DVD and Beyond 2008 celebrates

DVD's 10th anniversary

Time flies! The 10th anniversary edition of this website's companion magazine, which began as a directory of European companies servicing the newly-arrived DVD-Video format, is published. So, this year’s publication takes stock – and celebrates – DVD’s first 10 years.

Looking into my news archives, there were wild predictions about the nascent format. There was a surprising consensus that it is DVD-ROM that would make it big, not DVD-Video. Virtually all number-crunching pundits underestimated – badly – the format’s growth.

There were suggestions DVD would fail because it offers a picture quality only as good as television, succeeding when it will deliver true HDTV. Other claims posited the DVD format is nothing more than a flash in a pan, short-lived because of its lack of the interactivity found in online delivery.

The 650 million households worldwide which spent in excess of $50bn on DVD titles last year will beg to differ! In fact, in Europe, the installed base of DVD players and recorders has increased to 158 million last year, from just over 142 million in 2006. And the six billionth DVD title, Shawn the Sheep, was pressed in May.

Make no mistake. DVD has been an unmitigated success. Indeed, estimates put the number of devices with DVD playback capability (players, computers, game consoles) to 1.4 billion units globally.

If the news is good for consumers, the figures are challenging for the industry. The average price of DVD titles keeps falling, forcing manufacturers and packagers to live with razor-thin margins. Add the increased cost of raw material and it was too much for some, who pulled the plug.

The arrival of the next-generation format is giving hope that, as a premium product, software and hardware margins can be restored, at least for a while. There is no time for complacency, though, and expectations could be short-lived, as the price of hi-def video titles and players are already falling.

The big development this year is, indeed – and finally – the arrival of the next-generation, high-definition disc. After a bruising, but short-lived battle with HD DVD, Blu-ray Disc emerged as the winner. The industry can now regroup and forge ahead. With my home cinema installation, I breathe true high-definition every day. Denying this experience to my fellow humans ought to become a punishable offence (Brussels legislators may already be at it!).

Naturally, Blu-ray occupies a big place in the magazine this year through features, advertising and interviews. But there are clouds in this Blu sky. The handful of independent replicators who have so far taken the (expensive) plunge into BD are concerned that the format progenitor, validator and giant competitor, Sony DADC, might not give them enough breathing space and, God forbid, kill the goose that lays the golden Blu egg. Hopefully, common sense will prevail.

Environmental concerns are now part and parcel of any responsible corporate citizen's strategy, and start to be seen as a unique selling proposition. Readers will find informative material.

I was part of that small family of DVD professionals who, ten years ago when all started in earnest, shared trials, tribulations and successes, ultimately shaping Europe’s DVD creative industry. Some of those pioneers – Victoria Willis, Bob Auger, Mark Saxe, Bob Foster, Graham Sharpless – are telling their story in the magazine'spages, with lessons for things to come.

The prospect for alternative video delivery methods is giving headaches to packaged media planners. But for an optical disc industry regularly warned of impending demise, the encouraging perspective offered by our cool-headed, no-nonsense expert contributors is that packaged media is going to be around for a while. All the more so as online broadband delivery is not yet close to matching the capacity of polycarbonate to provide long-form high-resolution content to your brand new Full HD 1080p display.

The support we have received from the industry has been, once again, most satisfying. Editorial contributions and advertising commitment, so readily forthcoming, have helped to maintain this publication’s pole position – the annual review that market-leading companies prefer to use in their efforts to reach customers in Europe. Also, the opportunities offered by our print-cum-online formula has caught the imagination of marketing executives.

The extent to which the industry has embraced our website www.dvd-intelligence.com has taken us by surprise. We knew we were filling a wide gap when we created the first independent Internet platform servicing the information needs of Europe’s DVD professionals. But we did not expect that, four years on, we would generate such big numbers given the specialist target audience. In May of this year, the site recorded nearly 750,000 hits from over 18,000 visitors in 105 countries. And the numbers still keep growing.

This magazine offers you a wealth of information, analysis and frontline practitioners’ views on all these topics. The place to follow the high-definition DVD saga – and related issues – is on www.dvd-intelligence.com, of course!

Click here to request your free copy.

. . . . . . .>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> . . DVD Intelligence publisher

. ........... . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .jean-luc@dvd-intelligence.com