The Blu•ray Blues

HD-DVD is dead!

Long live Blu•ray??

Not so fast. In the current issue of Digital Production Buzz's newsletter (I'd link to the actual piece but the content is refreshed every week) Larry Jordan lays out the costs of replicating on Blu•ray. I knew the costs were high since the Blu•ray spec requires copyright protection - and not just for Hollywood movies but also for your HDV baby pictures.

Or your demo reel.

How much? Here's Larry's breakdown:

• $2,500 : License Fee to author and distribute Blu•ray
• $3,000 : One-time fee to AACS. (I think this is billed per production company / individual)
• $1,585 : Per complete Blu•ray project
• $.04 : Four cents per disc. Fee paid to AACS
• $.01 : One penny per disc paid to Sony to handle all these payments on your behalf

So, for your first project licensing alone will cost $7,085. That's in addition to the actual costs of replication/duplication and packaging that we're already used to paying.

Idiotic.

If you were wondering why Sony spread their dollars around so liberally to pay off movie studios, you've got your answer.

It looks like Blu•ray is going to be the exclusive domain of the Studios. I guess the rest of us will have to settle for HD-DVD on standard DVD 5's (except that the players won't be made anymore).

Oh, and who is AACS? Just a couple of guys named IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros...

Huh. Suddenly this is starting to make sense...

UPDATE: The Avid-L list was on this discussion a week or so ago. It seems there is some compatibility issues with duplicated (not replicated) Bluray discs depending on the authoring software and the playback machines (which, of course, also bypasses all the fees detailed above). Apparently some Bluray players want to see a copy protection folder, even if it is empty and some authoring apps don't put those folders on their burns.

Don't ask me to confirm this... calls have only now just started to trickle in to our sister company Dubs by Pam asking about Bluray duplication. But this blog is named the Finishing Line and for many clients, delivery will soon become straight-to-DVDBluray.

- pi

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