bluray topic

[Steve Bleasdale]

Nice one Chris, you have to be ready for the big kick off!!! If bluray takes off im ready , you are ready !!but clients ready!!! I agree with John and your comments, i pad ,iphone media push its going that way, i think people will soon just plug in their phone or pad to the tv and play a movie film whatever, its happening now... High tech is coming i already have bookings due to the fact that i send their wedding trailer to their mobile phone! they love it. Also lately people have booked me by seeing my trailers on their phone from my website.
Soon we will all be able to pay, play, and do anything on our phones!!! Even myself at the moment, its all mobile, laptop,
A recent documentry on tv, was about just going to a shop counter and you pay the bill with your phone being scanned by the cashier, its as simple as that...
With regard to us videographers i can see the bride now saying, just e-mail me my film or upload to my ipad in a certain way, they just plug pad into a tv or projector and away they go, everything quick no hassle done... Thats the way its going, people may say what about the old days bla bla bla, but im all for ease!!!! Bring it on...

[Taky Cheung]

I have been offering Bluray weddings since 2007. At that time, the burner was $350 and a blank disk is $25. Now the burner is about $100 and a blank white BD is $5. BluRay player is less than $100 and people with PS3 can play BD. It's not an excuse. It's one way to separate my business from competitors.

[Philip Howells]

As Taky's post indicates, there are two aspects to the whole question of offering blu-ray as an option, the technical and the marketing.

Unless you're still recording in SD (and there's nothing wrong with that) the technical aspect is one of when you make the plunge ie when you need to fulfill a demand from your clients.

The marketing aspect is expressed by Taky and is a matter of being prepared for the demand but in the meantime using that preparedness as a marketing tool against your competitors.

The people who face the biggest challenge must surely be those for whom a change to BD would mean re-quipping to down camera level. On the other hand at least they have the experience of all of us who've made the change - one occasion when being first wasn't necessarily the wrong thing not to be.

[Taky Cheung]

I don't get much HD request by customers back in 2007 and 2008. But for the past few years, there were lots of clients asking for it. Some specified before meeting up is if we offer HD output in BluRay. I'm sure all of us here are tech enough wanting to view videos online, streaming.. but for the majority of customers, deliver a nicely packaged product is the way to go, and the way for them to "show off".

Here's my BluRay and DVD packaging =)

BluRay Case Insert Template for Download | L.A. Color Blog

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Starting from 2011, we give all our clients a HD version in Bluray. Free of charge. This has many advantages. First the couple that may not own a Bluray player, it's certain that they will have one in the future. Second is that we are even more competitive, since not only many colleagues started only recently to give the HD option, but they also charge a good amount of money for it. Now that the PCs (or Macs) are fast enough to process HD with no problems, it's easy to give away the goods at no extra cost. The couple may not be able to watch it right away, but they will appreciate the freebie! -:)

[John H. Lee]

Do youguys have any unstable playback issue with blue-ray disc? I heard that , unlike DVD , blue-ray disc made in computer burner is not that of a good quality that playback is not stable. I'm just little bit cautious that giving the blueray option to the customer would lead to the complaint from them.
Is there any issue when if you put the diskcover paper on the disk?

[Dimitris Mantalias]

To my experience there are two possibilities. a) The disc wont work at all and b) it will play perfectly. The first scenario has to do with cheap players that the companies dont release a firmware update for proper disc support. We always recommend a PS3. It may be more expensive but its the best BD player with lots of updates and it's also an amazing games console. :) The grooms love the game part. As for the covers, we always use printable discs. At the price of 2,5 Euros for a printable, there is simply no excuse.

[Taky Cheung]

For all the BD we authored since 2007, never have 1 single case of problem reported by the customers. I always use TDK BD-R

[John H. Lee]

Thanks for the comforting information. Some 'purist' says non-production made blueray discs are not stable and that is why apple doesn't support the format yet...

[Jeff Harper]

If anyone here uses Vegas, please see my thread http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-hap...-hd-video.html and offer your thoughts, thanks.

I've been toying with this problem for 8 hours since posting, and no one seems to have anything to offer yet.

[Philip Howells]

Originally Posted by John H. Lee

Thanks for the comforting information. Some 'purist' says non-production made blueray discs are not stable and that is why apple doesn't support the format yet...

John, my tally on BD burns must be getting into hundreds now and yours isn't a complaint I've encountered as yet - of course that's not a huge sample as samples go but it must tell you at least part of the story.

My personal opinion of the Apple part of your comment is that Apple's decision to embrace a technology is likely to be driven by the degree the technology can be made exclusive to Apple and thus the profit the company can make out of it. That's a pragmatic marketing decision not merely Luddite.

On the other hand there are others who still don't think that BD is anything but a passing fancy - the creators of the excellent DVD-Lab authoring for example. For them the world appears to have stopped at DVD.

[John H. Lee]

Originally Posted by Philip Howells

My personal opinion of the Apple part of your comment is that Apple's decision to embrace a technology is likely to be driven by the degree the technology can be made exclusive to Apple and thus the profit the company can make out of it. That's a pragmatic marketing decision not merely Luddite.
.

Phlip, that's a valid point that make sense. I guess I gain some confidence in using blueray format without worrying that much of playback failure issue. I don't know how people in UK is adopting the format, but in US, people is gradually adopting the format, especially the player price drops below the $100.

[Philip Howells]

John, the answer is that since I'm not in retail or privy to the big manufacturers' figures, I don't know how well BD is selling in the UK. As I wrote earlier, our local Blockbuster tell me that they now receive from their Head Office, the same number of copies of each new release in BD as they do in DVD.

Of course they may be subject to all sorts of purchasing minima or other decisions but on the face of it BD's penetration of the rental film part of the market is roughly the same as the DVD penetration. What I doubt is that they're ordering on that basis because they're trying to influence the market by making BD more available than DVD.

One other factor may be people's perception of the value of HD. Recently, at least one of the main broadcasters here has been reducing the HD bitrate of its broadcasts. It seems reasonable to assume that some people considering the upgrade of their replay equipment might look at their lower quality HD transmissions and decide that the perceived difference in quality isn't worth making the change for.

[Roger Van Duyn]

There aren't even ANY Blockbuster video rental stores, or any other video rental stores around here any more either. We used to have at least a dozen here in town.

I suspect everything is now Video on Demand from the cable and satellite companies or online viewing and download.

DVD and Bluray both are entering the death cycle and being replaced by file based systems. There may still be a little short term growth in places, but overall they are going the way of VHS and Beta both. Who cares anymore which of the tape based formats was better? Optical disks are following the same path.

Virtually ALL of my corporate clients now want file based delivery of my work for them. How long until my wedding couples do also? Personally, I'll deliver the way the clients want, if I can.

[Dimitris Mantalias]

Maybe there, Video on Demand is ready to kill all DVD/BD, and the same may happen in some other places as well, but on global scale terms, physical media have a loooot of life yet. No Video On Demand services? Slow and unstable ADSL lines? Choose one or both for the most part of the world, and you've got the answer to the question.