The publishers of www.dvd-intelligence.com, one of Europe’s premier online source of news, data and analysis for DVD professionals, are organising their 3rd annual seminar DVD and Beyond: The Future of Packaged Media in a Changing Marketplace, to be held at Congress Centre in London on 21 November 2006.
This year, around 500 million DVD players will be in use worldwide – perhaps as much as 1 billion when DVD-capable PCs and games consoles are counted. And consumers will spend a staggering $40 billion on DVDs.
“However, the days of the DVD industry – barely 8 years old and still growing – are numbered if cyberspace prophets are to be believed,” says Jean-Luc Renaud, founder and publisher of DVD Intelligence and the seminar director. “Packaged media is supposedly doomed, wiped out by online delivery, just around the corner. But, does it hold to scrutiny?”
Speaking about the seminar Renaud said, “It’s high time to engage in a level-headed, fact-based, analyst-led, hype-free discussion about the future of packaged media. This seminar will also venture into territories usually off the radar screen of other conferences.”
Key topics to be covered
- Video on mobile phone and portable device is portrayed as the “cool” way to consume content, taking the shine off the “old” living-room DVD format. But what is exactly the current status and future capabilities of mobile delivery technologies and how will it impact on current and next-generation discs?
- Korean and Japanese consumers have access to ubiquitous, advanced, ultra high-speed online and wireless delivery networks, which European countries want to emulate. In such an environment, what is happening to packaged media?
- With the fast take-up of HD-ready flat panel displays, will HDTV broadcasts jump-start the sale of HD packaged media hardware and software or will consumers spend be rather directed to HDTV channel subscription?1/2
- What will it take for Internet broadband to displace optical disc as the home entertainment delivery platform of choice? What is the real level of threat pre-recorded packaged content faced from the download-to-burn model? Will online bitrate capacity ever match higher resolution packaged media USPs and, if so, when?
- Is the current deadlock over unification talks between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps leave a window of opportunity for the introduction of alternative next-generation formats such as HD-VMD?
- Video-on-demand via phone lines, supposedly making disc-based entertainment delivery obsolete, has been around for 10 years without making appreciable inroads into the market. Why would much-touted iPTV – based essentially on the same principle – succeed where VoD so far failed?
- China – 1 billion consumers – is adopting home-grown next-generation DVD formats. Given that China supplies virtually all CE equipments for the global market, to what extent those alternative low-cost HD disc formats may establish a foothold in Europe and the US, and what impact they may have on ‘indigenous’ Blu-ray and HD DVD?
- Cost-effective mass production of high-capacity solid-state memory sticks that can accommodate HD movies is around the corner and could challenge the USPs of optical discs. Packaged media in their own right, what content delivery, storage and transaction models memory sticks open the door to?
- Consumers are the ultimate arbiter of the success or failure of future formats, and actors from the entire spectrum of entertainment formats and delivery systems are fighting for the heart and mind and disposable income of consumers. It is therefore critical to understand the factors governing consumer behaviour – technology, price, convenience, service offering, lifestyle, utility, demographics, etc. In short, what make consumers tick?
“While there will be plenty of opportunities to talk to product and service suppliers attending and exhibiting there, seminar contributions will come from independent industry analysts,” says Renaud. “So, expect a straight-talking, focused, one-day event that no-one remotely involved in the packaged media industry would want to miss.”
