Is anyone else here planning (or considering) to begin offering wedding video production AND delivery, before the end of the year?

Is anyone else here planning (or considering) to begin offering wedding video production AND delivery, before the end of the year?

Some people have been doing this for up to a year or so now, using compressed HD delivery formats and products like the Avel Linkplayer2. I offer Windows Media HD output as a standard option for those willing to pay extra for HD editing, and I had one customer who asked to have a finished HDV master delivered to him on an external hard drive. Starting as soon as this month Toshiba will begin shipping their blue-laser HD DVD player, and the Viiv multimedia platform should be capable of playing a Windows Media HD disc to an HDTV. So yes, it's time to start offering HD delivery for those customers willing to pay for and work with the available options. Otherwise, standard widescreen SD DVDs are fine for most people and look good on HDTVs.

I'm planning to begin producing and delivering in HD by summer, and bundling a LinkPlayer2 right into the package. I haven't read anything from anyone that's actually done it yet. If anyone has, I'd sure like to know about their experiences.

Also, if anyone is considering delivering in HD this year, it might be nice to collaborate.

if anyone is considering delivering in HD this year, it might be nice to collaborate.

The number one thing I'd like to find out is whether the blue-laser players will also be able to play HD content from red-laser discs, so if anyone gets an answer to that please let us know. In theory that could work and would save us all a lot of trouble, but there's no way to know for sure until the players are shipping and we get a chance to try it.

Perhaps there are technical issues that would make it difficult, but if there aren't, I would think it won't be long until we see players that can play both types of disks (I hope).

Well, in terms of playing both types of discs I would hope that the Blu-Ray machines could play standard discs. It would be fairly useless to most consumers to only have it play the HD discs. But, I know very little about what the new machines will be able to do. I would think it would be fairly simple to change the bandwidth of the laser to read standard discs, since the Blu-Ray machines simply use a finer laser (as far as I understand it that is).

Delivery of HD content has been what kept me out of the HD market for the time being. Do I like HD? Sure! Who doesn't? But in my area not enough people have HDTV's and the delivery formats aren't mainstream yet. I do think that those of you who are "pushing the envelope" so to speak are great. Without people forging ahead like this things would stay stagnant. I know that there's a lot of backlash against early HDV adopters. I wish it were not so as it does help all of us. But most SD folks don't see it that way. Best of luck with the new players. I'm excited to see how they go. Also, any word on when Blu-Ray burners might be available?

It's nice to know us crash-test dummies are appreciated ...LOL.

:)

Well, in terms of playing both types of discs I would hope that the Blu-Ray machines could play standard discs.

I'd expect the new players to be able to play standard SD DVDs, the question is whether they'll be able to play HD content from red-laser discs produced to HD DVD specifications. Kinda like putting DVD movie files on a CD, if that helps clarify what I'm saying. Being able to produce HD content on red laser discs for the new players would save us all a whole lot of hassle and money.

Kevin, do you know what types of HD encoding will be supported under HD-DVD specs? Will it be MPEG-2, MPEG-4, both, more, etc?

My understanding is that both types of blue-laser players will officially support playback of Windows Media HD, H.264 and MPEG2-TS (HDV). The first two of these can deliver decent HD quality at standard DVD bit rates (e.g. 5-8 Mbps), so you'd be able to deliver a complete HD wedding video on standard 4.7 GB DVDs -- if that works on the new players. Otherwise, we'll have to buy new blue-laser burners and expensive blue-laser discs, with minimal benefit to customers. On the other hand, MPEG2 is easier and faster to output and may offer some slight quality advantage, so in the long run that would be a useful delivery format.

Well, I hope the new HD-DVD players will play HD content from standard DVDs. For now, I'm just going to consider the LinkPlayer2 mandatory (for me) to provide in a HD wedding pkg (assuming it works ok when I test it). I do plan to burn DL DVDs, probably either Xvid or MPEG-2 encoded. Somebody here who has a LinkPlayer2 told me that DivX encoded material plays back with a soft focus for some reason. I'll probably order a Linkplayer2 in the next couple weeks. I've been waiting on their tech support for like forever to answer questions I sent. There's a sales guy there who is real responsive to me, but the tech support is a real big fat zero there. Their manual is worthless too (very inaccurate). The folks here at DVinfo.net are a way better source of information on the Linkplayer2 than the manufacturer!

I might be remembering wrong on that. Maybe it was WMV-HD that played back soft.

My fallback plan, if all else fails, is to go with MPEG-2 on DVHS. B&H sells one of the JVC DVHS decks for 300 bucks. I sure don't want to do tape for a client, but it is a viable last resort. I believe the LinkPlayer2 will work out okay, but the level of (non) tech support there worries me.

The problem with DVHS tape is that it's only playable on a DVHS player, which severely limits its usability. But if you encode to WMV or H.264 and put that on a standard DVD, your clients could play that on many recent computers plus on the Avel-type players. Disc-based solutions make way more sense at this point than going back to tape.

Yes, I very much desire to deliver on a disk (for a number of reasons), but primarily, I think it's imperative to deliver a means to the client to be able to view the video on their HDTV, in the living room, without a computer attached to it (way to often, that would mean providing a computer which would, most likely, be unattractive to many clients, in their living room - and considerably more expensive to bundle in - much better would probably be to deliver on both tape and disk, if need be).

My concern with the LinkPlayer2, is the possibility of, after booking several weddings, taking deposits, etc., finding out there is a serious problem with the player that wasn't detected when initially testing it. I intend to test the LinkPlayer2 thoroughly, but I won't rule out that testing might miss something that comes out later, after having made numerous serious commitments, especially considering I will most likely be the defacto last line of tech support for the unit (I've pretty much written off depending on IO-DATA for that).

Basically, I'm attempting to do something that, largely, I really have no example to work from and emulate, in a number of important regards, so I am trying my best to cover all bases with extreme caution, and have at least somewhat viable backup plans for anything I can reasonably foresee as a potential "show stopper" problem. I sure don't want to wind up saying, "sorry about promising you HD, here's a really nice DVD" or "sorry, here's a gangly computer for your living room" (that also costs me a few hundred more that I get to eat).

Robert: those are valid concerns, and suggest caution in what you promise to deliver to customers. But for now the Avel-type players are the most practical way to deliver HD content for playback on HDTVs, and if you deliver Windows Media HD on a DVD which plays on those players, that video content should be transferrable to future mainstream HD DVD players.