Expecting the death of the DVD? It's going to be a while says, the amusingly dry Joseph Amodei, president of Hart Sharp Video, a New York-based film distributor for the home market. The DVD business is worth about $24 billion a year, thanks in part to HD and Blu-Ray tech. Besides, "music studios are greedy," he says. "They'll put content out in any way people will consume it."
"The mass consumer loves to go into the stores on Tuesday -- street day -- to browse," Amodei says. "Yeah, one day they'll stop. But we're on a 10- to 15-year cycle. Who knows where we'll be then."
Kevin Collins, director of HD DVD Evangelism at Microsoft, reminds usnot to get too excited, either. Will all physical media -- like DVDs --
go away? Collins says there are two fractions at the company thatdivide on the matter: "We talk about [what needs to happen].
Forty-megabit download speed is really what you need." That exists inAsia, but not here. And once you have that, he says, you need lots ofdisk space. "You can prepare for this, but in the short run? The silverdisc is going to be here for awhile."
What does this mean for indie films? Oddly not much -- it's still toughto get on the shelves of Walmart, and it’s only going to become moredifficult as new physical formats take off. (You wind up with more ofthe same top sellers crowded onto the same shelf space.)
"Because of HD and Blu-Ray, there's less shelf space for indie films,"
says Brent Hoff, editor of Wholphin, a DVD magazine with great onlineclips dedicated tounseen films. "[Indie films are] eight or nine times more expensive toput out there in the format. The sales are good, but not phenomenal."
Another interesting point on the future of film distribution, according to Collins: Watch the kid market. "You really see the interactive graphics going into play [with] children's title. You can really draw that age group into the interactivity."
"Not all movie viewers are gamers" -- we know that from the stats, says Collins. Sure, the big crossovers do well -- for instance, watch the upcoming Halo film on your game console and play real-time target practice. (Apparently, Microsoft has prototypes in which "you can use the console with the movie and shoot things.") But that's not mass appeal -- a lot of people still like to mentally check out when they watch a film.
One last nugget of info from Collins: Coming this summer to your home HD player -- up-to-date trailers (finally!). "None of the HD players ship with trailers," he says. "This summer they'll start downloading them." Yet, another reason to lose the silver disc with its two-year-old trailers.
