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"There was a need for this conference to bring in some fresh perspectives from people in the entertainment industry but not necessarily in the media manufacturing," which has been the historical focus of the program, said conference director Larry Jaffee. He cited "It’s Out There, Now What?", a presentation by buzzmaker Maurice Bernstein, CEO of Giant Step, relating how he helped turn Katy Perry and Amy Winehouse into brands. "The ‘Future of Packaged Media’ is a pretty broad topic and we wanted to hit on more topics along the food chain than just manufacturing." Charles Van Horn, president of the CDSA, stated that 75 percent of the speakers had never been on one of the organization’s programs before, and that the emphasis on packaged media was to counter what he said has been an attitude in the general press that "packaged media is dead and digital [distribution] rules." Show Them The Money
Business and financial issues were hot topics, reflecting the economic concerns that optical disc replicators have been facing as CD and DVD sales continue to trend downward, combined with a still-spreading global recession that is testing the nostrum that entertainment products are recession-proof. (In fact, Edward Williams, senior analyst at market researcher BMO Capital who specializes in the game industry, said that despite a doubling of the installed base of game consoles in the U.S. since 2007, "Games are at best recession-resistant.") It also marked the first time that manufacturing and operations efficiency consultants presented at the conference. Productiv’s president Rich Boehling suggested that replicators place less emphasis on conventional operational protocols such as Six Sigma and instead implement "Earned Value Contracts," essentially abandoning the hourly wage model and instead reward productivity, as measured by pieces completed per hour. "Employees tend to give maximum effort when [payments are] tied to output," he explains. A second consultant, Asheesh Barman, executive v.p. at Acutrack, emphasized green best practices. These include encouraging replication clients to move more of their paper products to disc or file formats such as PDF, implementing more manufacturing on demand for short-run work, taking advantage of state and local incentivized programs that reward use of energy-efficient products such as CFL bulbs for plant lighting, and using the same bulk packaging used to deliver blank disc media to ship the finished products back to the customer. Disc makers got some mixed messages. John Marmaduke, president and CEO of media retailer Hastings Entertainment, believes its 153 stores in mid-sized U.S. markets that sell both new and used CDs and DVDs validate the big-box retail concept despite the fall of Tower, HMV, Wherehouse and other large media sellers. "A third of customers surveyed say that they’re OK with used media," told attendees, some of whom were replicators. He said that the buy-sell-trade-rent initiative underscores the notion that media is moving towards a "temporary ownership" model, in which DVDs and other media products move in a continuous cycle that Hasting is positioned as hub for. On the other hand, BMO Capital analyst Edward Williams believes that game software is moving inexorably towards download distribution, propelled by low-cost apps for the Apple iPhone and iTouch devices, which he added pose a "significant" challenge to handheld game players, particularly Sony’s PSP. "The PSP needs to evolve to meet what is a very credible threat to it from Apple," he stated. Many familiar disc-manufacturing brands were represented in a small product exhibit area, including mold maker Axxicon, manufacturing line maker Singulus and disc-inspection systems developer Datarius, which introduced a desktop laser-based inspection system that replaces its camera-based scanner for Blu-ray QC. But there were some new faces that also reflect new directions for replicators. Thomas Fryer, CEO of 2GeeksInALab, asserted the company’s Global Garde content protection software, which uses less then 300KB of file space, enables replicators to offer piracy protection as a service for all types of files, including HTML and PDF formats, as well as on disc. "We believe that more accessible, easier-to-use copy protection will encourage more content owners to use optical discs to distribute content," he said. Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray authoring was a strong focus of the conclave, specifically regarding how it has made the authoring workflow more complex than DVD. A panel made up of several leading independent Blu-ray authoring facilities—1K Studios, B1 Media, Giant Interactive, Deluxe Digital Studios, and RCDb—concluded that while progress is being made to establish templates that will streamline the authoring process, issues real and perceptual remain. "While some [authoring] procedures have ‘settled in’ because there has now been time enough certain templatized processes to have evolved, there is still enough uniqueness in every BD project that makes it difficult to completely streamline the BD workflow in general," commented Bruce Nazarian, president of the International Digital Media Alliance (IDMA) and CEO of Digital Media Consulting Group, Inc., who moderated the panel. But, he added, workflow is challenged by the fact that "clients are asking for far more complex BD projects to be completed on DVD timelines—and sometimes even DVD budgets!" And that’s before BD-Live enters the picture. Panelists agreed that while the Java-enabled interactive iteration of Blu-ray remains complicated, programming-intensive and vastly more expensive than even standard BD authoring, it’s definitely on Hollywood's agenda. Brian Johnson, president/CEO of B1 Media, stated, "BD-Live is still very new but the studios are putting a lot behind it." Despite the format’s slow progress toward gaining consumer traction and mindshare, Johnson says it’s a necessary step for the progression of games on disc. "We carved out a niche for creating games for DVD releases over the last ten years, but the technology was very limiting because standard DVD players had no persistent storage, so all gameplay had to be pre-rendered," he said. "Also, SD players do not randomize well, so we could not create complex games. BD-J has opened that up and allows us to create games that not only look great at 1920x1080 resolution, but that also play like true video games. Now the games we are creating in BD-J are visually impressive and also fun to play because they are a different experience every time. And it’s a great way for the studios to communicate with their audience directly. With a big installed base of connected players, the studios will have direct access to provide their customers with not only Blu-ray Discs, but also downloadable content, and possibly digital versions of their films." Sidebar: Politics Aside
One of the other notable aspects of the "Future of Packaged Media 09" conference was neither technical, nor specifically economic—it was political. The confab was a joint venture mainly between two trade organizations perceived to some extent as competitive with one another. CDSA and Media-Tech share constituencies among disc replicators, DVD mastering and authoring facilities, and supply chain entities, and both vie for the attention of content providers. Both Bryan Ekus, managing director of the Media-Tech Association, and Charles Van Horn, president of CDSA, acknowledged the perception of competitiveness in past years, though Ekus said it was never intentionally so. "There were anomalies that caused tension on certain sides at times, but our common goal is to bring the community together," he said. "We have to work together in synergistic manner of there won’t be any future." Van Horn added that the economy also drove the organizations’ convergence on the conference. As for future collaboration, he said, "We will continue to explore other alternatives to move away from a proliferation of events with a lot of overlap to bring people together at a more wide-ranging common event." Dan Daley (danwriter at aol.com) is an experienced journalist and author, covering the business and technology of the entertainment industry for over 20 years. His work has appeared in numerous publications, both trade and general interest, including Billboard, The New York Daily News, Mix Magazine, GRAMMY Magazine, American Way, Spin, History Channel, TravelHost, International Business, USA Today, ArchiTech, and many others.
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