Koo’s Corner

I have a couple of items for benkoo.com in the works before the year closes but wanted to distinguish Judd Apatow as my person of the year. Apatow declined to accept in person citing a busy schedule but released a statement that “this was the proudest moment of my entire career”.

For many of you, the name doesn’t ring a bell which is is somewhat of travesty in my opinion. Apatow is the creative mind between the new generation of comedic gems to follow in the foot steps of the Frat Pack movies in recent years (Zoolander, Wedding Crashers, Old School)

Apatow has overseen in some capacity the following films which includes two of my top 5 of 2007

- Walk Hard (writer producer) -haven’t seen it but people keep alerting me on how good it is

- Superbad (Producer)- funniest movies of the year?

- Knocked Up (Director, Writer, Producer) - Apatow should be applauded for his casting of Katherine Heigel (bummed she just got married) as well as the casting of his real life wive as the older sister.

- Talledga Nights (Producer) - poking fun of nascar. Genius.

- Anchorman (Producer)- Steve Carrell and Will Ferrell. Sweet!

- 40 Year Old Virgin (Diretor, Writer, Producer- hilarious and somewhat poignant

Apatow has had a major role in elevating the careers of great actors like Steve Carrell, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, and John C Reilly. With Apatow’s growing success he was able to reunite his writing team from the defunct television cult classic, Freaks and Geeks.

Freaks and Geeks Clip Below

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=FlM-ny3GgX0]

Apatow has a handful of movies in the works for 2008 including Pineapple Express, Don’t Mess With Zohan, Drillbit Taylor, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Step Brothers. These films will include the likes of Seth Rogan, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrel, and a handful of other Apatow collaborators.

While its easy to ignore the guy behind the scenes, its even harder to ignore the success and influence Apatow has had on the entertainment scene the past couple of years. His films are often watched several times in theatres as well as on DVD and are staples to the Generation Y demographic.

Congrats Judd, on a successful 2007 and much thanks for picking up the slack for the rest of Hollywood.

Twice I have blogged about my enthusiasm for a product I own and have followed since its inception, (vudu demo blog, vudu initial reaction). To recap, Vudu is a small box that you plug into the internet (or wireless bridge) that allows you to play thousands of movies instantly. I am a strong believer in this Bay Area startup as the technology, usability, and concept behind Vudu all point to a successful IPO and subsequent adoption by the mainstream market. My only qualm about the company was its ability to execute and cultivate a solid business plan where market education and product differentiation would be a constant challenge. Business Week actually tackled this issue a month ago with its cover story, I want My itv

Although Vudu has only been on the market for less than 60 days, I have been pleasantly surprised with their fast start out of the gate. A couple weeks back Vudu rolled out the first series of HD releases, with promises of more to come. With HD titles now available, Vudu is now being mentioned along with Blu Ray and HD Dvd in press releases and articles announcing upcoming releases of new movies. With so much uncertainty surrounding the HD format war , consumers may now opt to go with Vudu rather than rolling the dice on a potential next gen loser (HD DVD).

While I have raved about the convenience, user interface, and ease of use of Vudu, I quickly grew skeptical of the offerings Vudu had initially thinking Vudu would live up to the hype of a Blockbuster in a box. I thought that if the Itunes store was able to resell television shows, then why not Vudu? Surely this was on Vudu’s road map but these types of distribution deals take time and the networks would need to wined, dined, and most importantly convinced that Vudu was a long term viable product and platform.

Surprisingly Vudu has already signed a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, a mere 2 months after product launch. Vudu already had a deal with Fox for movies, but it was my belief that the network television would take a wait and see approach before adding television episodes to the mix. Sometime early in 2008 shows with cult audiences like 24, Prison Break, and Family Guy will now be available to be purchased at $1.99 per episode. One would surmise other networks will join the party seeing a new revenue stream, but more importantly a increasingly popular media platform of the future.

Other news to report on the Vudu front, is more traction with distributors as initially Vudu was only sold on their website. However a quick look at Vudu’s reseller page boasts a very modest reseller network for such a young company with the likes of Magnolia, Tweeter, Sound Advice, Hifi Buys, and Myer Emco. Although the electronic giants such as Best Buy and Circuit City have yet to reach an agreement, its pretty clear that retailers like what they are seeing from the young company and believe their is a viable market to sell to.

Another encouraging sign can be found in the coming soon area of the Vudu box interface. Initially Vudu was batting around .600 or so when new releases would come out. It seems now that the studios are seeing positive signs of Vudu’s adoption and are releasing a larger percentage of movies onto the young platform. The Simpsons, Once, Superbad, Die Hard, and Spiderman 3 are some of the many popular movies that are simultaneously being released on Vudu concurrently with their DVD release.

With a good collection of new releases and old classics, Vudu only sore spot is box set collections and a good chunk of the nineties classics I grew up with (Jerry Mcguire, Forrest Gump, Shawshank, Goodwill Hunting, Tarentino, Coen Brothers, etc). Vudu made a huge marketing splash with the Bourne Series being available in HD ( the first two were free!) so its very plausible that studious are pushing for similar marketing efforts around releasing series like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, Rocky, etc, and will release those titles once an agreed upon marketing push is finalized.

Another hiccup with Vudu, lies with movies availability for purchase only or for rent only. New releases are typically only available for purchase for the first couple of weeks before becoming available for rent. Many Vudu owners are hesitant to purchase a movie instead of renting knowing if the box breaks or Vudu goes out of business, its possible their purchase will have been in vain. Luckily Vudu keeps a purchase history for each owner and will preload all purchased movies onto a new box should your box break. Still its an unnecessary drawback to a system I absolutely adore. Only time will tell if they will address this.

So with all this general analysis, how is Vudu fairing in my household? I use the box about 3x a month with my roommates using it about once a month. I have watched or rented Knocked up, Tootsie, Muholland Drive (wtf?), A player to be Named Later (great sports documentary), Who Killed the Electric Car, and Oceans 13. If I didn’t have Vudu I would likely have not watched the majority of these flicks which really validates the need and demand for such a product.

While I love the system, I am still opposed to purchasing a new release at $20, rather than purchasing the DVD or Blu Ray as its a hard copy that I will be able to hold onto and transport more easily in addition to the added extras. I have purchased movies on Vudu but strictly for convenience purposes thus far

In closing, Vudu is on the right track and are growing faster than I anticipated. More movies, more shows, and more retailers are on the horizon which will bode well for the young company. Things are shaping up nicely for Vudu who I believe will likely make a big marketing push for the product for the 2008 holiday season when their brand, product, and title selection is more mature.

Vudu is not perfect with some obvious favorites missing and others only available for purchase only. Regardless the progress Vudu has made since shipping its product is remarkable as the proliferation of new releases, HD movies, and television shows has quickly raised the value and future outlook of this industry changing product.

I have long contemplated blogging on this topic but decided to chime in now as I see this holiday season being HD DVD’s last stand. Let’s recap for those of you who don’t know squat about Blu Ray and HD DVD. I thought by now most people were somewhat familiar with this next generation format war, with the amount of advertising circulating about both products. To my surprise one of my more plugged in and knowledgeable friends confessed he was unfamiliar with Blu Ray and the format war.

Similar to how VHS won out over Beta and Laser Disc lost out to the DVD, a third generation format war of what technology is the chosen video media format has been raging for over a year. Sony’s techology, Blu Ray (or sometimes Blue Ray), is more expensive but holds higher amounts of memory compared its competitor HD DVD. Sony rolled the dice on bundling in a blu ray drive into all PS3’s which have been shipping since November 2006. At the time blu ray players were going for around $800 while PS3’s were a much more functional alternative for $600.

Through out 2007 new HD DVD and Blu Ray players hit the market with the price for both players dropping a hundred bucks or so every other month with HD DVD consistently being a hundred bucks or more cheaper than Blu Ray. Gadget gurus, reporters, technology analysts, and bloggers monitored the situation as corporate America began to take sides on which technology to embrace. Below I will break down why I think Sony Blu Ray is on the verge of claiming victory against Toshiba backed HD DVD.

Origins-

Long story short, this war was almost avoided but electronics makers, movie studios, and technology companies could not come to an agreement on what would replace DVD as the next generation of disc for movie. For more information Wikipedia has a great write up on the rift and dispute

Studios Take Sides: Many believe the most important factor for this format war will come from movie studio support as they control which format their movies will come out on. Currently Blu Ray boasts Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, and Disney as studios who exclusively release in Blu Ray for HD titles.

New line Cinema and Warner Brothers release movies in both formats while Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks exclusively release to HD DVD. In August Paramount and Dreamworks made the switch from supporting both formats to being HD DVD exclusive with rumors that they committed to be HD DVD exclusive for $150 million for a 18 month commitment. This announcement ruffled some feathers in Hollywood with Michael Bay stating he would not direct Transformers 2 because it would not be on Blu Ray (he later retracted the statement but is still bitching about it.) Below is a list of popular recent movies and what formats they have been released on.

HD DVD

Knocked Up, Bourne Ultimatam , Transformers

Blu Ray

Superbad, Simpsons Movie, Talladega Nights, Spiderman 3, Ratatoile, Pirates of the Carribean 3

Both

300 The Departed

Technology Companies, Rental, and Retail Pick Sides:

Not to be overlooked is the actual distribution of new players and discs of these next gen players. With both format’s consortuims lobbying hard to win over corporate America, Blu Ray has taken a stronger position in this regard.

On the technology side Apple, Dell, Samsung, HP and Pioneer are members of the Blu Ray consortuim with, Intel, NEC, Microsoft, and Fujutsi all in HD DVD’s camp. Bottom line these electronic makers are on board with only making hardware that play, record, or burn these type of disks. With HP, Apple, Sony, and Dell in Blu Ray’s camp its safe to say Blu Ray holds an advantage in this category.

Although sales for players is still largely dominated by PS3 blu ray players over stand alone players, we are beginning to see traction of Blu Ray camcorders and disk drives in PC’s, laptops, and desktops.

The rental market has also chimed in heavily for Blu Ray with Netflix and Blockbuster opting to push Blu Ray nationally (testing showed blu ray were 70% rentals of HD rentals) prompting both to push roll out Blu Ray rentals only nationally. Target and other retailers have opted to carry movies on both formats but elected to only stock Blu Ray players over HD DVD as well.

The bottom line is that domestically and internationally Blu Ray movies have been sold at a much higher rate than HD DVD. Although this was to be expected with PS3’s making inroads in gamer’s houses all over the world, the unwillingness of corporate America to support HD DVD has led to some countries to boast 5-1 or even 9-1 advantage of Blu Ray disc sales compared to HD DVD. On the home front its not that bad but movies released in both formats tend to usually be 2-1 to 3-1 in favor of Blu Ray (Departed and 300 being the best 2 benchmarks)..

Below a quote from a great Business Week article about the number of players in the US for both sides

“According to industry tracker Adams Media Research, by the end of this year as many as 578,000 U.S. households will own HD DVD players, compared with 370,000 that have Blu-ray players. Adams also estimates there are 300,000 more HD DVD players in circulation as an external add-on to Microsoft Xbox game consoles. But that still pales in comparison to the estimated 2.3 million Blu-ray-equipped Sony PlayStation 3 consoles sold through November in the U.S.”

From these estimates you would have around 900,00 HD DVD players compared to 2,700,000 Blu Ray players with many of these being PS3’s that may or may not be utilized as a Blu Ray player.

So why is this Christmas season so special?

Although there are a not of players out in the market compared to DVD players,those who got that big fat HD TV in the last year or so might feel the need to splurge on one of these 2 kinds of players. HD DVD backers have thought the lower price would allow them to gain ground on Blu Ray. I would guesstimate the average playing being sold this Chrisman season for HD DVD would be around $225 with the average Blu Ray player being purchased at $400 (price of PS3, recently lowered which is sure to help the cause). Despite this price advantage,