Blue-ray distributor like CreateSpace?

[Matt Townley]

Hi Bruce,

I don’t have an exact system like CreateSpace, but I do provide Blu-ray Disc duplication. I could at least do the publishing, packaging and fulfillment, minus listing it on Amazon, and without quite as fancy of an online interface. If you can’t find anyone else and are open to a slightly different approach, feel free to email or call me and I’d be happy to talk with you and see if we can make something work for what you need.

Matt

[Jeff Bach]

Hi Bruce

I’ll bet if anyone had the stones to offer a service like you are looking for, the BDA/AACS would have them hauled to court and promptly shut down.

I would HUGELY love to be wrong, but I’m almost positive that a service like Createspace that does Blu-ray on demand will never happen. Due almost entirely to the slew of licensing, patents, royalties, DRM, etal., that is along for the ride on the cluster~!@# that is Blu-ray for anyone besides Hollywood-scale authoring houses.

To me, this is a huge MISSED opportunity. Over the last ten or so years, the SD DVD world has created this whole ecosystem of people that understand the authoring workflow and would still be quite amenable to upgrading to Blu-ray. Instead, Blu-ray BDA/AACS has shut this entire ecosystem down and left most of us on the sidelines waiting.

my .02
Jeff Bach
Quietwater Films
Madison, WI.

[Bruce Bennett]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the reply. Are you saying the royalty costs for Blue-ray are so high that Blue-ray replication/fulfillment is not profitable for most replicators? Can guys like you and me create copies of our own Blue-ray projects and distribute/sell them? Or do we need to license the technology for our very small operations?

Please elaborate if you wish.

Thanks,
Bruce

Bruce Bennett
Bennett Marketing & Media Production, LLC
Creative Inspiration
Documentaries for those who love to create … and to be inspired.

[Matt Townley]

Jeff, I agree with your sentiment completely. Sony has severely limited the expansion and adoption of smaller corporate, commercial and entertainment folks, who like you said, comprise a very large ecosystem of people that would like to upgrade to Blu-ray. Enter BD-R.

BD-Rs don’t have the over shadowing licensing, costs and control that Sony/BDA has put on BD-Rom, but instead they have a crippled technology spectrum available on them. They can’t use BD-Java, can’t be copy-protected, are not compatible with BD-Live and have other compatibility issues that replicated discs don’t have.

So to Bruce’s question, yes, you can make your own Blu-rays ans distribute them easily without having to go through huge licensing hoops. When you buy a blank BD-R, you are paying your due royalties on them, just like a CD-R or DVD-R. But you are essentially limited to authoring a DVD like disc that happens to playback in HD. You cannot really take advantage of any of the great advanced features that Blu-ray is known for.

On a side note, in response to the licensing costs of AACS, the BDA recently announced new pricing structures and fees that are lower than before and offer a bit more flexibility to the payment options.

[Jeff Bach]

Hi Matt and Bruce

All good words from Matt. I agree 100%. The recent price drop is a step in the right direction, but still keeps Blu-ray out of the hands of 96% of the authoring world. At least that is less than the 98% that it was before 🙂

I’ve passed from the frustrated phase into the apathetic and “resigned to wait” phase. The BDA seems to not want the business that comes from the 96% of the people that they do not yet have. The SD DVD world still owns the giant bulk of that crowd. My authoring is still at DVDSP 4, just like it was four + years ago.

I have to throw in a tip of my hat to John Harrington at Netblender. I love their product. From day one, they have had the authoring solution for HD DVD and then Blu-ray, that I have been anxiously waiting to use. But, I have yet to get the client or the budget that allows for the hit that the BDA/AACS requires 🙁

Hopefully, someday soon that will change.
Jeff

Jeff Bach
Quietwater Films
Madison, WI.

[Tim Green]

Disc on Demand is an Australian company that does BD-R to order, similar to Createspace, although it doesn’t “distribute” to other websites like Amazon. You do get an online store, however, similar to Createspace’s eStore. https://discondemand.com.au/