More DVDs made to order
JUNE 22 | After years of being hyped as the next big thing, DVD manufacturing-on-demand is finally poised to fulfill its promise, allowing suppliers to put out thousands of films and TV shows too niche to justify a traditional DVD release.
In the coming months, consumers will be able to choose from a growing range of made-to-order DVDs, everything from classic Warner Home Video movies to original Web shows.
Ironically, it’s partly the struggling economy and the slide in DVD sales and shelf space that’s benefiting MOD, in which a DVD is made when a customer places an order. The ability to now include CSS encryption, the same copy protection used on mass-produced DVDs, has been an equally powerful selling point for major studios.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group became the first major studio to offer its films through MOD this year with the launch of Warner Archive. The studio says it expects to have more than 300 films from its library available for consumers to purchase as a made-to-order DVD or download by the end of the year.
Video labels including Nickelodeon and MTV have begun releasing some TV series through Amazon.com’s MOD offshoot CreateSpace instead of a traditional DVD release. Nick’s most recent MOD releases are two seasons of popular kids’ series The Rugrats and The Fairly OddParents. MTV chose MOD for reality series The City and College Life so they could be released quickly, says Mike Haney, head of content acquisitions for CreateSpace.
Amazon also has found a niche with online programming, putting out Web hit Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon in December, and in May, The Guild, a series from Dr. Horrible actress Felicia Day.
Other studios and suppliers are said to be exploring MOD deals as well.
Doug Olzenak, president of Allied Vaughn, which handles disc manufacturing and the backend for Warner Archive, met with three other major studios this month. The company also is pitching MOD to distributors as a more efficient way of manufacturing titles that tend to sit on warehouse shelves.
All he will say about the Warner partnership is “they’ve been thrilled; we’ve been thrilled.”
Allied Vaughn and CreateSpace are the two leading players in MOD, though others are making a push. Hewlett-Packard highly publicized its launch into MOD in 2006, landing the first studio deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to test MOD releases. Though that deal has since expired and HP has cut back on MOD, the company told VB in April that it is still able to offer MOD at a competitive price. Meanwhile, new entrant Ustrive, made up of former executives and staff from digital kiosk company TitleMatch, also is making a play in MOD.
While digital downloads have gotten more hype lately, studios such as Warner are finding that consumers just want content, regardless of format, Olzenak says. “The thing that’s changing is now people are recognizing that customers of content shop for content; they don’t shop for delivery formats,” he says.
It remains to be seen whether that will hold true in stores as digital kiosk companies begin testing downloads in the second half of the year.
MOD Systems, one of the few remaining companies getting into the digital-movie kiosk business, partnered with Toshiba and NCR last year to offer downloads to SD memory cards, the same cards used in digital cameras to store photos. MOD Systems is negotiating with three retailers to launch pilot tests of the kiosks in stores in the second half of the year. CEO Anthony Bay says he’s confident the company will have deals in place in time to get kiosks in stores for the 2009 holiday season.
Apple also is eyeing the kiosk space, filing a patent for digital kiosks that could transfer movies to iPods and other Apple devices through an over-the-air connection.
MOD Systems plans to sell new releases and catalog films from Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures as a rental or permanent download, supplementing a retailer’s DVD offerings. “There’s lots of interest in a lot of different places,” Bay says.
