BETWEEN THE LINES

July 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

In home entertainment, halfway through 2008, the world is flat. And that is a very good performance for a non-essential (believe it or not, movies are not necessary to maintain life) product category when the price of essentials like food, housing and gasoline are skyrocketing.

VB’s midyear research report shows consumer spending on sales and rentals of all home entertainment formats holding steady just above $10 billion. That’s a big improvement over the midyear mark in 2007, when home entertainment spending was down 5%.

Sales of standard DVD do look to be off 2% to 4%, according to various studio estimates, but rental is up and Blu-ray, with about
$200 million in sales in the first half is offsetting the small standard...Read More

July 3, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Just how much this industry is changing was clear at the Entertainment Merchants Assn.’s Home Media Expo show in Las Vegas last week.

The show is just a fraction as large as it used to be and the new Palms casino venue had its pluses and minuses—smaller (plus), but not easier to navigate due to scattered exhibits and events and long waits for an elevator (minus, minus). People were mostly irritated at having to stay in one hotel and do business in another. Before the show even opened, the EMA board was discussing what to do to revamp the event next year. One suggestion: lose the big production value opening session and awards show. Everything just echoes in a theater filled to less than one-third capacity.

The neither-here-nor-there nature of the show, ...Read More

Industries: Retail

June 25, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Still live from Las Vegas--Jamie Kennedy was quite funny tonight as host of the EMA awards, and his jokes about the limited number of people in the audience came across as all in fun. Kennedy remarked at one point that there were 53 people in the audience, and then when a few more folks entered the Pearl theater here at the Palms, he good naturedly upped his estimated to 56.
In reality, there were more like 200 warm bodies in the audience, including a sizable and vocal contingent from Allumination Filmworks all in matching shirts. (A show of team spirit before they are absorbed into Peace Arch?)
But the 200 might have seemed like 50something from the stage of the cavernous theater that looked to seat about 500.
There were also about 200 people in the morning's opening business session, also held in the Pearl, but there seemed to be about 53 people in each slow eleva...Read More
Industries: Retail

June 23, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

So, many of us are arriving in Las Vegas for Home Media Expo. Actually, the show officially starts tomorrow and there's no way to tell yet how many of us are actually attending, but for many attendees it's the 5th, 8th, 10th, 12th, or way-too-manyeth appearance at the annual confab formerly known as VSDA. 
I saw many familiar faces, and some new ones, at Lionsgate's swanky retailer summit yesterday, and most were planning to move from Lionsgate's digs at the Wynn to the Palms, Palms Place or Rio by today.
We're anxious to see how the new Palms/Rio venue works for the show, which appears to be more spread out, but over a smaller total space, than at the Venetian, if that makes sense.
In terms of lodging, the Palms is certainly not the Venetian. Miss those comfy suites...

Kudos to Lionsgate for putting on another fun and informative show for ...Read More
Industries: Retail

June 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Notice how "game changer" has become the studio buzz word for the interactive potential of Blu-ray? 
Both Warner's Darcy Antonellis and Disney's Lori MacPherson used the term to describe BD Live in separate keynote speeches last week.
Fair enough. The technology could in fact change how consumers view  use home entertainment if adoption becomes widespread enough.
Antonellis did a good job in her ESCA keynote of portraying the technology as having the potential to slash consumers' YouTube/Facebook/MySpace time and increase the attention they give shiny disc. Blu-ray interactivity has the potential to forge a "sticky kind of relationship [with viewers] that we have never had with the DVD format."
She used t...Read More
Industries: High-Def, Studios/Suppliers