. Nice.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Is this serious?

Does that mean if I make a small video project for a local client, and that client wants it delivered on BluRay, he would have to shell out sevel thousands dollar on top of the actual video project?

Please say this is not true, or there won't be any minor HD releases.

Coming to think of it, this might put quite a showstopper for all medium-quality HD camcorders...
B-Scene Films said…
The DRM fee is currently $3000 to $5000. There is no way for the little guy to master a Blu-Ray disk at this time. You have to take your source material to a post house and pay your fees like the big boys.

I suspect that when we start to see software (Update to DVD Studio Pro perchance?) that will allow us to create a Blu-Ray master, these fees will have nothing to do with us.

After Sony gave Warner $500M as an incentive to dump HD-DVD, the war was basically over. I hope that Blu-Ray as a standard will become cntrolled by a standards organization and not by Sony. Had HD-DVD won, it would be Microsoft helming it - As it is, we have Sony - Not sure what one is better really.

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