Making a commercial DVD today (2009), is SD still ok, or is BluRay a must?

Hi, I have a question regarding future DVD formats.

I looks like the industry have adopted Blu Ray DVD as the format of choice/the future. Sales have been much slower than what they thought though, so whether it will truly stay for a long time remains to be seen, but it should be around for the next 5-7 years. And these machines can upconvert SD to 1080p too quite well it seems.

I am looking to make some commercial DVDs that are intended to be sold. I am quite capable in SD, there are tons of resources around. HD shooting is new to me, and I understand that it could be quite expensive?

I thought about shooting and editing in HD to come up with a master file. I can then either downconvert the master to SD to duplicate in SD video with the HD as a 'safety' in case I ever want to release in HD.

Or would I do both an SD and HD (BluRay in this case) version for sale? Is it worth it today to have the HD safety and will it pay off over the next few years in terms of sales for recouped revenue for it?

Or will SD still sell well then?

Your insights are appreciated.

I'd say as a practical matter, plan to do BOTH. Shoot/edit/produce in HD, 16:9 with the goal of being able to create the BR disc if and when needed. But output to a standard DVD for the time being.

BR penetration is simply not happening that quickly - the prices for burners and players are still high, in a recessionary economy... Logic suggests that until DVD players are dying and you can buy a "replacement" BR at a sensible price (sub $100 IMO), and burners come down (again sub $100) as well so that it becomes a "commodity" format, BR will stay in the "luxury" classification.

With people losing houses and everything else and no credit available, luxury items aren't in the "average" budget anymore... I'm guessing the DVD player will not be "replaced" anytime soon unless the economics adjust.

If you're planning a "commercial" release, you need to sell as many units as you can, so sell to the largest market. VHS survived a LONG time after it was "obsolete", and in some markets is STILL hanging in there...

The year of BluRay will be 2010. There are still too many manufactures and distributers transitioning, for BluRay to be mandatory. But it's coming, and soon.

I produce DVDs of the weekly series racing at a local stock car track where the biggest race of the year, the TD Banknorth 250 draws a driver or two from the premier NASCAR series. This year it was Kevin Harvick and he won it. Sales just crossed the 100 unit mark.

I was in the track's booth at a motorsport show this past weekend and somebody wanted to know if it was available on VHS. VHS!?!?! Turns out the guy's TV didn't have any inputs besides the one for an antenna so he couldn't simply get a DVD player.

My point is that DVD won't be dying any time soon and as Dave said, there are still bunches of VHS users out there. You should consider that as your primary delivery medium for at least 2009. 2010 may be the year when the world crosses over to high def disks. That will depend upon the economy turning around this year.

The other thing you'll to do is take a SWAG at your target audience's demographics and try to extrapolate BD penetration there. For example, if you create content for Alpine skiers in Vail, Park City or St. Moritz, the likelihood of consumers having BD players, and the cash to pay for BD content is likely higher than content aimed at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. Your choice of delivery media will depend upon your audience.

That said, there's no time like right now to get familiar with HD content production. Even if you don't output to BD now, it can't hurt to do projects that way now. You'll be able to get all the kinks out of your HD workflow before you actually have to output to BD.

But that's just my view of the world.

Wise observation -
I've been shooting HDV for 3-4 years since I got hands on a second hand HC1... There's a learning curve, and it can be steep and somewhat treacherous! It looks so good, BUT, bottom line, I've been delivering on regular old DVD (looks lots better when shot/edited in HD though).

I've taken a bit of time to figure out how to deliver BR readable HD on regular old burned DVD's, and will be doing that until I find a demand for BR discs and/or the prices are more reasonable... the finished HD output definitely looks better than SD DVD, but I'll bet that 9 out of 10 people would hardly notice in most situations.


You have to remember that the average end user is not necessarily watching on "state of the art" equipment... and whatever they do have is probably nowhere close to properly calibrated or optimized - a VCR through antenna input is probably far more painfully common than we'd like to think... just because someone HAS an HDTV and a BR player doesn't mean they have any idea how to set it up properly or even the observational skills to see the difference in quality.

Until people buy BR because it's competitively priced, IMO the market will remain limited - I thought the elimination of the BR - HDDVD "war" would help somewhat by eliminating the uncertainty over betting on the "wrong" horse, and bring critical mass to bring pricing down. So far, doesn't seem to be happening, and I don't think there's a huge line of people wanting to spend $300-400 for a decent BR player. 1080p HDTV's have dropped a lot, so maybe that will help, but 2010 is probably a realistic timeline, IF the economy doesn't tank in the meantime.

Regarding 1080 HDTV's, when the broadcasters do their switch over to HD only broadcaster (what, is it slated for 2013 now?) then everyone will start scrambling for it. There are sources for HD now, such as BR and HD broadcasts, so people are starting to adopt.

But with BR DVD's,.... I don't know.

It may eventually get adopted as I do like the obvious increase of quality over SD DVD. But most people out there are already saturated with their huge SD DVD collection....and are happy with it,.... few will go and replace their collection with BR versions...and there aren't a lot of BR discs being released at the moment compared to SD.

Plus you are paying 30-40% more for BR. So another $15 to $20 for the privelege. For a large distributor, that is great. But for a small producer of DVD's it's a fine line to pay the extra to get the project made in HD to potentially sell a BR copy and make perhaps only a few thousand dollars more in the end...

Will the new BR players ever be able to upconvert SD DVDs to look sharp on HDTV? That kinda technology is out there (Terranax box), but is very expensive.

I'm still trying to figure out how "upconverting" can create what ain't there... sounds like marketing in overdrive to me, but I suppose with sufficient scene analysis it's "possible"?

I know that a regular old cheap-o DVD player set to progressive and hooked to the R/G/B inputs looks way better than the same player left on default settings and run through a component or whatever input... so I have to wonder how much of the "upconverting" is nothing more than proper hookups through an HDMI? YES, it would look lots better, but calling it "near HD quality" is a bit... of marketing...