Welcome to BluScenes
February 1, 2012 - Moving the blog to Google Plus.
This will be my last post on the site. I'll be moving our blog over to Google Plus. I've been looking for a better way to integrate a blog with our site, and I think that Google Plus will add some cool social interaction. So, if you are already a member, feel free to add us to your circles!
January 11, 2012 - A Fab Deal!
We're excited to be one of the featured products on the design site Fab.com.
A number of our discs and our Compendium are featured at a great price. So click the link above to accept our invite. And while you're there, check out some of the other products. It's addicting and fun!
January 2, 2012 Happy New Year!
Please excuse the break in blog posts. We had a very busy December. Thank you to our customers for making the BluScenes Compendium the best-selling ambient Blu-ray collection ever. And that's without a distribution deal. Speaking of which, there have been some developments in the distribution area, but things are far from settled and I'm unsure of how to proceed.
Distribution is a difficult issue because you are putting your fate into the hands of another company. You are trusting that they will promote you and that when they collect the money, they will pay you. And if they don't, you're basically screwed. On the other hand, if you are self-distributed, the inventory risk is low and if you run into problems you only have yourself to blame.
Anyway, we're planning some cool promotions for January, and we're also offering our brand new BluScenes Compendium with FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING for a limited time. We're able to do this because the fine folks at Scanavo came up with a gorgeous and sturdy case that uses 85% less plastic than using 12 separate cases.
This week also marks 2 years since I lost my job in the midst of the Great Recession. I already had a seed of an idea in my mind, but sometimes having nothing to lose is a great motivation to take a risk.
Wishing you and yours a very prosperous 2012.
All the best,
Jason Rosenfeld
December 6 - New Release day! (With a catch).
While today is technically our new release day, orders don't begin shipping until tomorrow. Because Blu-ray is still a distant second to DVD, and because there are only a few Blu-ray production lines in the United States, most DVD replication facilities have not yet made the (significant) investment required to run a Blu-ray production line. In any case, last week, both our primary and our backup lines (two separate facilities) experienced significant downtime. Finding a replacement proved to not be an option because many of the other facilities in the USA use those two lines (Signature & Deluxe). Aside from that, the AACS requirement ties our masters to a particular facility.
Fortunately, we are able to mitigate the delay by shipping our orders from the factory in California, which eliminates cross-country 3-day freight. We are also bumping all standard shipping orders up from Media Mail to First Class Mail. While we'd intended to deliver in our usual 1-3 days, these orders will still ship within the original media mail guidelines of 5-10 business days. I sent an email to Amazon and other resellers letting them know that their discs will be 24-48 hours late.
A special shout-out to Denise for strong-arming the production team and getting our discs out first (there is a huge backlog of about 25 other projects)! It's for that kind of service that we've done 11 discs with them and now our entire 12-disc box set. They don't usually drop ship, but they are making this exception for us. (Our masters have been waiting for a looong time).
BTW, did you know that Blu-ray discs are still pretty much stamped out with a mold? Not very different from old vinyl records, although there are layers of coatings. The equipment involved in the meltdown at both facilities was what the facilities need to make the molds, or "stampers." Our regular facility can handle the manufacturing, but they are still bringing their mastering capability back online.
November 28 - AACS still stinks
Heard back from my replication facility that my attempt to allow "UNLIMITED" managed copies will likely cause problems with some players, since apparently nobody else is doing it, so I had to make a last minute change to limit copies to 3 copies. We'll ship a day or two later than we planned because of this (we will upgrade to first class from media mail to make up for lost time).
That kind of stinks because we don't want to use AACS anyway. For our Compendium, AACS fees add up to $.48 per set. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. It comes directly out of the bottom line. Meanwhile, the copy protection is ridiculously easy to break and we prefer not to have it anyway (it's mandatory).
It's like I've said in the past. I grew up in a very "mafia-oriented" town in NYC. When you are forced to pay for "protection," it's called a racket.
November 27 - Visions of Meat. You know you want it.
Just an update for all of you Visions of Meat fans.
We're going to try to set up a Kickstarter project. We're going to try to offer two versions:
1) Regular Version
2) SteelBook Version (oh yeah...)
Plus, we'll offer a host of options, like the ability to buy a producer credit. You can be a producer of Visions of Meat. Put that on your business card.
If enough people want this to happen, we will make this a reality. We will even include a bonus 3D Meat section.
You know you want it.
May 16, 2011 - Attempting To Fend Of Price Increases
We are looking at a few options to avoid increasing our prices. One of these options involves switching our discs to a slimline case. While the cost is about the same, we can trim our freight and postage expenses significantly. As an added benefit, the discs would take up less space on your media shelf.
We've also looked at combining our MegaBundles into a single multi-disc case. The jury is still out on this, though. The main issue is that we are always releasing new discs, and we don't want to have to keep revising our bundle configurations.
Another added value that we'll be including shortly are free screensavers with some of our discs, beginning with the Aquarium disc. We tried to offer an aquarium via the Mac App store, and while the experiment proved that there is a demand, the App store placed too many limitations on how the screensaver performed. We've requested that HiveBrain software remove it from the App Store. Instead, we will offer it for direct download. Revenue from sales of the standalone screensaver will be donated. It will also be included at no charge with our Blu-ray discs.
January 1, 2011 HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I can hardly believe that it has been one year since we launched our line of Blu-ray discs. Today also marks the one year anniversary of my last day at my last employer, DVD International, where I helped to develop another ambient, but very different line, called HDScape. I also marketed Digital Video Essentials, and helped to develop a popular line of religious discs called Bibles On DVD. In a lot of ways, my job hasn't changed, I just do it for my own company.
2010 was a growing year in which virtually all of the revenue from sales went into growing an improving our product line. Growing years aren't bad. In business, it's important to implement the right systems to put yourself in a position to scale and expand. I'm really excited about what's in store for BluScenes in 2011. Every week, more customers try us out and experience our discs. Word of mouth was tremendous for us in 2010. So many people tried us out on the recommendation of their friends. It's always fun getting an email from new customers trying our discs and telling us how they found out about us.
On a personal level, my twin girls turned 2 in October. Things have gotten interesting! I owe an infinite amount of gratitude to my wife, Kim. I could not have started a new business (especially in this economic environment) without her faith that I could get it off the ground. When I first started, I was so burned out and worn down from my old job that there were days where I could barely get anything done. These days, even on a stressful day, Kim tells me that she can see from my face that I'm much happier. I'm proud to call her my wife. She's a terrific mom and she's the person that I trust more than anybody when I need an opinion about anything, whether business-related or personal.
I really love what I do at BluScenes. I think that's important to play to win in business, but you have to be passionate about what you do day-in and day-out, otherwise you probably won't last too long. I hope my passion for our products has come through in my blog posts during the past year. Here's to an even better 2011.
Lastly, a big THANK YOU for all of our retail and wholesale customers. We love reading your emails and blog posts about our discs. While we're excited about our continued growth, we're glad that so many customers returned for our new releases. That tells me you enjoy our products and appreciate what we stand for.
Thank you for your business and for allowing us to share our passion with you.
December 30, 2010 USPS Shipping Costs to Increase on January 2nd.
We've taken steps to reduce our costs and lower our prices, so I want to explain our shipping policy. We don't make money on shipping. Unlike some online retailers, we charge exactly what it costs us to ship (not that marking up shipping and handling is wrong, but we choose not to do it). We believe that "handling" is part of what it takes to create our products. If anything, it's already factored into the product cost.
We don't believe that there will be drastic increases in our shipping costs, but we will continue to charge the actual USPS rates, which means that some methods (like media mail) will increase on January 2. The good news? Some methods, like Priority Mail, might cost less depending on location.
December 28, 2010 - 26 Inches of Snow
& 3) Bonus conclusion: I'm thinking of a twist on #2 so that past customers can also take advantage without having to repurchase the first 3 discs.
September 25, 2010 - A few weeks away from replication
It has been remarkably quiet over the last week or so. All of the discs are at the authoring facility and we're finishing up on the cover designs, which I'll be sure to post shortly.
I had to re-render one of the files and overnight it to the authoring house this morning. The first 2 TB drive that I sent to them wouldn't mount, so I backed up my backup and sent a replacement drive. When I received the original drive back, it mounted fine on my machine. I can believe it, though, as I've seen lots of weirdness with computers over the last few decades.
Anyway, the replacement drive that I sent inadvertently contained one incorrect file. So I had to re-render it and send it on a separate drive. It was one of the Waves of Tranqulity scenes. We really try to make these discs so they'll blend into the background. You can leave them running all week if you want, and something that stands out, like someone talking or walking across the beach would get really old, really fast.
We loop seamlessly without any jumps, and because they loop, we don't want certain events to happen, like people walking across the screen, etc. Anyway, the looping point had not been set on the other version that I sent. it is now.
September 4, 2010 - A Sneak Peek of BluScenes: Underwater Cozumel
November 28 - AACS still stinks
Heard back from my replication facility that my attempt to allow "UNLIMITED" managed copies will likely cause problems with some players, since apparently nobody else is doing it, so I had to make a last minute change to limit copies to 3 copies. We'll ship a day or two later than we planned because of this (we will upgrade to first class from media mail to make up for lost time).
That kind of stinks because we don't want to use AACS anyway. For our Compendium, AACS fees add up to $.48 per set. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. It comes directly out of the bottom line. Meanwhile, the copy protection is ridiculously easy to break and we prefer not to have it anyway (it's mandatory).
It's like I've said in the past. I grew up in a very "mafia-oriented" town in NYC. When you are forced to pay for "protection," it's called a racket.
November 27 - Visions of Meat. You know you want it.
Just an update for all of you Visions of Meat fans.
We're going to try to set up a Kickstarter project. We're going to try to offer two versions:
1) Regular Version
2) SteelBook Version (oh yeah...)
Plus, we'll offer a host of options, like the ability to buy a producer credit. You can be a producer of Visions of Meat. Put that on your business card.
If enough people want this to happen, we will make this a reality. We will even include a bonus 3D Meat section.
You know you want it.
November 26, 2011 - Bandwidth Blitz!
We offered a free Yule Log screensaver with our Compendium, and some people misinterpreted and thought it was a free screensaver. Well, as Steve Jobs taught us, sometimes we can will things into existence.
November 23, 2011 - Preparing for Black Friday
It's funny that all three of our release cycles have coincided with Black Friday. Certainly, there are worse times to debut new discs, but each year we start our editing process earlier than the last, and we simply end up using every available moment to get things the way we like them.
At the beginning of our first year, we released 3 discs. In our second year, we released 4 more, and now we've got another 4 discs, plus a 12 Disc Box Set with a bonus disc bringing the total to 12. The economy still stinks, but we're plowing ahead.
When I used to be in a band (back in my college days), I used to dream of walking into a supermarket and hearing the band's music. I'd know that we'd arrived. It never happened. However, now I find our videos in all sorts of places. I've learned that something as whimsical as an aquarium on Blu-ray has a lot of real-life use -- from doctor's offices, to nursing homes, oncology centers, restaurants, spas, trendy boutique hotels and more. Literally, hundreds of thousands of places.
So, maybe there's something to this "ambient thing" after all.
October 3, 2011 - Welcome Deals.Woot visitors.
We hope that you take advantage of our sale and enjoy our discs. If you have any questions, there is usually somebody around to take your call, instant message (look at the lower right of the page), or email.
The most common question that we get is about our pricing. We're a 2 year-old company. We are self-distributed and self financed (read: banks aren't exactly in a lending mood, let alone to a bunch of guys who film fishtanks). In a little under 2 years, we've sold several hundred thousands BluScenes discs to customers around the world. We have five new discs coming out within the next few months (and past customers always get an extremely steep discount on the new stuff).
Simply put, on most days we sell at full (or a higher) price. When we need to raise some funds for new releases, we offer deals. With 5 new discs coming out in the next few months, we're holding some sales to fund them.
The way that we determine our pricing is as follows:
1) We take our production costs into account. They are quite high (expecially when factoring mandatory AACS fees, authoring and mastering), but we immediately divide them by hundreds of thousands of units. We use this figure as the basis of our cost-per-unit.
2) We factor in our replication and distribution costs.
3) We figure out what we need to keep it going. Not to get rich, not to position the product at a higher pricepoint, but to charge a fair markup where we make a profit and customers get a good deal. We price for volume and get volume pricing from our suppliers.
While we make a living producing and selling fun and unusual items, we are dead serious about customer service. We stand behind everything that we sell with a 100% no-questions asked customer service guarantee.
August 26, 2011 - We're not holding our breath for Ultraviolet.
Sorry for the unusual radio silence - nothing top secret going on, but a lot to talk about. Our Mac App continues to rank among the Top 10 entertainment apps, and we've been working on our upcoming releases (check out our YouTube channel for links to works in progress, that's sort of like our corkboard for new ideas).
We've been reading about Ultraviolet, which is supposed to be the successor to managed copy, even though it seems as though you'd need to actually have managed copy up and running to name a successor. Perhaps "replacement" is more appropriate. In any case, we're not buying it. It's a DRM solution that leaves out 95% of portable devices (Apple is not signed on to the scheme).
Instead, we will offer MKV (Matroska Media Container) files, Cineform, ProRes as well as MP4 and M2V files. Unprotected and DRM free.
Along with this, we will announcing volume pricing for lodging, hospitals and OEM hardware manufacturers.
I'm going to be cutting it short, but look forward to a brand new BluScenes website in the next few days. We're getting ready to launch a simpler and slicker design as we prepare to begin our new fiscal year on September 1.
August 6, 2011
We offered a free Yule Log screensaver with our Compendium, and some people misinterpreted and thought it was a free screensaver. Well, as Steve Jobs taught us, sometimes we can will things into existence.
We decided to make it free to everybody. You can find it here. If you like it, please be sure to tell your friends where you found it! We've increased our available bandwidth to 10 TB, and we're already 3/4 through, so we'll probably need to add another 10 TB.
And don't forget that our 12 disc BluScenes Compendium is still on sale. We literally tried to make sure that has a bit of something for everybody. From flowering gardens for your mom, to psychedelic fractal art for your hippy uncle. From Journey Through Space for your science-obsessed children to Impressionist art for your next cocktail party. It's like a Whitman's Sampler of ambient art. Some of it is sweet, and some of it is nutty. And with some of it you just don't know until you take a bite. Ok. enough bad metaphors.
Anyway, we increased our production by about 300% since last year, but we are also offering 12 discs at essentially the price that we charged for 7 discs a year ago (combining things in a single case meant that we could use the money saved on cases to include more discs!), so supplies are going to be very tight. We might be able to squeeze another replication order in if necessary, but it's not 100%.
No pressure, we still have plenty of stock, but that's just how it is. We only keep 30-60 days of inventory on hand at any given time.
And don't forget that our 12 disc BluScenes Compendium is still on sale. We literally tried to make sure that has a bit of something for everybody. From flowering gardens for your mom, to psychedelic fractal art for your hippy uncle. From Journey Through Space for your science-obsessed children to Impressionist art for your next cocktail party. It's like a Whitman's Sampler of ambient art. Some of it is sweet, and some of it is nutty. And with some of it you just don't know until you take a bite. Ok. enough bad metaphors.
Anyway, we increased our production by about 300% since last year, but we are also offering 12 discs at essentially the price that we charged for 7 discs a year ago (combining things in a single case meant that we could use the money saved on cases to include more discs!), so supplies are going to be very tight. We might be able to squeeze another replication order in if necessary, but it's not 100%.
No pressure, we still have plenty of stock, but that's just how it is. We only keep 30-60 days of inventory on hand at any given time.
November 23, 2011 - Preparing for Black Friday
It's funny that all three of our release cycles have coincided with Black Friday. Certainly, there are worse times to debut new discs, but each year we start our editing process earlier than the last, and we simply end up using every available moment to get things the way we like them.
At the beginning of our first year, we released 3 discs. In our second year, we released 4 more, and now we've got another 4 discs, plus a 12 Disc Box Set with a bonus disc bringing the total to 12. The economy still stinks, but we're plowing ahead.
When I used to be in a band (back in my college days), I used to dream of walking into a supermarket and hearing the band's music. I'd know that we'd arrived. It never happened. However, now I find our videos in all sorts of places. I've learned that something as whimsical as an aquarium on Blu-ray has a lot of real-life use -- from doctor's offices, to nursing homes, oncology centers, restaurants, spas, trendy boutique hotels and more. Literally, hundreds of thousands of places.
So, maybe there's something to this "ambient thing" after all.
October 3, 2011 - Welcome Deals.Woot visitors.
We hope that you take advantage of our sale and enjoy our discs. If you have any questions, there is usually somebody around to take your call, instant message (look at the lower right of the page), or email.
The most common question that we get is about our pricing. We're a 2 year-old company. We are self-distributed and self financed (read: banks aren't exactly in a lending mood, let alone to a bunch of guys who film fishtanks). In a little under 2 years, we've sold several hundred thousands BluScenes discs to customers around the world. We have five new discs coming out within the next few months (and past customers always get an extremely steep discount on the new stuff).
Simply put, on most days we sell at full (or a higher) price. When we need to raise some funds for new releases, we offer deals. With 5 new discs coming out in the next few months, we're holding some sales to fund them.
The way that we determine our pricing is as follows:
1) We take our production costs into account. They are quite high (expecially when factoring mandatory AACS fees, authoring and mastering), but we immediately divide them by hundreds of thousands of units. We use this figure as the basis of our cost-per-unit.
2) We factor in our replication and distribution costs.
3) We figure out what we need to keep it going. Not to get rich, not to position the product at a higher pricepoint, but to charge a fair markup where we make a profit and customers get a good deal. We price for volume and get volume pricing from our suppliers.
While we make a living producing and selling fun and unusual items, we are dead serious about customer service. We stand behind everything that we sell with a 100% no-questions asked customer service guarantee.
August 26, 2011 - We're not holding our breath for Ultraviolet.
Sorry for the unusual radio silence - nothing top secret going on, but a lot to talk about. Our Mac App continues to rank among the Top 10 entertainment apps, and we've been working on our upcoming releases (check out our YouTube channel for links to works in progress, that's sort of like our corkboard for new ideas).
We've been reading about Ultraviolet, which is supposed to be the successor to managed copy, even though it seems as though you'd need to actually have managed copy up and running to name a successor. Perhaps "replacement" is more appropriate. In any case, we're not buying it. It's a DRM solution that leaves out 95% of portable devices (Apple is not signed on to the scheme).
Instead, we will offer MKV (Matroska Media Container) files, Cineform, ProRes as well as MP4 and M2V files. Unprotected and DRM free.
Along with this, we will announcing volume pricing for lodging, hospitals and OEM hardware manufacturers.
I'm going to be cutting it short, but look forward to a brand new BluScenes website in the next few days. We're getting ready to launch a simpler and slicker design as we prepare to begin our new fiscal year on September 1.
August 6, 2011
The last two months have brought us tens of thousands of new customers, both on the Mac App store, and via some exclusive OEM deals in which we were fortunate enough to partake. To those new customers, a very hardy welcome and we are ecstatic to have a chance to communicate with you.
We're been busy working on some new releases for the fall, and our improved scale is going to result in better pricing and some cool features that nobody else is offering. More info soon!
June 1, 2011 Major Expansion
We've been working on a bunch of exciting releases for the fall -- exactly how many are going to be released at the same time is still being determined. We're rolling out our downloadable screensaver program for Mac and PC, and we will be publishing our first few apps to the Mac app store in the coming weeks.
We're also finalizing a sponsorship that will bring some of our discs to the masses at shocking prices.
We started BluScenes when the Blu-ray format was still considered to be "in progress." One much-heralded feature was something called "managed copy." AACS-LA, the organization responsible for Blu-ray licensing has not delivered on this feature. As such, we have no choice but to begin rolling out our own solution. For now, this solution will take the form of downloads of different types -- video files, video container files, preloaded hard drives with unprotected media and computer screensavers.
Our rollout will begin in stages. Our first download, available as of this writing, is a a PC/Mac screensaver version of our very popular Coral Reef Aquarium program. We will gauge the response and issue future downloads if there is a demand. The things keeping me from posting everything at once are my own time constraints. I'm excited about downloads and finding ways to make up for AACS-LA's failure. And it is interesting that all of this comes as we continue to look beyond the Blu-ray disc.
It is my opinion that features like "digital copy" are not a feature of Blu-ray. They are a workaround - a way to address AACS-LA's failure to provide a mobile content option for Blu-ray publishers. Believe it or not, we are REQUIRED pay a royalty to AACS (copy protection) for each disc we sell. We have no choice but to use the copy protection on our discs. And, oh yeah, it doesn't work.
This month alone, we've literally spent thousands of dollars on AACS fees. In mafia terms, charging for non-existent protection is known as a racket.
Aside from this AACS nonsense, we're having a lot of fun over here.
We are looking at a few options to avoid increasing our prices. One of these options involves switching our discs to a slimline case. While the cost is about the same, we can trim our freight and postage expenses significantly. As an added benefit, the discs would take up less space on your media shelf.
We've also looked at combining our MegaBundles into a single multi-disc case. The jury is still out on this, though. The main issue is that we are always releasing new discs, and we don't want to have to keep revising our bundle configurations.
Another added value that we'll be including shortly are free screensavers with some of our discs, beginning with the Aquarium disc. We tried to offer an aquarium via the Mac App store, and while the experiment proved that there is a demand, the App store placed too many limitations on how the screensaver performed. We've requested that HiveBrain software remove it from the App Store. Instead, we will offer it for direct download. Revenue from sales of the standalone screensaver will be donated. It will also be included at no charge with our Blu-ray discs.
May 10, 2011 - Modest Price increases coming June 1
We have always tried to keep our costs as low as possible so that we can offer great deals. For the last 18 months, we've absorbed increasing freight and fuel costs, but as with so many other businesses, we will be modifying some of our pricing to keep it in line with the rising costs of doing business.
Effective June 1, all BluScenes discs will retail for $15.95 (up from $14.95). Our free shipping will be replaced with a $2 flat rate shipping to anywhere in the USA and Canada. In the meantime, we've started our Father's Day promotion early, in case you want to purchase before the price increases. Thanks!
April 7, 2011 - Update
Thanks for stopping by! Our move is complete and my family (and business) have settled in at our new home. We didn't move very far away, but it was still a pretty hectic month, so my ex post facto apologies if you emailed me and my responses were more scattered than usual.
We're working on a bunch of new discs, and we're supporting this with some sales of our existing discs at some incredible prices. We're entirely self-funded here, so when we want to release something new we'll usually open the spigot on some of our existing discs to help pay the way for the new ones. This allows us to keep our costs down, but it also forces us to focus on the kinds of discs that people will want to own.
We've also instituted a limit on the number of discs that can be purchased at a discount. In the past few months, we've had situations where people were buying 30-50 bundles and selling them at jacked-up prices. The result was that we'd be out of stock and that people would have to pay 2-3 times the price we are charging.
We've expanded our selling on some of these other venues directly (Amazon Marketplace and eBay) in the hope that we can offer uniformly low prices to everybody.
March 19, 2011 - Beyond The Disc?
March of 2011 marks the start of our long-term strategy to move beyond the Blu-ray disc. The first example is the Coral Reef Aquarium screensaver available via the Mac App Store. Rather than attempt something like this on our own, we teamed up with Hive Brain Software. The resulting screensaver app has been in the top 50 of paid apps since its launch about a week ago.
Due to some idiosyncrasies of how the Mac app store works, we can't offer discounts specifically for our customers -- however, we can set certain days where the price is set to zero and notify our customers so they can obtain the screensaver for free.
We are also planning a PC version, as well as a Mac version outside of the app store. It might offer some additional features not allowed in the app store due to certain "sandbox" requirements.
April will see the launch of our ShuttleDrive service for professional customers. Quite simply, this is a hard drive with unprotected (no DRM -- no dreaded AACS) copies of our discs in MKV container file format with most features preserved. The idea of ShuttleDrive is as follows: Our current MegaBundle is about 120 GB. Downloading this would take forever and cost about $18 in bandwidth even at a cheap and reliable host like Amazon S3.
Instead, we're buying a fleet of hard drives and loading them with content. Customers will pay a deposit for the drive. Once it's sent back, we'll refund the deposit. The drives will be rewritten regularly and scanned for viruses. Basically, this is the snail-mail version of digital downloads -- so that we can deliver the highest quality without tying up your internet connection.
We also have a few other things planned for the coming months. We plan to hold a limited sale for the benefit of GeoHot, the iPhone and PS3 jailbreaker. All proceeds will go to his legal defense fund, and we will be eating the cost of the discs (thus, the limited nature of the sale). Why? because we should all be able to use products that we purchase as we see fit.
The same goes for businesses. I'm tired of having to pay AACS-LA for a DRM scheme that doesn't work and that doesn't deliver on the minimum promised capabilities - I'm talking about managed copy, something that we originally viewed as vital to our business, but have had to live to do without.
HD DVD had its own issues, but at least AACS was not compulsory. We currently pay about 7% of replication costs to AACS-LA, and we also have to pay an up-front fee for each disc -- and we don't even want or need DRM. If you are testing out new projects with small runs of about 1,000 discs, AACS will effectively double your replication costs.
A large number of new discs are in the works, and we've developed a structure with new content providers that will really allow us to raise the bar on our releases, all while keeping prices low and probably paying providers significantly more than they'd get at a traditional label.
We were also looking seriously into some distribution options, and aside from wanting to make some progress internationally, I'm thinking that we'll remain self-distributed. Does that sound OK to you?
February 21, 2011 - Our Biggest Month Yet!
Hello again! It's been almost three weeks since my last post. But we've been busy processing orders and working on our new release schedule for the end of the year. This month was our biggest month ever. Thank you!
As soon as we sign the papers and cap the pens, I'll be able to provide more details, but I'm pleased with the caliber of content that we've been able to attract. One disc that I'm happy about is an underwater disc made just for kids. I tried to sign a deal for this same program at my old employer, and I'm happy to be working with these guys again. As well as containing some gorgeous underwater footage, there's also an entire album of kids' songs. And yes, a guy in a furry shark costume.
But 2011 will hopefully also see us release discs featuring some of the most beautiful HD footage from the Monterey Peninsula, some truly insane fractal experiments along with some surprising musical scores.
And of course, there are a few other releases that will remain under wraps for now, but we think that you'll enjoy them as much we will.
February 3, 2011 Spears & Munsil Benchmark back in stock!
It took longer than we thought, but we're happy to have S&M back on our site! Our "free bonus disc" offer has been expanded to any of our BluScenes discs, and we're trying something new. An additional discount on our MegaBundle with the purchase of Spears & Munsil. In sum, $24.95 for S&M, $15 for the MegaBundle = $39.95. We'll test it out with free USA and Canada shipping.
February 2, 2011 Groundhog Day
Hello again! It's been almost three weeks since my last post. But we've been busy processing orders and working on our new release schedule for the end of the year. This month was our biggest month ever. Thank you!
As soon as we sign the papers and cap the pens, I'll be able to provide more details, but I'm pleased with the caliber of content that we've been able to attract. One disc that I'm happy about is an underwater disc made just for kids. I tried to sign a deal for this same program at my old employer, and I'm happy to be working with these guys again. As well as containing some gorgeous underwater footage, there's also an entire album of kids' songs. And yes, a guy in a furry shark costume.
But 2011 will hopefully also see us release discs featuring some of the most beautiful HD footage from the Monterey Peninsula, some truly insane fractal experiments along with some surprising musical scores.
And of course, there are a few other releases that will remain under wraps for now, but we think that you'll enjoy them as much we will.
February 3, 2011 Spears & Munsil Benchmark back in stock!
It took longer than we thought, but we're happy to have S&M back on our site! Our "free bonus disc" offer has been expanded to any of our BluScenes discs, and we're trying something new. An additional discount on our MegaBundle with the purchase of Spears & Munsil. In sum, $24.95 for S&M, $15 for the MegaBundle = $39.95. We'll test it out with free USA and Canada shipping.
February 2, 2011 Groundhog Day
I love the movie "Groundhog Day." I lived it for a good 7 years of my life. Spent years making the same mistakes over and over until I finally "got it right" and moved on. When things don't work, you have to find a way to move on.
It has me thinking. I'm no fan of DRM. I don't believe it works. Checking torrent sites for our content proves that it doesn't work. It only serves to antagonize paying customers. I've always believed this, yet I've built a business on a content platform that requires mandatory DRM.
Fact is, AACS costs Scenic Labs more than piracy. You heard that right. The supposed "protection" costs us more than the lost sales. How do I figure? Each disc that we sell includes a $.04 tribute/tax to AACS. If you buy a 7 disc bundle, we paid $.28 for mandatory protection that doesn't work (not counting AACS setup fees).
On the other hand, if somebody downloads our products illegally, there's no cost to us. Unlike some in the entertainment industry, I don't believe that somebody who downloads would have ever purchased from us. Our prices, especially during promotions, are cheaper than making illegal copies.
I'm not telling you to steal our content, and I'm not giving permission to steal. However, if you purchased our discs, you should have the right to make as many copies as you need.
AACS was supposed to include a feature called Managed Copy. Our discs comply with this standard. 3 years after the victory of the Blu-ray format over HD DVD, there is still no legal way to make copies. The rollout of managed copy has been delayed multiple times. AACS-LA does not have its act together.
While many people don't need copies, some people do -- for instance, to run a media server in a home or place of business. In fact, a hospital contacted me about this just today.
I'm thinking that we might start renting out hard drives with our unprotected files. At about 150 GB for Blu-ray quality (much larger for 4K or uncompressed files), snail mail would actually be cheaper and faster than digital delivery. We'll charge some inflated price for the drives with the idea that we don't want to be in the business of selling the hardware. Once the drives are returned, we'll refund a hard drive deposit. For security, we'll wipe them completely and make a new copy each time.
January 1, 2011 HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I can hardly believe that it has been one year since we launched our line of Blu-ray discs. Today also marks the one year anniversary of my last day at my last employer, DVD International, where I helped to develop another ambient, but very different line, called HDScape. I also marketed Digital Video Essentials, and helped to develop a popular line of religious discs called Bibles On DVD. In a lot of ways, my job hasn't changed, I just do it for my own company.
2010 was a growing year in which virtually all of the revenue from sales went into growing an improving our product line. Growing years aren't bad. In business, it's important to implement the right systems to put yourself in a position to scale and expand. I'm really excited about what's in store for BluScenes in 2011. Every week, more customers try us out and experience our discs. Word of mouth was tremendous for us in 2010. So many people tried us out on the recommendation of their friends. It's always fun getting an email from new customers trying our discs and telling us how they found out about us.
On a personal level, my twin girls turned 2 in October. Things have gotten interesting! I owe an infinite amount of gratitude to my wife, Kim. I could not have started a new business (especially in this economic environment) without her faith that I could get it off the ground. When I first started, I was so burned out and worn down from my old job that there were days where I could barely get anything done. These days, even on a stressful day, Kim tells me that she can see from my face that I'm much happier. I'm proud to call her my wife. She's a terrific mom and she's the person that I trust more than anybody when I need an opinion about anything, whether business-related or personal.
I really love what I do at BluScenes. I think that's important to play to win in business, but you have to be passionate about what you do day-in and day-out, otherwise you probably won't last too long. I hope my passion for our products has come through in my blog posts during the past year. Here's to an even better 2011.
Lastly, a big THANK YOU for all of our retail and wholesale customers. We love reading your emails and blog posts about our discs. While we're excited about our continued growth, we're glad that so many customers returned for our new releases. That tells me you enjoy our products and appreciate what we stand for.
Thank you for your business and for allowing us to share our passion with you.
December 30, 2010 USPS Shipping Costs to Increase on January 2nd.
We've taken steps to reduce our costs and lower our prices, so I want to explain our shipping policy. We don't make money on shipping. Unlike some online retailers, we charge exactly what it costs us to ship (not that marking up shipping and handling is wrong, but we choose not to do it). We believe that "handling" is part of what it takes to create our products. If anything, it's already factored into the product cost.
We don't believe that there will be drastic increases in our shipping costs, but we will continue to charge the actual USPS rates, which means that some methods (like media mail) will increase on January 2. The good news? Some methods, like Priority Mail, might cost less depending on location.
December 28, 2010 - 26 Inches of Snow
My back is aching (not from digging, but from trying to start the snowblower). It turns out that if you scream really loud and shake it violently, it starts with no problem at all.
Hope that everybody is doing well. We are open and shipments are going out without delay.
December 24, 2010 - Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
From our family to yours.
December 17, 2010 - Monitoring Problem Delivery Areas
I have been tracking our orders and it looks like a significant number of orders to Illinois are not showing a scan since leaving NJ on Monday Tomorrow would be day 4, which should be the absolute latest that priority mail should be delivered. We're keeping our eyes on those orders.
Dec 16, 2010 The Christmas Rush
We've been monitoring orders on Endicia.com (the automated postal service that we use), and it looks as though about 85% have been delivered, another 10% have scanned somewhere en route, and 5% are still waiting to be scanned somewhere.
I asked our post office if we should be worried about that remaining 5%, and they said it's not uncommon with truckloads of orders. These are not scanned "over the counter" as when we wait in line at the post office.
However, if those orders are not showing a status by tomorrow, we will begin reaching out just to make sure (some might be delivered without scanning). Worst case, we will reship an order by Express Mail. If this affects you, feel free to email me at jason@bluscenes.com or call 973-933-1455. Likewise, if there is an error with your order, please let us know and we WILL fix it.
Dec 13, 2010 Order Processing Continuing
Yesterday I emailed some customers of our non-rush orders to alert them that their orders are being sent 2-3 days later than planned, but that the delivery date estimate is not changing because we upgraded from Media Mail to Priority Mail at no charge.
This seems like a good idea between now and Christmas, so we'll be sending ALL US orders by priority mail, even though rush orders will be sent out first (in fairness, these people are paying about $1.50 more for shipping). The remainder will be sent on a first-in first-out basis.
We still have sufficient stock, but it seems that we will sell out before Christmas. (We have more on the way, but Christmas delivery will be tough for that new replication order).
December 6, 2010 Orders Begin Processing Tomorrow
I just received a call that shipment #1 arrived safe and sound at the foundation, andother shipment is en route. Tomorrow morning, I'm heading over just to ensure that orders are packed quickly and that there are no problems that need to be addressed.
December 1, 2010 All Going According to Schedule (touch wood!)
The first part of the bundles is being picked up tomorrow, and the remainder should be picked up Friday -- possibly Monday, depending on timing.We're using 3 day freight. Last year, we had orders packed in California, and then we moved orders to Amazon. While we'll still use Amazon for overflow, we're using regular USPS service now. Why? Cost-wise, Amazon was great, but they recently started assigning each of our discs to different warehouses. It was very likely that 7 discs would ship from 3 or 4 locations. A pain to track, and very confusing to customers.
How are we packing the bundles? A group called The Foundation for the Handicapped in Wayne, NJ. I worked with them for almost 4 years at my old company and they were phenomenal. They handled a very successful direct response TV campaign for about 4 years. As with a lot of foundations, the down economy has affected them. I always intended to send BluScenes' business there, and we are finally making good on that promise, although a year later than we originally intended.
November 23, 2010 Happy Thanksgiving! New Discs! And The Mona Lisa's Forehead Dilemma!
This Friday marks our first year in business. Sure, we actually launched in June of 2009, but we didn't actually sell any of our products until Black Friday 2009.
A lot has happened in that time, we've grown from 3 quirky titles to 7 discs. We have some cool plans for new discs, including:
1) A couple of scenery discs with very cool 3D bonus features (which will hopefully work with both BD 3D while also containing a classic "red-blue" version for compatibility with all TVs. Our main concern is that we don't think that ambient content is very conducive to sitting around with 3D glasses, so we're doing this in the hope that glassesless TVs become more common. In order to shoot the 3D scenes, We're working on building the "Biclops," a homebrewed, genlocked pair of DSLR camerasthat export in a visually lossless format.
2) More art discs. Sure, we might include some impressionist art, etc. but we sort of realized that most people these days couldn't name the artists who painted the art hanging on their walls. We're thinking about releasing artwork created specifically for the TV. This prevents what we (and by "we," I actually mean "I") call the Mona Lisa's Forehead Dilemma. What is this dilemma? Try to fit Mona Lisa onto a 16:9 screen (you can't hang it sideways or use black bars on either side) and you'll understand. :)
3) I'm also working on a pet project, which is called Greetings Fron Scenic New Jersey. Intended for Blu-ray and DVD, this will not be one of our core products (it won't be in our Bundle unless somebody wants to add it). What is it? I guess that you could call it a video love letter to my home state. Sure, there were times in my life when I tried to leave, but NJ always pulled me back.
The disc is not a joke, it will focus on some of the most beautiful scenery in the State of New Jersey. And, yes, there is a lot of beautiful scenery in the state. And, who knows? Maybe with a little luck, we can offer them for sale at Turnpike rest stops.
Anyway, the NJ disc will be a way for us to focus on some less-commercial products, while learning more about my surroundings.
November 13, 2010 A Fundamental Change to Managed Copy
AACS-LA's (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator) original Managed Copy deadline "live date" was scheduled for late 2009. I remember this well, because we scheduled our first batch of releases to coincide with the deadline. We flagged our initial discs with copy permission, included an ISAN number, and a "universal resource identifier" link that pointed to AACS-LA's managed copy server.
Sometime in July, I received an email from Secure Path -- the ISAN (think of an ISBN-type number for ALL media) agency in the USA saying that they were getting out of the ISAN-issuing business. This resulted in the major Blu-ray studios telling AACS-LA that the original managed copy model was not going to work.
At the time, I called AACS-LA for advice about authoring our upcoming discs. They advised me that the new way to prepare for managed copy was to "do nothing." Essentially, managed copy would be supported by player software, and a managed copy server would be baked in to the player.
We have long maintained that it is the right of our customers to make copies of our discs in accordance with our display license (one screen per disc, with huge discounts for multiple screens). We also believe that in an era when electronic devices gain new capabilities every year, the mandatory adoption of DRM by Blu-ray publishers is detrimental to the growth of the video industry. DRM failed the music industry and it will fail the video industry. It provides little-or-no protection and significantly adds to the cost of releasing new Blu-ray discs. In essence, it is a protection racket.
We are considering a few options:
1) Releasing unprotected copies of our discs as data discs (BD-ROM)
2) Offering direct-from-the-masters downloads for free, or at the cost of bandwidth for past customers
3) Offering our content for online streaming from companies such as Netflix
Our main concern with #3 is the inability to loop video in the Netflix player.
November 5, 2010 The Home Stretch
We've been monitoring orders on Endicia.com (the automated postal service that we use), and it looks as though about 85% have been delivered, another 10% have scanned somewhere en route, and 5% are still waiting to be scanned somewhere.
I asked our post office if we should be worried about that remaining 5%, and they said it's not uncommon with truckloads of orders. These are not scanned "over the counter" as when we wait in line at the post office.
However, if those orders are not showing a status by tomorrow, we will begin reaching out just to make sure (some might be delivered without scanning). Worst case, we will reship an order by Express Mail. If this affects you, feel free to email me at jason@bluscenes.com or call 973-933-1455. Likewise, if there is an error with your order, please let us know and we WILL fix it.
Dec 13, 2010 Order Processing Continuing
Yesterday I emailed some customers of our non-rush orders to alert them that their orders are being sent 2-3 days later than planned, but that the delivery date estimate is not changing because we upgraded from Media Mail to Priority Mail at no charge.
This seems like a good idea between now and Christmas, so we'll be sending ALL US orders by priority mail, even though rush orders will be sent out first (in fairness, these people are paying about $1.50 more for shipping). The remainder will be sent on a first-in first-out basis.
We still have sufficient stock, but it seems that we will sell out before Christmas. (We have more on the way, but Christmas delivery will be tough for that new replication order).
December 6, 2010 Orders Begin Processing Tomorrow
I just received a call that shipment #1 arrived safe and sound at the foundation, andother shipment is en route. Tomorrow morning, I'm heading over just to ensure that orders are packed quickly and that there are no problems that need to be addressed.
December 1, 2010 All Going According to Schedule (touch wood!)
The first part of the bundles is being picked up tomorrow, and the remainder should be picked up Friday -- possibly Monday, depending on timing.We're using 3 day freight. Last year, we had orders packed in California, and then we moved orders to Amazon. While we'll still use Amazon for overflow, we're using regular USPS service now. Why? Cost-wise, Amazon was great, but they recently started assigning each of our discs to different warehouses. It was very likely that 7 discs would ship from 3 or 4 locations. A pain to track, and very confusing to customers.
How are we packing the bundles? A group called The Foundation for the Handicapped in Wayne, NJ. I worked with them for almost 4 years at my old company and they were phenomenal. They handled a very successful direct response TV campaign for about 4 years. As with a lot of foundations, the down economy has affected them. I always intended to send BluScenes' business there, and we are finally making good on that promise, although a year later than we originally intended.
November 23, 2010 Happy Thanksgiving! New Discs! And The Mona Lisa's Forehead Dilemma!
This Friday marks our first year in business. Sure, we actually launched in June of 2009, but we didn't actually sell any of our products until Black Friday 2009.
A lot has happened in that time, we've grown from 3 quirky titles to 7 discs. We have some cool plans for new discs, including:
1) A couple of scenery discs with very cool 3D bonus features (which will hopefully work with both BD 3D while also containing a classic "red-blue" version for compatibility with all TVs. Our main concern is that we don't think that ambient content is very conducive to sitting around with 3D glasses, so we're doing this in the hope that glassesless TVs become more common. In order to shoot the 3D scenes, We're working on building the "Biclops," a homebrewed, genlocked pair of DSLR camerasthat export in a visually lossless format.
2) More art discs. Sure, we might include some impressionist art, etc. but we sort of realized that most people these days couldn't name the artists who painted the art hanging on their walls. We're thinking about releasing artwork created specifically for the TV. This prevents what we (and by "we," I actually mean "I") call the Mona Lisa's Forehead Dilemma. What is this dilemma? Try to fit Mona Lisa onto a 16:9 screen (you can't hang it sideways or use black bars on either side) and you'll understand. :)
3) I'm also working on a pet project, which is called Greetings Fron Scenic New Jersey. Intended for Blu-ray and DVD, this will not be one of our core products (it won't be in our Bundle unless somebody wants to add it). What is it? I guess that you could call it a video love letter to my home state. Sure, there were times in my life when I tried to leave, but NJ always pulled me back.
The disc is not a joke, it will focus on some of the most beautiful scenery in the State of New Jersey. And, yes, there is a lot of beautiful scenery in the state. And, who knows? Maybe with a little luck, we can offer them for sale at Turnpike rest stops.
Anyway, the NJ disc will be a way for us to focus on some less-commercial products, while learning more about my surroundings.
November 13, 2010 A Fundamental Change to Managed Copy
AACS-LA's (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator) original Managed Copy deadline "live date" was scheduled for late 2009. I remember this well, because we scheduled our first batch of releases to coincide with the deadline. We flagged our initial discs with copy permission, included an ISAN number, and a "universal resource identifier" link that pointed to AACS-LA's managed copy server.
Sometime in July, I received an email from Secure Path -- the ISAN (think of an ISBN-type number for ALL media) agency in the USA saying that they were getting out of the ISAN-issuing business. This resulted in the major Blu-ray studios telling AACS-LA that the original managed copy model was not going to work.
At the time, I called AACS-LA for advice about authoring our upcoming discs. They advised me that the new way to prepare for managed copy was to "do nothing." Essentially, managed copy would be supported by player software, and a managed copy server would be baked in to the player.
We have long maintained that it is the right of our customers to make copies of our discs in accordance with our display license (one screen per disc, with huge discounts for multiple screens). We also believe that in an era when electronic devices gain new capabilities every year, the mandatory adoption of DRM by Blu-ray publishers is detrimental to the growth of the video industry. DRM failed the music industry and it will fail the video industry. It provides little-or-no protection and significantly adds to the cost of releasing new Blu-ray discs. In essence, it is a protection racket.
We are considering a few options:
1) Releasing unprotected copies of our discs as data discs (BD-ROM)
2) Offering direct-from-the-masters downloads for free, or at the cost of bandwidth for past customers
3) Offering our content for online streaming from companies such as Netflix
Our main concern with #3 is the inability to loop video in the Netflix player.
November 5, 2010 The Home Stretch
As somebody running a small Blu-ray label, I'm a huge fan of computer generated art. Right now, after finishing 5 month production binge, it's the only thing I can watch on a TV without totally driving me insane. I've been doing a lot of quality testing over the past few weeks, and it might be relaxing to watch a disc with waterfalls or waves at the beach, but it's pretty stressful when you are looking for problems that can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to fix.
While there are definitely issues involved in creating computer generated discs, a whole layer of capture issues is resolved. I really like our Gallery Moderna disc, and I hope to flesh out some more discs in that subgenre. While I don't dislike the other discs, I feel a bit too much like the plastic surgeon who knows where all of the scars are. I can't see the beauty. I just see a checklist of editing decisions, transitions, codecs, content deals, looping points, frame and bit rates.
My wife and I were watching "Fringe" on TV last night, and I couldn't stop focusing on staging, transitions, compression (most likely more due to the broadcast than the source material). This morning, I hooked up my PS3 to the cheapest TV I could buy at Walmart and just about had a panic attack. Although calibrating it with Spears & Munsil made it look better, there are still some very apparent limitations to what the TV can do -- both compared to a broadcast monitor, a much pricier plasma TV, or my editing i7 iMac, for that matter.
I called the production manager at Cine-O-Matic in a tizzy and I appreciate his feedback. He basically told me I was obsessing and smacked some sense into me over the phone. :) He reminded me that nobody else watching the discs is as close to it as I am, so I'm focusing on the tiniest details.
Anyway, this is always the hardest part of a project; taking it from a highly-controlled environment and getting ready to have people watch it on thousands of TVs. I won't deny that in the case of some footage, there are limitations that are inherent in the source. We can try to limit the loss of quality by encoding at a higher bitrate. Almost all scenes on the new discs are encoded at a higher bitrate. We can also use special tools to clean the footage without removing detail. However, you also have to get the source to look as good as possible.
For me, the hardest footage to work with was the darker underwater HDV footage. Dark scenes are often a concern (take a picture in the dark with almost any camera and you know what I mean), and the use of a red-filter (to give the scenes a less washed out/blue look) tends to add video noise. Anyway, I used a filter called Video Purifier (by Innobits) to remove noise from those scenes while preserving detail. At $500, it's a bit pricey, and it doesn't work as a plugin, it's a separate NLE, but the output was free of most noise. Even the very dark shots (for some scenes, I had to actually add some grain back to avoid banding in the 10-bit to 8-bit conversion for Blu-ray).
So I have two conclusions today:
1) I truly hope that our customers are able to enjoy the discs. I hope that in time, I can forget about the checklists and view the discs as a whole. At that point, I think I'll be able to honestly assess them.
2) I'm thinking of something really big for Black Friday. In particular, something involving a way for all of our customers to calibrate their TVs even if they weren't in the market for a calibration program. I think that people will be pretty excited by it.
October 19, 2010 - Amazon Fulfillment Update
As of today, we're still shipping orders from Amazon, but in about a month or so we plan to use them on an overflow/favorable rate/vacation basis. The main reasons are:
1) Amazon is splitting most orders in half between Phoenix and Arizona. This is causing some customer confusion, and it's costing us more. So basically it wastes fuel, it makes customers worry that part of an order is missing (when both parts don't arrive on the same day), and complicates things like tracking number integration with our site.
2) With 4 new discs coming out, and larger bundles in the future, the pick, pack and ship fees become very high. We can start to offer media mail as an option, which will make a big difference. Our current bundle weighs 10 oz, so it costs only a little more to send First Class than Media Mail. Our new bundle will weigh about 24 oz, which cannot go out via First Class Mail (13 oz is the limit). We'll offer Priority Shipping, but we'll also offer Media Mail as an option.
Honestly, I can't say enough good things about Amazon, it's just that we do a lot of sales of our bundles. We can pre-pack a lot of those orders and stick labels on the packages when orders are placed.
October 5, 2010- Coming Soon from Scenic Labs
As of today, we're still shipping orders from Amazon, but in about a month or so we plan to use them on an overflow/favorable rate/vacation basis. The main reasons are:
1) Amazon is splitting most orders in half between Phoenix and Arizona. This is causing some customer confusion, and it's costing us more. So basically it wastes fuel, it makes customers worry that part of an order is missing (when both parts don't arrive on the same day), and complicates things like tracking number integration with our site.
2) With 4 new discs coming out, and larger bundles in the future, the pick, pack and ship fees become very high. We can start to offer media mail as an option, which will make a big difference. Our current bundle weighs 10 oz, so it costs only a little more to send First Class than Media Mail. Our new bundle will weigh about 24 oz, which cannot go out via First Class Mail (13 oz is the limit). We'll offer Priority Shipping, but we'll also offer Media Mail as an option.
Honestly, I can't say enough good things about Amazon, it's just that we do a lot of sales of our bundles. We can pre-pack a lot of those orders and stick labels on the packages when orders are placed.
October 5, 2010- Coming Soon from Scenic Labs
The team is busy working on getting our next four releases ready for shipment in approximately 4 weeks and, once again, we'd like to thank our customers for making this possible -- not only by purchasing our products, but literally by helping to spread the word and making our current lack of wider distribution a moot point. Thank you!
September 29, 2010 - My view right now
Sure it's on my monitor, but hey. Actually, due to a failure with one of my backup drives, I'm verifying the content of all of my main content drives before I make another backup from them. That means I get to watch a lot of relaxing videos. The downside is that I am not allowed to blink (every frame has to be viewed).
Update: To answer John G., who emailed me asking how I don't blink. No, John, I'm not a robot. The answer is that I do blink, but I have to pause the video while blinking. After a while it becomes automatic.
Update: To answer John G., who emailed me asking how I don't blink. No, John, I'm not a robot. The answer is that I do blink, but I have to pause the video while blinking. After a while it becomes automatic.
September 28, 2010 - Doing an extra verification - stretching the limits of physical media
It seems like one of my 2 TB backup drives was recently damaged (data allocation table), so I've been verifying my "master drive" against my spare drive. Each one is 2 TB, so it takes pretty long to just go through the data. I temporarily halted production for a few days and ordered all of my drives sent back so I could verify the integrity of the contents before they are used for authoring a test disc. So far, so good.
It got me thinking. Even though there is so much talk of digital and bitable media, most of it resides on 20th Century analog/magnetic media. We're definitely stretching the limits of magnetic discs when it comes down to editing files that are 500 GB in size. It becomes a bit unwieldy.
Anyway, if you have a lot of digital photos, and MP3s it's probably a good idea to make numerous backups very often. We take so many photos these days but we might find that we can no longer retrieve them when we're sitting in our rocking chairs. We store our most important documents on hard drives that often don't even have more than a one year warranty.
It has been remarkably quiet over the last week or so. All of the discs are at the authoring facility and we're finishing up on the cover designs, which I'll be sure to post shortly.
I had to re-render one of the files and overnight it to the authoring house this morning. The first 2 TB drive that I sent to them wouldn't mount, so I backed up my backup and sent a replacement drive. When I received the original drive back, it mounted fine on my machine. I can believe it, though, as I've seen lots of weirdness with computers over the last few decades.
Anyway, the replacement drive that I sent inadvertently contained one incorrect file. So I had to re-render it and send it on a separate drive. It was one of the Waves of Tranqulity scenes. We really try to make these discs so they'll blend into the background. You can leave them running all week if you want, and something that stands out, like someone talking or walking across the beach would get really old, really fast.
We loop seamlessly without any jumps, and because they loop, we don't want certain events to happen, like people walking across the screen, etc. Anyway, the looping point had not been set on the other version that I sent. it is now.
September 4, 2010 - A Sneak Peek of BluScenes: Underwater Cozumel
This was a really fun disc to work on - lots of different types of footage, and scenes shot under different weather conditions, but the whole disc fits together really well.
I originally color graded in Color, but after purchasing a Cineform NeoHD license, I went back and redid all of the projects in FirstLight. For stabilization, I primarily used iStabilize, and rather than use any of the stabilizers' built-in scaling, I used Video Purifer to rescale the stabilized shots. Due to some issues with running Cineform files through Video Purifier, I used uncompressed quicktime files instead. It made a huge difference.
Now we're just adding the music and I'm gently graining the video (to reduce color banding -- a result of going to 8-bit for Blu-ray) using a 1920x1080 23.976 pattern that was created from some gorgeous film stock. (I can share it if you want it). Anyway, here's a peek of what Underwater Cozumel looks like:
Now we're just adding the music and I'm gently graining the video (to reduce color banding -- a result of going to 8-bit for Blu-ray) using a 1920x1080 23.976 pattern that was created from some gorgeous film stock. (I can share it if you want it). Anyway, here's a peek of what Underwater Cozumel looks like:
August 20, 2010 - Finishing up 3 of the 4 discs. 4th is for next week!
I was gone for a week -- on vacation in Amish country. A great place to get unplugged. I arrived back at the Scenic Labs garage with refreshed eyes (in fact, I'm trying to ween myself off of my reading glasses -- I was spending too much time in front of the monitor with them on, and I could barely see without them). My eyes have adjusted, and while I still use them (especially during the editing and rendering process), I'm not as dependent on them as I was.
I'm looking forward to getting the hard drives out of my hands and into the authoring facility. The longer I hold onto them, the more likely I am to want to tweak something. I originally thought that I'd be done with the editing process on July 4. However, as any of you can attest, when you are always discovering new things, there's a tendency to want to go back to the beginning and redo the earlier work. In the case of these discs, I'm trying to do my best to minimize any reduction in quality when the files are reduced from 500 GB hard drives down to 25 GB Blu-ray discs. This includes previewing everything in 8-bit mode and finding scenes and areas that need tweaking.
Also, in the case of image stabilization (the underwater disc uses stabilization in some key scenes), there's a cost to overall resolution (for a stabilized scene). So it's used sparingly (up to 10%), and I use so-called "super-resolution" techniques to avoid loss of detail in those scenes.
Anyway, it's going to be time to get out of production mode and back into marketing mode. But before that, I'm going to be contacted out beta tester volunteers (people who experienced problems with our first batch of fireplace discs). I'm using those people and their players to catch potential problems with the new discs before they are released.
July 27, 2010 -- And more editing, rendering and compression.
While things are moving along well, and there is some extra time built into our development process, I spent longer than expected editing the waves and waterfalls discs. A big part of this was due to the fact that even though I am editing with 10 bit-equiivalent Cineform files, I am now previewing in 8-bit mode. This gives me a better idea of what the final product will look like on Blu-ray, which is also 8-bit. There were some gradients that I needed to dither and smooth out to avoid banding on the final product. As you can imagine, with sky and water surfaces, there were a lot of gradients to smooth. For one of the scenes, I hand-edited about 300 frames to remove some rough edges.
Sitting 12 inches away from a big, calibrated computer screen makes it easy to catch problems, but it is also helpful to remember the limits of technology. And as advanced as Blu-ray is, it is still a highly compressed format.
July 16, 2010 And More Editing. :)
I was gone for a week -- on vacation in Amish country. A great place to get unplugged. I arrived back at the Scenic Labs garage with refreshed eyes (in fact, I'm trying to ween myself off of my reading glasses -- I was spending too much time in front of the monitor with them on, and I could barely see without them). My eyes have adjusted, and while I still use them (especially during the editing and rendering process), I'm not as dependent on them as I was.
I'm looking forward to getting the hard drives out of my hands and into the authoring facility. The longer I hold onto them, the more likely I am to want to tweak something. I originally thought that I'd be done with the editing process on July 4. However, as any of you can attest, when you are always discovering new things, there's a tendency to want to go back to the beginning and redo the earlier work. In the case of these discs, I'm trying to do my best to minimize any reduction in quality when the files are reduced from 500 GB hard drives down to 25 GB Blu-ray discs. This includes previewing everything in 8-bit mode and finding scenes and areas that need tweaking.
Also, in the case of image stabilization (the underwater disc uses stabilization in some key scenes), there's a cost to overall resolution (for a stabilized scene). So it's used sparingly (up to 10%), and I use so-called "super-resolution" techniques to avoid loss of detail in those scenes.
Anyway, it's going to be time to get out of production mode and back into marketing mode. But before that, I'm going to be contacted out beta tester volunteers (people who experienced problems with our first batch of fireplace discs). I'm using those people and their players to catch potential problems with the new discs before they are released.
July 27, 2010 -- And more editing, rendering and compression.
While things are moving along well, and there is some extra time built into our development process, I spent longer than expected editing the waves and waterfalls discs. A big part of this was due to the fact that even though I am editing with 10 bit-equiivalent Cineform files, I am now previewing in 8-bit mode. This gives me a better idea of what the final product will look like on Blu-ray, which is also 8-bit. There were some gradients that I needed to dither and smooth out to avoid banding on the final product. As you can imagine, with sky and water surfaces, there were a lot of gradients to smooth. For one of the scenes, I hand-edited about 300 frames to remove some rough edges.
Sitting 12 inches away from a big, calibrated computer screen makes it easy to catch problems, but it is also helpful to remember the limits of technology. And as advanced as Blu-ray is, it is still a highly compressed format.
July 16, 2010 And More Editing. :)
"Jason, take a break and walk away from the computer."
That's what my wife should be telling me, but she's letting me finish these projects. :)
Here's a sample from one of the beach scenes I'm working on. Who needs to go outside when you have this view in your office (or in my case, garage). :)
June 28, 2010 Editing, Editing and more Editing
We are pleased to have added Area4 as an authoring house for our upcoming releases and value their Blu-ray authoring expertise. I've worked with them on some very complex projects at my former company and while these discs are not as complex as some of those projects, they've proven their mettle.
Aside from that, all of the usual gang is back on board, from Collin Venuto working on the newest covers, to Geoff and Chris composing all of the 7.1 audio at Purple Planet. Added to this group is a very talented journeyman DP named Randy Travis (he is also a musician, but he's not THAT Randy Travis), with an amazing collection of underwater footage.
Randy also contributed full-length beach and waterfall shots from Mexico, and also flew out to Hawaii last week for some additional shots. Soon, he will be heading out to Thailand's famed coral reefs, and we look forward to seeing what he shoots.
We've also added a computer artist by the name of Chris Ursetti. He's creating the fractal and abstract paintings in motion sections for our BluScenes: Gallery Moderna disc -- first in our new line of art discs. More genres are coming later.
Here at the Scenic Labs Garage, I've upgraded our editing hardware, to a 27" iMac quadcore i7 a Drobo for 3.5 TB scratch disc, backup and storage, and a Datavideo TLM-170D reference monitor. Rendering still takes hundreds of hours, though.
June 14, 2010, Another HDTV Giveaway - in time for Father's Day
In preparation for Father's Day, we're giving away another TV -- this time a 42" Proscan 240hz (yes @240hz), and a great 178 degree viewing angle. Spread out and get comfortable!
We're also giving away 5 bundles of Spears & Munsil with BluScenes Discs and, 5 additional BluScenes Bundle prizes.
The deal and contest are still going until tomorrow night, so be sure to stop by http://www.slickdeals.net. Our deal and contest are at the top of the page.
And to those who know me... don't worry I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER THIS CONTEST. ;-)
Jun 8, 2010 Hooray for Canada!
Jun 3, 2010 Piracy: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
I usually update this blog more frequently, but I was away and in Chicago for part of the time. Must have eaten pretty well, though, because in spite of jogging about 10 miles per day, I gained 5 lbs. I even got hit by a motor vehicle (a tourist on a Segway) and have the road rash on my right arm and leg to prove it (not from the Segway, but from the ensuing tumble to the ground at top speed).
Anyway, I use a live web-traffic tracking program called Woopra, and I've noticed an increase in traffic from piracy sites. My opinion about piracy is well-known: It happens. Don't lose sleep over it. In fact, as piracy has increased, so have our sales.
However, there are a few things that bug me. Let's start with several things that cost us more money than piracy:
1) Despite the ineffectiveness of AACS, I am required to pay a mandatory AACS fee for each master that we send to replication, and a $.04 "tax" (AACS royalty) on each disc that we sell. The only way we don't pay it is if we stop making Blu-ray discs or burn them ourselves.
2) Image and video preview leeching. It's one thing to pirate content, and another for pirate sites suck the bandwidth from a site by leeching images rather than re-posting them. This slows down the site, costs money in bandwidth overages, and might impact sales if somebody gives up on a slow site. We're working on blocking this, but it's not done yet. There are sites that we do want to allow to leach our images (i.e. affiliates).
Anyway, we try to price our stuff so that it's competitive withpiracy. We sometimes offer our bundle for as little as $14.95 shipped. Compared to bandwidth, the value of your time, and blank media costs, we believe that this makes us cheaper than piracy for 99% of our customers. The people who do pirate at these prices weren't going to buy anyway. Also, a large number of pirates are overseas. To me, this indicates that we need international distribution of our products.
May 20, 2010 A different kind of view.
Every once in a while, I try something out that really changes the way that I do business. The current service that fits this description is called TrackMyShipments.com. In the past, I only would learn of delivery problems after weeks went by, and a customer would either contact me and I'd overnight a replacement, or they would file a dispute with a credit card company.
This service sends me notifications for certain types of events (order problems, etc). It even has an iPhone app with a retro-futuristic robot voice. But, more importantly, this will allow me to catch problems as soon as they arise, and I wouldn't be surprised if it lowers our reshipment costs significantly, resulting in lower prices for everybody.
Here is the current map from Monday and Tuesday of this week.
May 13, 2010 Welcome SlickDeals Members!
Win a 40" Toshiba Regza 120hz 1080p HDTV from Scenic Labs and SlickDeals!
No, we don't have distribution in Canada (yet), but this is almost as good. We are now shipping ALL Canadian orders from the Scenic Labs garage in NJ. Why is this a big deal? Because we are sending them via USPS instead of UPS.
UPS has been great for us in the USA, but many Canadian customers (or would-be customers) have been turned off by UPS's "egregious" (their words) brokerage fees (an arbitrary fee charged for handling a product for which customs fees are owed). This has effectively doubled the price of our products for some Canadian customers. No more.
I should also add that it's now CHEAPER for us to mail to Canada, so we might be able to adjust the shipping charge after a few days of monitoring.
If you were affected, and if you placed the order on our site; and your order was shipped to Canada, we will REFUND the brokerage fees, but you must provide proof of payment.
I usually update this blog more frequently, but I was away and in Chicago for part of the time. Must have eaten pretty well, though, because in spite of jogging about 10 miles per day, I gained 5 lbs. I even got hit by a motor vehicle (a tourist on a Segway) and have the road rash on my right arm and leg to prove it (not from the Segway, but from the ensuing tumble to the ground at top speed).
Anyway, I use a live web-traffic tracking program called Woopra, and I've noticed an increase in traffic from piracy sites. My opinion about piracy is well-known: It happens. Don't lose sleep over it. In fact, as piracy has increased, so have our sales.
However, there are a few things that bug me. Let's start with several things that cost us more money than piracy:
1) Despite the ineffectiveness of AACS, I am required to pay a mandatory AACS fee for each master that we send to replication, and a $.04 "tax" (AACS royalty) on each disc that we sell. The only way we don't pay it is if we stop making Blu-ray discs or burn them ourselves.
2) Image and video preview leeching. It's one thing to pirate content, and another for pirate sites suck the bandwidth from a site by leeching images rather than re-posting them. This slows down the site, costs money in bandwidth overages, and might impact sales if somebody gives up on a slow site. We're working on blocking this, but it's not done yet. There are sites that we do want to allow to leach our images (i.e. affiliates).
Anyway, we try to price our stuff so that it's competitive withpiracy. We sometimes offer our bundle for as little as $14.95 shipped. Compared to bandwidth, the value of your time, and blank media costs, we believe that this makes us cheaper than piracy for 99% of our customers. The people who do pirate at these prices weren't going to buy anyway. Also, a large number of pirates are overseas. To me, this indicates that we need international distribution of our products.
May 20, 2010 A different kind of view.
Every once in a while, I try something out that really changes the way that I do business. The current service that fits this description is called TrackMyShipments.com. In the past, I only would learn of delivery problems after weeks went by, and a customer would either contact me and I'd overnight a replacement, or they would file a dispute with a credit card company.
This service sends me notifications for certain types of events (order problems, etc). It even has an iPhone app with a retro-futuristic robot voice. But, more importantly, this will allow me to catch problems as soon as they arise, and I wouldn't be surprised if it lowers our reshipment costs significantly, resulting in lower prices for everybody.
Here is the current map from Monday and Tuesday of this week.
 |
May 13, 2010 Welcome SlickDeals Members!
Win a 40" Toshiba Regza 120hz 1080p HDTV from Scenic Labs and SlickDeals!
Click here for more information
After making sure that all of the orders are transmitted properly to Amazon Fulfillment this afternoon, I will take a breather and upload some samples from our never-before-seen upcoming fall releases. They are a lot of fun -- and very relaxing. Zzzzzzz.
PS: I noticed some people were asking where an old "tree emergency fund" coupon code came into play. It's kind of funny, actually. This past winter, we found out that a tree was in danger of falling on our house, so I put everything on sale to help raise some extra money to have it removed. The current offer is actually a little lower. We have been able to save some money on shipping, by moving to Amazon Fulfillment, and we used most of the savings to lower our prices.
May 8, 2010 Some notes on the Aquarium disc.
We will be releasing a disc with underwater footage, coral reefs, turtles, anemones, this fall, but I want to make clear that our current aquarium disc is designed, intentionally, to make your TV look like an aquarium. We used the aquarist's own lighting and we used a Nikon lens and Nikon-to-RED One lens mount for photographic effect - and an approximate 18" depth of field for a 2 foot deep tank.
This means that objects in the back of the tank look softer, and add a feeling of depth. I believe that when someone is looking at a tank installed on a wall, that this creates a more realistic feel (as realistic as these things can be). There are lenses that place everything within equal focus, but the result is a bit sterile and flat. If you stand up to the screen and stare at the back, it is going to look softer because that simply was not our focus, and it was honestly not as attractive as the focus of the tank.
Anyway, I just thought I should comment about that. I know that most of our customers are looking for a disc that will create the look of a tank, but if you were not, we will be happy to exchange your disc for our upcoming underwater disc!
May 8, 2010 Checking In
We received our new order of aquarium discs, so all backordered items have been sent to complete partially-shipped orders. Thanks for your patience! We also increased our order by about 50% to have enough on hand for our promotions this month (and then some -- hopefully).
Aside from that, I have a lot of editing to complete, and as soon as my daughters are both feeling better, I will try to make up for lost time. One of my girls' fever is breaking but it seems like the other is just starting to get sick. :-
May 5, 2010 New Releases, trailers coming soon.
Some last-minute promotions and an HDTV giveaway next week.
I wish that I could say that the last week has been filled with nothing but progress, but my twin girls have been ping-ponging various viruses and microplasms back and forth. Not fun! On some days, they go to daycare or my mom's house so that I can free my computer from playing Elmo videos, but when they are sick, they are home with daddy!
Anyway, I will have some cool teaser trailers up soon for our fall release schedule. People are asking for more "nature scenery" so that's the kind of stuff we're working on, but with a special BluScenes twist. I'll explain more about that in a future post.
Aside from that, we're gearing up for a couple of big Father's Day promotions and we are sponsoring an HDTV giveaway in conjunction with a major deal site. We should finally have our stock problems solved this month -- I ordered larger batches than usual. We tend to keep our inventory levels tight and reorder frequently, but we're going to start to keep a little more on hand as buffer when we sponsor special promotions.
April 24, 2010 Thanks for a great week
We had a few promotions, this week. It started with Deals.Woot.com, and then we expanded it to DealNews.com, which was picked up by the Crave blog on CNET.com. Orders exceeded our expectations, and current orders, we are splitting the orders into two separate shipments. First, the Fireplace and Space disc will go out, and we will send the Aquarium at the end of next week (give or take a few days, plus there's a weekend there).
It appears that Amazon Fulfillment shipments went without a hitch this time. Sure, whenever there is a high volume of orders there are bound to be some problems, but we'll keep an eye on it as people's orders arrive.
We'll be winding down this promotion and preparing for one more big push before Father's Day. After that, we don't have any major sales planned over the summer, but we will have a new lineup of discs, and an expanded bundle (and a discount for people to complete their bundles if they want the rest of the discs). Thanks again!
March 23, 2010 Another shipping update:
After making sure that all of the orders are transmitted properly to Amazon Fulfillment this afternoon, I will take a breather and upload some samples from our never-before-seen upcoming fall releases. They are a lot of fun -- and very relaxing. Zzzzzzz.
PS: I noticed some people were asking where an old "tree emergency fund" coupon code came into play. It's kind of funny, actually. This past winter, we found out that a tree was in danger of falling on our house, so I put everything on sale to help raise some extra money to have it removed. The current offer is actually a little lower. We have been able to save some money on shipping, by moving to Amazon Fulfillment, and we used most of the savings to lower our prices.
May 8, 2010 Some notes on the Aquarium disc.
We will be releasing a disc with underwater footage, coral reefs, turtles, anemones, this fall, but I want to make clear that our current aquarium disc is designed, intentionally, to make your TV look like an aquarium. We used the aquarist's own lighting and we used a Nikon lens and Nikon-to-RED One lens mount for photographic effect - and an approximate 18" depth of field for a 2 foot deep tank.
This means that objects in the back of the tank look softer, and add a feeling of depth. I believe that when someone is looking at a tank installed on a wall, that this creates a more realistic feel (as realistic as these things can be). There are lenses that place everything within equal focus, but the result is a bit sterile and flat. If you stand up to the screen and stare at the back, it is going to look softer because that simply was not our focus, and it was honestly not as attractive as the focus of the tank.
Anyway, I just thought I should comment about that. I know that most of our customers are looking for a disc that will create the look of a tank, but if you were not, we will be happy to exchange your disc for our upcoming underwater disc!
May 8, 2010 Checking In
We received our new order of aquarium discs, so all backordered items have been sent to complete partially-shipped orders. Thanks for your patience! We also increased our order by about 50% to have enough on hand for our promotions this month (and then some -- hopefully).
Aside from that, I have a lot of editing to complete, and as soon as my daughters are both feeling better, I will try to make up for lost time. One of my girls' fever is breaking but it seems like the other is just starting to get sick. :-
May 5, 2010 New Releases, trailers coming soon.
Some last-minute promotions and an HDTV giveaway next week.
I wish that I could say that the last week has been filled with nothing but progress, but my twin girls have been ping-ponging various viruses and microplasms back and forth. Not fun! On some days, they go to daycare or my mom's house so that I can free my computer from playing Elmo videos, but when they are sick, they are home with daddy!
Anyway, I will have some cool teaser trailers up soon for our fall release schedule. People are asking for more "nature scenery" so that's the kind of stuff we're working on, but with a special BluScenes twist. I'll explain more about that in a future post.
Aside from that, we're gearing up for a couple of big Father's Day promotions and we are sponsoring an HDTV giveaway in conjunction with a major deal site. We should finally have our stock problems solved this month -- I ordered larger batches than usual. We tend to keep our inventory levels tight and reorder frequently, but we're going to start to keep a little more on hand as buffer when we sponsor special promotions.
April 24, 2010 Thanks for a great week
We had a few promotions, this week. It started with Deals.Woot.com, and then we expanded it to DealNews.com, which was picked up by the Crave blog on CNET.com. Orders exceeded our expectations, and current orders, we are splitting the orders into two separate shipments. First, the Fireplace and Space disc will go out, and we will send the Aquarium at the end of next week (give or take a few days, plus there's a weekend there).
It appears that Amazon Fulfillment shipments went without a hitch this time. Sure, whenever there is a high volume of orders there are bound to be some problems, but we'll keep an eye on it as people's orders arrive.
We'll be winding down this promotion and preparing for one more big push before Father's Day. After that, we don't have any major sales planned over the summer, but we will have a new lineup of discs, and an expanded bundle (and a discount for people to complete their bundles if they want the rest of the discs). Thanks again!
April 18, 2010 Preparing for another Deals.Woot.com promotion
We've increased our video server capacity since our last Deals.Woot promotion used most of our monthly allotment in one day. Kudos to vzaar.com, our video host. I was always a huge fan of vimeo.com but, alas, vimeo.com does not allow commercial use. Vzaar.com is essentially a commercial take on vimeo. We also have full streams of entire programs on our previews page, but they are hosted at blip.tv. They allow users to get an idea of the content, but the video quality is much lower.
We're also glad that we are making serious progress on our new batch of BluScenes discs. Our original goal was to release them in April/May, but with the way that selling-cycles work, we'd prefer to start selling just before the fourth quarter, so we're probably looking at an August release, although we may offer some via our site before the official street date. The general idea is that it's best for products to be reviewed before the holiday season and most reviews go up closer to the release date.
April 9, 2010 Amazon is really going to ship the correct items this time.
Amazon reviewed their stock and it turns out that a relatively small (thank heavens) number of Space discs were labelled as Fireplace discs. They've waived our label requirement, so future discs will just be scanned via their UPC. This should solve this problem moving forward. For those who received two space discs, we believe we've heard from and sent replacements to all of you, but if not, please let me know via our "contact us" page.
April 1, 2010 No, there is not really going to be a BluScenes disc about Dung Beetles
And future versions of the Fireplace disc, will not require a "Simulate Fire" text crawl across the screen, but BluScenes discs do make really good April Fool's gifts.
I received word from 3 customers who received the wrong items from Amazon. I'm not sure of why this happened -- the packing slips were all correct -- but it seems like these orders might have been in the same batch. This might be sloppy packing on the part of the warehouse workers. I have to admit that I thought that Amazon's automation would catch this kind of error.
Another batch of customers had their shipments split into two halves, and another group actually are receiving three separate packages. All of our discs are warehoused together at Amazon's warehouse in Nevada, so this seems a bit weird and like a waste of packaging and postage on Amazon's part.
Another batch of customers had their shipments split into two halves, and another group actually are receiving three separate packages. All of our discs are warehoused together at Amazon's warehouse in Nevada, so this seems a bit weird and like a waste of packaging and postage on Amazon's part.
March 23, 2010 Shipping Update:
All Deals.Woot.com orders were transmitted to Amazon by Sunday night, and yesterday I received about 95% of the shipping confirmations, which have been forwarded to each customer (with the exception of people who paid with Google, it's taking me a bit longer to link the tracking to your account, but the orders shipped).
One thing that I noted was that for about 10% of the orders, Amazon is splitting the shipments into two parts. The first part contains the Fireplace and Space disc. They have a TON of Aquarium discs in their inventory, so I'm not sure of why the orders were split. I contacted seller support, and they said that even though all of the discs were in stock, we sent them ALL of our inventory on March 16, so it's possible that not all of our discs are in the main area and that some had to be moved. (The number of sales on the day of the Deals.Woot.com promotion was significantly higher than usual, so if they were going off of a rolling average, the number of orders probably exceeded the discs in their main packing area. Anyway, they told me that the other disc is going to ship and that when they do this there is no additional shipping charge to BluScenes (which is a relief because we subsidize the shipping cost -- the customer portion covers postage and our portion covers the pick, pack and ship portion).
March 19, 2010 - Welcome Wooters.
All Deals.Woot.com orders were transmitted to Amazon by Sunday night, and yesterday I received about 95% of the shipping confirmations, which have been forwarded to each customer (with the exception of people who paid with Google, it's taking me a bit longer to link the tracking to your account, but the orders shipped).
One thing that I noted was that for about 10% of the orders, Amazon is splitting the shipments into two parts. The first part contains the Fireplace and Space disc. They have a TON of Aquarium discs in their inventory, so I'm not sure of why the orders were split. I contacted seller support, and they said that even though all of the discs were in stock, we sent them ALL of our inventory on March 16, so it's possible that not all of our discs are in the main area and that some had to be moved. (The number of sales on the day of the Deals.Woot.com promotion was significantly higher than usual, so if they were going off of a rolling average, the number of orders probably exceeded the discs in their main packing area. Anyway, they told me that the other disc is going to ship and that when they do this there is no additional shipping charge to BluScenes (which is a relief because we subsidize the shipping cost -- the customer portion covers postage and our portion covers the pick, pack and ship portion).
March 19, 2010 - Welcome Wooters.
I'd usually be sleeping right now, but I wanted to make sure that our appearance on deals.woot.com went smoothly. So, if you haven't heard of us before, welcome and thanks for stopping by.
We're a small ambient Blu-ray label based out of New Jersey. After working for larger media companies for over a decade, we're dusting ourselves off in this Great Recession and doing something that we enjoy -- LOVE to do.
As somebody who buys a lot of Blu-ray discs myself, you might be wondering how we are able to charge so little for our bundle. The answer has four parts:
As somebody who buys a lot of Blu-ray discs myself, you might be wondering how we are able to charge so little for our bundle. The answer has four parts:
1) We manage our costs and charge a modest markup.
2) We benefit from high volume. Our initial development costs are spread over more discs and the cost for each disc drops dramatically.
3) We are essentially charging what a distributor might pay us, if they ever ended up paying in full, but instead we're selling directly to our customers.
4) As a Blu-ray-Only label, we don't charge the "Blu-ray premium" that some DVD companies might charge.
Feb 27, 2010 - Blizzard Sale!
If the weather will cooperate, I will be scouting some really cool locations for future shoots this week. I'm also still in the midst of researching options for 3D recordings.
One of the negatives about being an early entrant into a new market is that the costs can be prohibitive. So, we need to find a way of maintaining quality without spending all of our cash reserves on new-fangled technology. Check out this rig of 2 Canon 7D DSLRs (1080p capable) fused together for stereoscopic video!
Feb 13, 2010 - Possible 3D projects
Thanks for the "get well" wishes. I ended up having a nasty virus that started to turn into pneumonia -- sending my white blood cell count well outside of the normal range. I'm a cancer survivor, so these weird numbers require a bit closer followup than they otherwise might. I feel fine now, and I'm finally able to jog again. I was getting a bit stir-crazy.
I've been storyboarding several of our upcoming releases. One thing that we try to do is to acknowledge the other ambient art out on the market, and to approach things from a different angle. I started working on a disc featuring Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artwork, but I'm finding that some truly great works simply don't work on a 16:9 screen. Other so-called "lesser" works, sometimes are astonishing -- especially if you can pick up some of the finer details. Personally, I gravitate to the floral and landscape images, as they seem to be the most modern -- they work best in this format.
Another idea that we've been looking into is a disc featuring fractal animations. If we can do it right, I think there might be a place in our already "niche" line of discs!
Speaking of niche, since the CES show, we've received a number of inquiries about whether we'd offer 3D programming. We are trying to see if we can capture 3D content while we are doing other shoots. Personally, I think that this is better suited for 3D laptops and screens than for setups that require glasses. I just can't imagine relaxing at home with 3D glasses on. The ambience is lost.
Speaking of niche, since the CES show, we've received a number of inquiries about whether we'd offer 3D programming. We are trying to see if we can capture 3D content while we are doing other shoots. Personally, I think that this is better suited for 3D laptops and screens than for setups that require glasses. I just can't imagine relaxing at home with 3D glasses on. The ambience is lost.
February 2, 2010 - Under the weather
I caught a pretty bad winter bug that has had me struggling to get out of bed. Not to make a habit of this, but I ended a bunch of promotions on our site just to slow down the pace of orders for a few days.
Sales will return, and don't worry - orders are not being delayed (and I don't physically come in contact with your orders - they are located, safely, over 3,000 miles away from germ-central). I just wanted to limit things to a manageable level while I rest for a few days.
January 22, 2010 - The Return of the Crazy Sale Prices!
The #1 Question that we get around here is "Why are your discs so cheap?"
Without sounding like an aluminum siding sales pitch (no offense to aluminimum siding salesmen), our philosophy is that something doesn't have to be overpriced to be good. The current state of the video distribution is such that we are happier selling directly to consumers than going through a middleman. When many of the middlemen are going under and not paying their bills their value is diminished.
If we sell our disc to a major retailer, we have to offer 60% discounts, 60 days terms (that means they pay 60 days after we ship) and the stores are definitely going to order more than they need and send back the rest (as much as 50-60%). Why? Ask Wal-Mart why they do it. I believe it has something to do with sending merchandise back before payment is due just to re-order it and start the 60 day clock again.
On the other hand, when we sell directly on our site, we get paid immediately. It allows us to fund our future projects and to own our content. This allows us to offer the most liberal fair use and public display terms in the video industry. Also, it allows us to operate without any loans and to run a profitable business while also charging only a modest markup.
We don't skimp on quality. We hire the best industry professionals. You might not find "fishographies" or other features that companies add to raise the perceived value. When we set a budget, we put it into things that will pay off in picture and audio quality. Lastly, we do a lot of the work "in-house," which is to say "in my garage." Chris and Geoff compose their audio in the UK, Kwan runs his 4K production house in NYC, orders are fulfilled from California, and Jeff works from Pennsylvania.
Who said that the internet didn't change everything!
BluScenes Orders Status Summary:
If we sell our disc to a major retailer, we have to offer 60% discounts, 60 days terms (that means they pay 60 days after we ship) and the stores are definitely going to order more than they need and send back the rest (as much as 50-60%). Why? Ask Wal-Mart why they do it. I believe it has something to do with sending merchandise back before payment is due just to re-order it and start the 60 day clock again.
On the other hand, when we sell directly on our site, we get paid immediately. It allows us to fund our future projects and to own our content. This allows us to offer the most liberal fair use and public display terms in the video industry. Also, it allows us to operate without any loans and to run a profitable business while also charging only a modest markup.
We don't skimp on quality. We hire the best industry professionals. You might not find "fishographies" or other features that companies add to raise the perceived value. When we set a budget, we put it into things that will pay off in picture and audio quality. Lastly, we do a lot of the work "in-house," which is to say "in my garage." Chris and Geoff compose their audio in the UK, Kwan runs his 4K production house in NYC, orders are fulfilled from California, and Jeff works from Pennsylvania.
Who said that the internet didn't change everything!
BluScenes Orders Status Summary:
January 14, 2010 12:30 AM - Progress. . . and The Hermit Crab Edition (no case!?)
It's been about a week since our back-to-back sales ended, and we've had some time to recover. This past week, I spent most of my time entering all of my expenses into QuickBooks. I originally tried using a web app called LessAccounting, and it was actually very Web 2.0 slick. The only issue is that I ran into was that it can't integrate with my bank account. Moving forward, I want to try to streamline the process. Unfortunately, I couldn't retroactively import bank data into QuickBooks. So it basically took me a few days.
Enough about that!
I'm finally moving ahead on the next series of 3 discs. I'm trying to figure out how to space out the releases. When we released the first 3 discs, we wanted to have a bundle to offer. Now, I think we'll release them every few months -- for a while. I'm thinking of April, June and August. That way, we can keep our name out there and also have newer discs out right before Christmas.
We have already decided to offer special "bundle" pricing to people who purchased previous discs. This would put the total bundle cost on par with somebody buying all of the discs together as the bundle grows.
We've also been thinking of a new way of selling our discs. I'm calling it the "hermit crab edition." We'd mail it in a cardboard envelope with a casewrap and a disc, and the customer would supply a case -- from a disc they don't use anymore, or simply do away with the case altogether. We'd save on shipping, so we could probably make this a really sweet deal. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not a huge fan of physical media? The discs are bearable. The packaging is what drives me nuts.
January 14, 2010 9:35 PM - Putting it in perspective
It's been about a week since our back-to-back sales ended, and we've had some time to recover. This past week, I spent most of my time entering all of my expenses into QuickBooks. I originally tried using a web app called LessAccounting, and it was actually very Web 2.0 slick. The only issue is that I ran into was that it can't integrate with my bank account. Moving forward, I want to try to streamline the process. Unfortunately, I couldn't retroactively import bank data into QuickBooks. So it basically took me a few days.
Enough about that!
I'm finally moving ahead on the next series of 3 discs. I'm trying to figure out how to space out the releases. When we released the first 3 discs, we wanted to have a bundle to offer. Now, I think we'll release them every few months -- for a while. I'm thinking of April, June and August. That way, we can keep our name out there and also have newer discs out right before Christmas.
We have already decided to offer special "bundle" pricing to people who purchased previous discs. This would put the total bundle cost on par with somebody buying all of the discs together as the bundle grows.
We've also been thinking of a new way of selling our discs. I'm calling it the "hermit crab edition." We'd mail it in a cardboard envelope with a casewrap and a disc, and the customer would supply a case -- from a disc they don't use anymore, or simply do away with the case altogether. We'd save on shipping, so we could probably make this a really sweet deal. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not a huge fan of physical media? The discs are bearable. The packaging is what drives me nuts.
January 14, 2010 9:35 PM - Putting it in perspective
I woke up this morning and received a Google Alert with recent posts about BluScenes, and actually got bummed out. The reason? Our first scathing review on Amazon.com, which I'll quote, but now is not the time to rebut:
"One Star - Lousy. Look elswhere. Colorful yes. Does not seem like 1080p at all (cloudy). only 3 tank choices, all which are too similar to be called different. Lousy new-age music with it. I saw no choice for music off/bubbles on. Fish are not realistic in their movements. No real flow. What a mistake. Please please look elswhere."
Not just one "please" but Morrissey-style "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" pleading. I think that's what bummed me out the most.
Not just one "please" but Morrissey-style "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" pleading. I think that's what bummed me out the most.
Anyway, I was drinking my coffee and watching the morning news. The story about the earthquake in Haiti was on, and I suddenly felt like the world's biggest idiot for being upset about a bad review. I have 15 month old twin daughters and I can't imagine going through what these parents are going through.
I want to use these discs to leverage what I can donate to the Haiti effort. I'd like to try to raise a modest $1,000, but I don't want to collect any money here. What I'm thinking of doing is asking people to donate the purchase price of our bundle to an online charity, and in return we'd give a coupon code equal to the value of the donation.
Our cost would be the cost of shipping 60 bundles plus the cost of replication, but we'd turn it into $1,000 donated directly to those charities. If you are interested, please email me using the "contact us" link. Feel free to tell a friend, but honestly don't post on forums. Our goal is modest here, and it's a test to see if this kind of thing can help spur donations directly to charities. I don't think this should apply to past orders simply because the goal should be to spur donations. If we end up refunding 60 people, it defeats the goal of turning what we can afford into a larger amount of money.
January 13, 2010 9:45 PM - Getting to know Google Checkout
I'm not sure whether Google Checkout is just extremely popular, or whether a higher-percentage-than-normal of people who frequent deal sites use it. But, wow! I signed up for a merchant account through my bank, and the terms are actually pretty good for a racket like the credit card business. However, I'm finding that about 45% of customers are using Google Checkout, about 30% are using PayPal, and the remaining 25% are using a regular credit card.
This has some customer service implications that I only became aware of today. Google Checkout is very slick. It's so integrated with our site via its API (which is also a great --tremendous and flexible platform. At my old employer, I actually used the instantestore.com platform for some sites that handled hundreds of thousands of orders a year. We never had problems) -- it's so integrated that we actually don't receive an order until we approve the charge. As soon as we do, via the Google backend, the orders are sent automatically to our database. This matters because I've been using instantestore's email capabilities to keep people informed about their orders, however, I realized today that we don't actually receive a customer record until I approve the sale. This usually doesn't matter, but we're not charging credit cards until we take delivery of our new batch of discs on Friday, so the information is not in the email database. If I send out updates, I have to make sure to also send them to Google customers.
January 6, 2010 12:00 AM - A busy day at the office
This has some customer service implications that I only became aware of today. Google Checkout is very slick. It's so integrated with our site via its API (which is also a great --tremendous and flexible platform. At my old employer, I actually used the instantestore.com platform for some sites that handled hundreds of thousands of orders a year. We never had problems) -- it's so integrated that we actually don't receive an order until we approve the charge. As soon as we do, via the Google backend, the orders are sent automatically to our database. This matters because I've been using instantestore's email capabilities to keep people informed about their orders, however, I realized today that we don't actually receive a customer record until I approve the sale. This usually doesn't matter, but we're not charging credit cards until we take delivery of our new batch of discs on Friday, so the information is not in the email database. If I send out updates, I have to make sure to also send them to Google customers.
January 6, 2010 12:00 AM - A busy day at the office
I didn't go to bed last night until about 3am. When I re-instituted the sale on our site, I didn't know what to expect. It turns out that it was our busiest day ever. By the time I did get to bed, we had already exceeded our Black Friday sales. THANK YOU. I just want you to know that every penny from these sales is being reinvested into expanding our line of Blu-ray discs.
As I've written before, I'm based in NJ and our shipping partner is in California. Because orders are continuing to come in at a faster rate than we anticipated, I'm thinking that we might run out of our current stock as early as tomorrow. To prepare for this, I've already deactivated automatic credit card processing, and our site will be taking authorizations only until we are ready to ship again -- usually it takes about 10 days. We will also upgrade those orders to priority shipping at no additional charge. We are not out of stock yet, but because of reshipped or missing orders, rattlers (discs that sometimes fall off the holder in a case and become damaged) and other QC issues, I need to obtain an accurate count tomorrow and match it to what our site says we actually sold.
The experience today also has me rethinking some of our marketing and distribution strategy. If people find this price attractive, and if we can sell more discs this way while still making a modest profit, we'd rather do this than send our products to retailers who double the price, order much more than they need on 60 day terms and end up sending back the unsold discs.
January 5, 2010 9:53 AM - It seemed like a good time for a sale
January 4, 2010 12:30 AM - New Year, New Beginning
Happy New Year! I'm very happy that we'll be shipping replacement fireplace discs out today and tomorrow. While most people have been emailing me asking why, when their disc has no problem, my answer is "because there IS a problem with the disc -- even if your Blu-ray player can compensate for it." Thanks to L&M for redoing the discs for us, especially to Denise and Yariv for the excellent communication throughout.
Today is notable because after spending 7 years as the director of marketing and technology for DVD International (home of Joe Kane's Digital Video Essentials, HDScape and more), I am now on my own. DVD International was and is one of the first DVD labels in the world, and they were also in laser disc before that. It was a fun place. David Goodman could tell you more about the video business than anybody. And he did. He was a great mentor.
I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues. Did we have disagreements over the direction that the company was headed in from time to time? We didn't agree about anything -- from the brand of coffee in the break room and office thermostat setting to the new product release schedule. (Now, I can freely admit that it was me who drove Josh crazy every day by adjusting the thermostat more to my liking). A little mystery in life is good even if, like crop circles, it's all a hoax.
As I've written before, I'm based in NJ and our shipping partner is in California. Because orders are continuing to come in at a faster rate than we anticipated, I'm thinking that we might run out of our current stock as early as tomorrow. To prepare for this, I've already deactivated automatic credit card processing, and our site will be taking authorizations only until we are ready to ship again -- usually it takes about 10 days. We will also upgrade those orders to priority shipping at no additional charge. We are not out of stock yet, but because of reshipped or missing orders, rattlers (discs that sometimes fall off the holder in a case and become damaged) and other QC issues, I need to obtain an accurate count tomorrow and match it to what our site says we actually sold.
The experience today also has me rethinking some of our marketing and distribution strategy. If people find this price attractive, and if we can sell more discs this way while still making a modest profit, we'd rather do this than send our products to retailers who double the price, order much more than they need on 60 day terms and end up sending back the unsold discs.
January 5, 2010 9:53 AM - It seemed like a good time for a sale
I am closely monitoring our orders today because it seems very likely that we will need to place a new replication order sooner than expected. For those who have followed the Fireplace saga from the beginning, I had them delivered to me yesterday and they are all either sent out or in the process of being sent to customers.
I've been holding back on any sorts of sales because I didn't have a fireplace to complete the bundle, but since it is back (and new and improved -- actually, it's the same, but without the skipping issue experienced on a some players), I put the bundle back on sale at a special celebratory price.
If I were in your shoes, I'd be asking "why are these discs so cheap?" So, here's my answer:
I've been holding back on any sorts of sales because I didn't have a fireplace to complete the bundle, but since it is back (and new and improved -- actually, it's the same, but without the skipping issue experienced on a some players), I put the bundle back on sale at a special celebratory price.
If I were in your shoes, I'd be asking "why are these discs so cheap?" So, here's my answer:
1) I pulled the sale of the Fireplace disc right before Christmas and the copies were destroyed. I just had a replacement truck load delivered yesterday. These are the replacement discs, so there is no problem with them, I'm just adjusting the price due to the fact that I view Christmas-through-New Year's as the prime selling season for a Fireplace disc.
2) As I've written before, the state of the video distribution business is a real mess right now. It makes the US auto industry look like a bull market -- subject to extremely high returns and distributors that go under or can't pay their bills. By selling on our own site, almost all of the risk is eliminated. We can sell at wholesale prices, with the money deposited the next day, and we can sell more because the final selling price is much lower than if we went through an intermediary. I honestly despise the phrase "win-win," but it's something like that.
3) Our goal is to be well-regarded for quality and price. We don't fill our discs with extraneous bonus materials to raise the perceived value. We'd rather spend the money on the core content. So, there are certain features that you will find only on our discs, but they are not "bonus" material. They are part of the core program.
January 4, 2010 12:30 AM - New Year, New Beginning
Happy New Year! I'm very happy that we'll be shipping replacement fireplace discs out today and tomorrow. While most people have been emailing me asking why, when their disc has no problem, my answer is "because there IS a problem with the disc -- even if your Blu-ray player can compensate for it." Thanks to L&M for redoing the discs for us, especially to Denise and Yariv for the excellent communication throughout.
Today is notable because after spending 7 years as the director of marketing and technology for DVD International (home of Joe Kane's Digital Video Essentials, HDScape and more), I am now on my own. DVD International was and is one of the first DVD labels in the world, and they were also in laser disc before that. It was a fun place. David Goodman could tell you more about the video business than anybody. And he did. He was a great mentor.
I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues. Did we have disagreements over the direction that the company was headed in from time to time? We didn't agree about anything -- from the brand of coffee in the break room and office thermostat setting to the new product release schedule. (Now, I can freely admit that it was me who drove Josh crazy every day by adjusting the thermostat more to my liking). A little mystery in life is good even if, like crop circles, it's all a hoax.
Anyway, we disagreed about nearly everything. That's what made it interesting. David could have decided to hire a bunch of automatons who echoed what he wanted to hear, but he didn't. I have a lot of respect for that. More recently, I had ideas about how I wanted to do things, and to their credit, they did not stop me. They could have tried, but I am most appreciative that they did not.
My original goal was for them to distribute for Scenic Labs. This might still happen, but it seems less likely by the day. However, the state of video distribution (for physical media, at least) is a real mess right now. Some major international distributors folded in the last year and others are on the brink. 2010 might end up being another scary year for retail. While we wait for the dust to settle, Scenic Labs will continue to sell our discs directly on our site, and through a number of partners, such as Amazon. We are also setting up a fulfillment center in Europe, and this will allow us to offer fast and inexpensive shipping within the Eurozone.
December 29, 3:59 PM - New Fireplace Ready To Ship!
Watching the test disc now, and NO MORE SKIPPING! I'm hoping that the replacements will all go out tomorrow.
-Whew!-
December 29, 1:00 AM - Still updating about the fireplace?
My original goal was for them to distribute for Scenic Labs. This might still happen, but it seems less likely by the day. However, the state of video distribution (for physical media, at least) is a real mess right now. Some major international distributors folded in the last year and others are on the brink. 2010 might end up being another scary year for retail. While we wait for the dust to settle, Scenic Labs will continue to sell our discs directly on our site, and through a number of partners, such as Amazon. We are also setting up a fulfillment center in Europe, and this will allow us to offer fast and inexpensive shipping within the Eurozone.
December 29, 3:59 PM - New Fireplace Ready To Ship!
Watching the test disc now, and NO MORE SKIPPING! I'm hoping that the replacements will all go out tomorrow.
-Whew!-
December 29, 1:00 AM - Still updating about the fireplace?
Due to a comedy-of-errors of fiasco-like proportions over the weekend, every single one of the test discs was sent to a new customer and not to the people waiting to test them them. I was supposed to receive a test disc, and I went to the P.O. pick it up today, and found that I had been sent the OLD version. The one guy in the world (Jeff!) with a disc to test has two players that had no problem with the prior version (making his comparison useless). Argh.
The Blu-ray gods are obviously angry at me for some reason.
Anyway, thanks to L&M, new test discs were sent out earlier today and will be received by all tomorrow 12/29. Once the discs are tested on players that had problems with the prior version, they can be mailed out to everybody. It's going to happen either on Wednesday or Monday (due to the holiday and depending on how quickly i hear back). In one regard, most outstanding customer service issues will be resolved once people who reported issues receive discs that (hopefully) solve their problems tomorrow.
December 23, 1:15 AM - Fireplace Redux
Denise called me from the manufacturer, and there are new discs. HOWEVER. Even though enough discs were made to replace customer discs AND restore my inventory, they want me to check them out. What better way than to send them (in time for Christmas!) to the people who encountered the most serious problems.
I'm overnighting discs to people who reported serious skipping and non-play issues. If the discs work on those players, we will start shipping replacements approximately Monday or Tuesday (Dec 28 or 29).
What caused the issues in the first place? It's still a mystery. However, there is a theory that somehow the very nature of a fireplace (monochromatic, fluctuating, relatively stationary, cracking/white noise) makes it slightly more error-prone. Somehow.
But we think we've got it this time. (fingers crossed).
Denise called me from the manufacturer, and there are new discs. HOWEVER. Even though enough discs were made to replace customer discs AND restore my inventory, they want me to check them out. What better way than to send them (in time for Christmas!) to the people who encountered the most serious problems.
I'm overnighting discs to people who reported serious skipping and non-play issues. If the discs work on those players, we will start shipping replacements approximately Monday or Tuesday (Dec 28 or 29).
What caused the issues in the first place? It's still a mystery. However, there is a theory that somehow the very nature of a fireplace (monochromatic, fluctuating, relatively stationary, cracking/white noise) makes it slightly more error-prone. Somehow.
The new master did not cause problems on test decks, but the examined error level was still slightly higher than Aquarium & Space. And this is with a brand new master. Ironically, when rival HDScape released their 720p Fireplace a few years ago, it didn't work on the PS3. Are fireplace discs cursed?
No. But it's possible that content that pushes the limits on a sustained basis would be more susceptible to errors. If the current batch of replacement discs doesn't do the trick, we will be using a totally different laser system to cut the next master.
No. But it's possible that content that pushes the limits on a sustained basis would be more susceptible to errors. If the current batch of replacement discs doesn't do the trick, we will be using a totally different laser system to cut the next master.
But we think we've got it this time. (fingers crossed).
December 18, 10:30 PM - Fireplace Update
The replicator called me at 6:00 PM EST and confirmed that they will be making a new glass master and stamper. They tried to make 4 new stampers from the original master, and all of them came up with errors or anomalies. The cause could not be determined. To explain how a disc works, there are multiple points that can cause a problem of this type (random skipping/pausing):
1) disc clarity
2) physical integrity
3) data integrity (includes AACS encryption as well as the original authoring), although this would usually cause a problem at a certain point for all players.
4) protective substrate condition
5) dust, dirt, scratches
Every disc has errors. Players are able to compensate for them. Combine too many issues from 1-to-5 below and at some point you go beyond a player's ability to error-correct. This is probably why wiping discs sometimes will make a non-playing disc function (even in the case of our fireplace disc, where we know there is something going on even though the check discs don't have any apparent problems)
Since my email this evening, we've received 2 more confirmations of problems. One player paused randomly and another one had to be unplugged and powered back on to eject the disc. That's 8 confirmed problems out of 800 discs in the wild so far. Replacement discs are being shipped to EVERY customer as soon as we get them.
December 17, 2009 5:15 AM Reported Fireplace Probiems
It was maddening! Within 48 hours, I received 4 emails from people who experienced skipping with their Fireplace discs. And by skippping, I mean pausing, which is how Blu-ray players freak out when they have trouble reading a disc. At first, I recommended that people wipe their discs. In some cases, this even worked -- a little.
We tried to recreate the problem on our test BD decks. The discs played fine. So we played them straight through, and voila -- in scene #4 (the long fire scene), the disc paused at about 19 minutes in. Once it happened, it paused a few more times, but then it played fine again. I tested it again, but it didn't skip the second time. I asked one of our early customers if he could try his disc (which he was actually watching at the time), and he originally had no problem, but when he tried scene 4, it skipped. On a different Blu-ray player, it didn't skip, but it acted as though "it wanted to skip." (the image actually broke up briefly, but the disc didn't stop playing.
What was the cause of this problem, and how to fix it? At first, I thought perhaps there was a bad batch of slugs/blanks. It's not uncommon for there to be some failure rate, but I couldn't tell if this was a trend since I shipped to 95% of my customers within one week. I would expect that the reporting of problems would also be compressed into a shorter window.
Fortunately, our replicator is located down the street from our fulfillment center. While getting quotes for Scenic Labs projects, I received some very low bids from some overseas replicators. Without even getting into the politics, I am very glad that we went with a USA-based company. By about 10:00am, Pacific time, they picked up a batch of samples to test. By 10:30, they found the source of the problem and offered to replace our entire stock of Fireplace discs as well as provide new discs in cardboard mailers for every customer to date. On top of this, they cut us into their production line so they can deliver the replacements to us on Friday, December 18.
To sum up the problem, the stamper had a very slight physical anomaly (sounds like it was off center by micrometers). Some BD players have better error correction than others, so that's why only certain players had a problem playing the disc. The disc acted almost the way that you would expect a warped disc to behave. The laser would occasionally fall off the groove and have to find its way back. The problem sounds eerily like what I read about with the Baraka disc on Blu-ray.com forums, but a host of issues can cause the problem. It would be bad form for me to diagnose a problem with another disc. I am only pointing out similarities in how the discs behave.
I called Amazon.com and other online retailers and immediately told them to destroy any remaining stock of the Fireplace. We will ship new copies to them tomorrow and Monday. I also coordinated with our shipping partner -- they will be getting these replacement discs out to everybody on our customer list. We are suspending shipments for our 3 disc bundle until tomorrow, when we will resume shipping with the discs from the new batch.
Fortunately, thanks to the feedback from our customers, we are able to respond to this issue quickly. I'd also personally thank Denise, our account rep at the replicator for her help of phonebook-tearing proportions. I've experienced manufacturing problems over the last 10 years at my old employer, and it is very rare that they are resolved so throroughly and so quickly by a replicator. I'm getting a lot of encouraging and thoughtful emails from customers in the wake of this problem, and I feel the same way about L&M. This is how they turn me into a loyal customer.
Dec 11, 2009 11:25 PM - Ars Technica Column about Managed Copy
Nate Anderson of Ars Technica talks about Managed Copy, and Scenic Labs' experience provides some insights into the process of preparing for a specification that only exists on paper (or PDF ;-)). In not too many words, we release content that has more value when we give users more flexibility in how and where it is played and stored. If AACS was not required, we would not use it (many studios chose not to use Macrovision for their DVDs).
And yes, piracy happens. We cannot stop it. We lose more sleep over the possibility that managed copy might not work than over piracy concerns. And since we don't think that we can stop it, we'd rather not limit how our content is used by paying customers. Otherwise, only the pirates have the freedom to use the content as they wish.
Dec 11, 2009 11:00 PM: Please let us know when your order arrives. Today is the first day that we started receiving a significant number of email notifications that the discs had been received. Several were in CA (we do ship from there even though we're located in NJ). We expect a very large number of orders to arrive tomorrow and Monday. I placed two test orders to gauge delivery times and make sure packaging, etc. is satisfactoy. I received my Priority Mail package yesterday, 12/10. I still have not received my First Class order (under 13 oz -- a single bundle is 10 oz).
We want to limit the number of emails we send, but we'll probably send an update before next Wednesday, just to check in with everybody. From past experience, I'd expect 95% of the orders to be received by then. (USPS delivery times for a large number of orders are always bell curve-shaped; some orders arrive in one day, and some are at the opposite extreme). We will make sure that everybody gets their stuff ON TIME by polling the Endicia.com site and checking for orders where delivery has not yet been confirmed.
Après le Déluge...
December 4, 2009 8:40 AM Managed Copy
November 29, 2009 10:00 AM
Good news this morning. The discs are no longer showing up incorrectly on Amazon as discontinued. It seems that when I updated the ship date, I cancelled the POs in their system and now new POs are being issued. This doesn't affect orders placed on BluScenes.com, but it does possibly affect some Amazon customers.
I received a few email and IM questions (you can reach me on AOL IM at screenname "bluscenes"). The most common question had to do with AACS changing the "live" date for Managed Copy and what this means for BluScenes. My answers are as follows.
What effect does moving the live date for managed copy from Dec 4, 2009 to March 31, 2010?
November 28, 2009 10:45 PM
The replicator called me at 6:00 PM EST and confirmed that they will be making a new glass master and stamper. They tried to make 4 new stampers from the original master, and all of them came up with errors or anomalies. The cause could not be determined. To explain how a disc works, there are multiple points that can cause a problem of this type (random skipping/pausing):
1) disc clarity
2) physical integrity
3) data integrity (includes AACS encryption as well as the original authoring), although this would usually cause a problem at a certain point for all players.
4) protective substrate condition
5) dust, dirt, scratches
Every disc has errors. Players are able to compensate for them. Combine too many issues from 1-to-5 below and at some point you go beyond a player's ability to error-correct. This is probably why wiping discs sometimes will make a non-playing disc function (even in the case of our fireplace disc, where we know there is something going on even though the check discs don't have any apparent problems)
Since my email this evening, we've received 2 more confirmations of problems. One player paused randomly and another one had to be unplugged and powered back on to eject the disc. That's 8 confirmed problems out of 800 discs in the wild so far. Replacement discs are being shipped to EVERY customer as soon as we get them.
December 17, 2009 5:15 AM Reported Fireplace Probiems
It was maddening! Within 48 hours, I received 4 emails from people who experienced skipping with their Fireplace discs. And by skippping, I mean pausing, which is how Blu-ray players freak out when they have trouble reading a disc. At first, I recommended that people wipe their discs. In some cases, this even worked -- a little.
We tried to recreate the problem on our test BD decks. The discs played fine. So we played them straight through, and voila -- in scene #4 (the long fire scene), the disc paused at about 19 minutes in. Once it happened, it paused a few more times, but then it played fine again. I tested it again, but it didn't skip the second time. I asked one of our early customers if he could try his disc (which he was actually watching at the time), and he originally had no problem, but when he tried scene 4, it skipped. On a different Blu-ray player, it didn't skip, but it acted as though "it wanted to skip." (the image actually broke up briefly, but the disc didn't stop playing.
What was the cause of this problem, and how to fix it? At first, I thought perhaps there was a bad batch of slugs/blanks. It's not uncommon for there to be some failure rate, but I couldn't tell if this was a trend since I shipped to 95% of my customers within one week. I would expect that the reporting of problems would also be compressed into a shorter window.
Fortunately, our replicator is located down the street from our fulfillment center. While getting quotes for Scenic Labs projects, I received some very low bids from some overseas replicators. Without even getting into the politics, I am very glad that we went with a USA-based company. By about 10:00am, Pacific time, they picked up a batch of samples to test. By 10:30, they found the source of the problem and offered to replace our entire stock of Fireplace discs as well as provide new discs in cardboard mailers for every customer to date. On top of this, they cut us into their production line so they can deliver the replacements to us on Friday, December 18.
To sum up the problem, the stamper had a very slight physical anomaly (sounds like it was off center by micrometers). Some BD players have better error correction than others, so that's why only certain players had a problem playing the disc. The disc acted almost the way that you would expect a warped disc to behave. The laser would occasionally fall off the groove and have to find its way back. The problem sounds eerily like what I read about with the Baraka disc on Blu-ray.com forums, but a host of issues can cause the problem. It would be bad form for me to diagnose a problem with another disc. I am only pointing out similarities in how the discs behave.
I called Amazon.com and other online retailers and immediately told them to destroy any remaining stock of the Fireplace. We will ship new copies to them tomorrow and Monday. I also coordinated with our shipping partner -- they will be getting these replacement discs out to everybody on our customer list. We are suspending shipments for our 3 disc bundle until tomorrow, when we will resume shipping with the discs from the new batch.
Fortunately, thanks to the feedback from our customers, we are able to respond to this issue quickly. I'd also personally thank Denise, our account rep at the replicator for her help of phonebook-tearing proportions. I've experienced manufacturing problems over the last 10 years at my old employer, and it is very rare that they are resolved so throroughly and so quickly by a replicator. I'm getting a lot of encouraging and thoughtful emails from customers in the wake of this problem, and I feel the same way about L&M. This is how they turn me into a loyal customer.
December 15, 2009 12:00 AM
We'll be open again tomorrow (we were closed for a family funeral). I believe that starting tomorrow, we're going to offer priority shipping, and we're probably going to work it into the 3 disc bundle price somehow. We're interested in finding out about how you are using the discs. If you have any problems, please let us know.
One thing that we didn't expect was the large number of people getting into Blu-ray for the first time, and some never saw a pop up menu before. We might include an instruction card based on this experience.
We'll be open again tomorrow (we were closed for a family funeral). I believe that starting tomorrow, we're going to offer priority shipping, and we're probably going to work it into the 3 disc bundle price somehow. We're interested in finding out about how you are using the discs. If you have any problems, please let us know.
One thing that we didn't expect was the large number of people getting into Blu-ray for the first time, and some never saw a pop up menu before. We might include an instruction card based on this experience.
Dec 14, 2009 11:25 AM Personal Days 12/14 - 12/15
Due to the death of my grandmother this morning, I will be closing the office early. Jewish tradition holds that the funeral is held on the day immediately after you pass away, which means that I will also be unavailable through most of tomorrow. I will respond in the evening, though.
My grandmother lived to be 86, she kept all of her wits, and I'm glad that she lived to enjoy her great-grandchildren. It's an extremely sad day but it's not, by any measure, tragic.
Dec 14, 2009 10:00 PM So, about that FBI warning on the discs. . .
We're happy that people are receiving their discs and checking in, and we've already received a question about an excellent point, and it merits a response:
"If you support customers making copies to hard drives and devices, why do your discs include the usual FBI warning?"
Due to the death of my grandmother this morning, I will be closing the office early. Jewish tradition holds that the funeral is held on the day immediately after you pass away, which means that I will also be unavailable through most of tomorrow. I will respond in the evening, though.
My grandmother lived to be 86, she kept all of her wits, and I'm glad that she lived to enjoy her great-grandchildren. It's an extremely sad day but it's not, by any measure, tragic.
Dec 14, 2009 10:00 PM So, about that FBI warning on the discs. . .
We're happy that people are receiving their discs and checking in, and we've already received a question about an excellent point, and it merits a response:
"If you support customers making copies to hard drives and devices, why do your discs include the usual FBI warning?"
1) The warning has to do with "unauthorized duplication." We believe that, in our case, it targets large-scale operations that would copy the disc and resell it.
2) We believe that our public display license provides proper authorization for public display on a one-screen-per-disc basis.
2) We believe that our public display license provides proper authorization for public display on a one-screen-per-disc basis.
3) While we can authorize users to make personal copies when there is no copy protection, the only way of doing so right now would require us to encourage customers to violate DMCA. We strongly discourage breaking the law. We are looking at options, such as offering BD-R copies, on-demand copies (also usually BD-R), or downloadable versions of content to provide legal alternatives.
Dec 11, 2009 11:25 PM - Ars Technica Column about Managed Copy
Nate Anderson of Ars Technica talks about Managed Copy, and Scenic Labs' experience provides some insights into the process of preparing for a specification that only exists on paper (or PDF ;-)). In not too many words, we release content that has more value when we give users more flexibility in how and where it is played and stored. If AACS was not required, we would not use it (many studios chose not to use Macrovision for their DVDs).
And yes, piracy happens. We cannot stop it. We lose more sleep over the possibility that managed copy might not work than over piracy concerns. And since we don't think that we can stop it, we'd rather not limit how our content is used by paying customers. Otherwise, only the pirates have the freedom to use the content as they wish.
Dec 11, 2009 11:00 PM: Please let us know when your order arrives. Today is the first day that we started receiving a significant number of email notifications that the discs had been received. Several were in CA (we do ship from there even though we're located in NJ). We expect a very large number of orders to arrive tomorrow and Monday. I placed two test orders to gauge delivery times and make sure packaging, etc. is satisfactoy. I received my Priority Mail package yesterday, 12/10. I still have not received my First Class order (under 13 oz -- a single bundle is 10 oz).
We want to limit the number of emails we send, but we'll probably send an update before next Wednesday, just to check in with everybody. From past experience, I'd expect 95% of the orders to be received by then. (USPS delivery times for a large number of orders are always bell curve-shaped; some orders arrive in one day, and some are at the opposite extreme). We will make sure that everybody gets their stuff ON TIME by polling the Endicia.com site and checking for orders where delivery has not yet been confirmed.
Après le Déluge...
Hi Folks. Thanks for stopping by! Things are slowly getting back to normal here after getting our initial batch of orders were processed. It would be very cool if you could check in and let us know when they arrive! According to USPS, First Class mail usually arrives within 2-6 business days. While there were no show stoppers, I understand that part of a batch was held over simply because it missed USPS pickup, but that really should affect anything by more than a day. Now that a normal number of orders is coming in every day, things are caught up again. So anyway, here's the story so far...
- Orders are now shipping as they come in.
- I have asked our SaaS shopping cart provider to check into something where the wrong tracking number might show for an order. This will not affect delivery, but if you check on Dec 9, the tracking number might be updated to a different one (if it was wrong). It looks like it got stuck with the same number for some orders.
- further to the second point, I believe this is now fixed, and I DO have a master tracking list, but I need to review this to make sure all is A-OK. It doesn't affect the orders themselves, but it might have affected tracking.
If you want more information, feel free to read the status blog below:
December 4, 2009 8:40 AM Managed Copy
Earlier this morning, we issued a statement about managed copy, which was originally scheduled to go live today. We received some emails about our statement, and I wanted to address some of the very valid points here.
Do we support DRM (digital rights management)? We don't believe that DRM works. Customer relationship management will always be more effective than DRM. However, if we want to release our content on Blu-ray, we are required to use AACS . So, while we don't believe it works in the way that some studios perhaps wish it did, we do pay for, and therefore support it via those payments. We want to continue to be allowed to offer our products.
Regarding DRM, when I worked at BMG, our parent company, Bertelsmann, purchased Napster. I was invited to participate in meetings to determine how to make use of the Napster model, probably because I was just out of business school and more on top of digital trends than some of the seasoned executives. I didn't personally like DRM because I owned one of the early Diamond Rio MP3 players, and it didn't support protected content. I also owned a DAT recorder that I used to record my own home music, and I didn't like the mandatory SCMS (affectionately referred to as SCUMS by musicians) DRM that it forced on our own digital copies.
I looked for potential CRM solutions to the DRM problem, and invited a now-well-known gentleman named Cory Doctorow, from his then-company called OpenCola to speak with Bertelsmann eCommerce Group and Digital World Services (the Bertelsmann DRM division) about how their software could introduce a more CRM-oriented solution. Their talk of tracking "digital karma" resulted in a lot of glazed eyes in the room, but they were onto something. People tend to support brands they like and disregard brands that they don't like.
One more example of this type of proto-CRM came in the form of a copyright message on CD by a talented musician named Ani DiFranco. She is HUGE now, but at the time (1992-1993) she was playing at the Rutgers Graduate Student Lounge for a women's center fundraiser and I bought her debut CD.
Her copyright statement was simple and inspired: "Copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the original." In the era of MP3 and DivX, the second part of this statement might be called into question, but the basic message is still true: If you are going to buy a gift for somebody, or collect something about something or from somebody that you care about, it's probably going to be an original.
The other question I received has to do with compatibility.
Will the delay in managed copy effect my use of this disc?
No. We cannot be certain of most things in this life, but we can be certain that your current Blu-ray player does not yet support managed copy, if for no other reason than the managed copy infrastructure is not yet installed or active.
December 3, 2009 - 8:40 PM All Systems Go
Hello all. We are finally there. Tonight I am transmitting the orders to our fulfillment partner in Valencia, CA. I'm breaking them out in a way to allow them to process the backlog faster. First, I'm sending all of the single bundle orders, and then I'm sending the different quantities and configurations as a separate file.
Most of the orders should be shipped Monday, and I will update tracking both when I send the data and when the items ship. All items are shipping via First Class Mail. Orders over 13 oz, will go by Priority (the level of service between Priority and First Class is very close).
Aside from that, tomorrow was originally to be the day that managed copy went live. It was moved by AACS-LA to March 31, 2010. It actually has no real effect, though, because none of the current Blu-ray players support managed copy at this time. We are issuing a press release at 12:05 AM PST providing details about the managed copy issue, and also announcing that orders are starting to ship.
Thanks again, and we will continue to keep this blog updated.
Most of the orders should be shipped Monday, and I will update tracking both when I send the data and when the items ship. All items are shipping via First Class Mail. Orders over 13 oz, will go by Priority (the level of service between Priority and First Class is very close).
Aside from that, tomorrow was originally to be the day that managed copy went live. It was moved by AACS-LA to March 31, 2010. It actually has no real effect, though, because none of the current Blu-ray players support managed copy at this time. We are issuing a press release at 12:05 AM PST providing details about the managed copy issue, and also announcing that orders are starting to ship.
Thanks again, and we will continue to keep this blog updated.
November 30, 2009: 11:00 PM - Here comes CyberMonday
I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving weekend! We took a trip down to Florida, ate a lot of food, and woke up to a surprising amount of orders on Black Friday. Thank You. As a startup company during a severe recession, it truly means a lot to us.
I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving weekend! We took a trip down to Florida, ate a lot of food, and woke up to a surprising amount of orders on Black Friday. Thank You. As a startup company during a severe recession, it truly means a lot to us.
The story goes that the Monday after the long Thanksgiving weekend has turned into a "shopping while at work" bonanza in the internet age. I spent this afternoon at Jersey Gardens (a large outlet mall in NJ) with my wife and our twin 13 month old daughters, and I can understand why some people would prefer to shop online -- even better still, if somebody is paying you to be at work.
I reviewed our pending orders to make sure that we could handle CyberMonday, and it looks like we can do it (the main issue is that we don't know exactly how many will end up going to 3rd party sites such as Amazon.com, and we need to keep a small reserve. We are fine when people order the bundle because we maintain relatively even quantities of each disc. When single discs are ordered it gets a bit trickier). We'll keep the coupon code active for 200 redemptions of either single discs or bundles. After that, we might be able to replicate more if needed, but things get tighter as the holidays approach.
The term Cyber Monday sounds a bit scary, so our coupon code will fit the mood. Use the code "pyrofish" to take 50% off your BluScenes order for the first 200 redemptions. Or Click Here to apply the code automatically.
I reviewed our pending orders to make sure that we could handle CyberMonday, and it looks like we can do it (the main issue is that we don't know exactly how many will end up going to 3rd party sites such as Amazon.com, and we need to keep a small reserve. We are fine when people order the bundle because we maintain relatively even quantities of each disc. When single discs are ordered it gets a bit trickier). We'll keep the coupon code active for 200 redemptions of either single discs or bundles. After that, we might be able to replicate more if needed, but things get tighter as the holidays approach.
The term Cyber Monday sounds a bit scary, so our coupon code will fit the mood. Use the code "pyrofish" to take 50% off your BluScenes order for the first 200 redemptions. Or Click Here to apply the code automatically.
November 29, 2009 10:00 AM
Good news this morning. The discs are no longer showing up incorrectly on Amazon as discontinued. It seems that when I updated the ship date, I cancelled the POs in their system and now new POs are being issued. This doesn't affect orders placed on BluScenes.com, but it does possibly affect some Amazon customers.
I received a few email and IM questions (you can reach me on AOL IM at screenname "bluscenes"). The most common question had to do with AACS changing the "live" date for Managed Copy and what this means for BluScenes. My answers are as follows.
What effect does moving the live date for managed copy from Dec 4, 2009 to March 31, 2010?
The only way that you will be affected is that you won't be able to use the feature until players start to support it, and now this won't happen until, at least, March 31. All of the other features will function normally.
If you are using Managed Copy anyway, why even bother with AACS? Doesn't it just cause delays?
If you are using Managed Copy anyway, why even bother with AACS? Doesn't it just cause delays?
Managed Copy is the Blu-ray industry's way of allowing customers to make copies of their discs. My own personal feelings about DRM aside (my view is that it often gets in the way of legitimate "fair use" copying), it might make the backup process easier for people who don't want to get their hands dirty. I also believe that some of our looping programs will work even better when played off of a hard drive.
November 28, 2009 10:45 PM
I contacted Amazon this evening and updated them with the updated ship date for the BluScenes discs. Due to a few extra days to clear AACS compounded by the Thanksgiving holiday, the discs won't be in Amazon's warehouse by Dec 1. Oddly, the items all switched to "discontinued" status right after I did that, but I believe that's just until a new PO is issued. I took an extra day to submit everything because when the replicator verified the disc image for the Space disc, they found an error. While there had been no reports of failure due to the error that was found, we couldn't submit it with an error, so we overnighted a replacement disc image the next day.
November 25, 2009 - 11:35 PM
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Our Black Friday sale is under way. We posted it on the site and went to sleep. When we woke up our inbox was filled with new order notifications. The pace is still going pretty strong considering the time of day. Thank you for the strong response. Simply going by our first two days since or "soft launch" you've guaranteed that we will continue our series with further installments.
How do you feel about this kind of price? Are there certain kinds of content you'd like us to capture in 4K or 1080p? One of the comments I received via email was from somebody who normally downloads. He said that if all Blu-rays sold at this price, there's be little incentive to download aside from the convenience. I think we can do it. The price of media is coming down. Blu-ray players are more affordable. I really think that Blu-ray is poised to go mainstream. Some may view Blu-ray as less an upgrade than a "sidegrade." I see the point. I still think that Blu-ray makes for a great archival format. Managed copy will eventually have us playing our content from massive hard drives. That's the way it should be.
Anyway, just a quick production update. We ship our discs from Valencia California. The fulfillment center is blocks away from our replicator. I was told by my account exec at the replicator that it took them a few days longer to hear back from AACSLA, and it might have something to do with us having some of the first managed copy enabled discs. Anyway, I'm supposed to get the final check discs Monday or Tuesday and once I greenlight on Wed, the orders can ship several days later.
Since a lot of people don't know a lot about us, I just wanted to reiterate that this is our maiden voyage and these are our first releases. This discount was offered during our preorder, and while we've taken an authorization to speed order processing, we will not charge cards until the orders actually ship (if you have a debit card, you will probably still see the authorization because it does affect available funds). We've added BD features like managed copy and 7.1 DTS-HD MA because we think that this genre should make use of BD's special features. We hope to implement BD Live on some upcoming discs, like our upcoming disc of famous artwork.
Anyway, thanks again all. As a small business trying to take root during "these challenging times," it honestly means the world to us to see our products being warmly received.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Our Black Friday sale is under way. We posted it on the site and went to sleep. When we woke up our inbox was filled with new order notifications. The pace is still going pretty strong considering the time of day. Thank you for the strong response. Simply going by our first two days since or "soft launch" you've guaranteed that we will continue our series with further installments.
How do you feel about this kind of price? Are there certain kinds of content you'd like us to capture in 4K or 1080p? One of the comments I received via email was from somebody who normally downloads. He said that if all Blu-rays sold at this price, there's be little incentive to download aside from the convenience. I think we can do it. The price of media is coming down. Blu-ray players are more affordable. I really think that Blu-ray is poised to go mainstream. Some may view Blu-ray as less an upgrade than a "sidegrade." I see the point. I still think that Blu-ray makes for a great archival format. Managed copy will eventually have us playing our content from massive hard drives. That's the way it should be.
Anyway, just a quick production update. We ship our discs from Valencia California. The fulfillment center is blocks away from our replicator. I was told by my account exec at the replicator that it took them a few days longer to hear back from AACSLA, and it might have something to do with us having some of the first managed copy enabled discs. Anyway, I'm supposed to get the final check discs Monday or Tuesday and once I greenlight on Wed, the orders can ship several days later.
Since a lot of people don't know a lot about us, I just wanted to reiterate that this is our maiden voyage and these are our first releases. This discount was offered during our preorder, and while we've taken an authorization to speed order processing, we will not charge cards until the orders actually ship (if you have a debit card, you will probably still see the authorization because it does affect available funds). We've added BD features like managed copy and 7.1 DTS-HD MA because we think that this genre should make use of BD's special features. We hope to implement BD Live on some upcoming discs, like our upcoming disc of famous artwork.
Anyway, thanks again all. As a small business trying to take root during "these challenging times," it honestly means the world to us to see our products being warmly received.
Nov 18, 2009 - 9:30 PM
Nov 11, 2009 - 8:30 PM
First of all, and thanks for stopping by our site. We are super-excited that you stopped by! The first 3 discs in our BluScenes series are in replication now and they will be shipped soon. In the meantime, all of our discs are on sale. Pre-order now!
Thanks again for visiting, and we will be posting more news soon. In the meantime, here are some of the things that we're trying to accomplish with BluScenes.
I heard back from the replication facility today and they said that 2 of the discs passed verification but the third (Space) had a problem:
"It appears that the UDF at n-256 is either corrupt or not written at all. The UDF file system is supposed to be recorded in the beginning of the media (Main Volume Descriptors) and at the end of the data n-256 9 (Reserve Volume Descriptor) We haven't had any reports of a damaged or missing RVD causing playability problems. "
In plain English, it's possible that the hard drive was damaged in transit, or that the file didn't write properly. I quickly got ahold of the authoring engineer and a new image is being sent out for delivery Friday morning. This may impact the release by a few days (compounded by Thanksgiving -- the replicator is closed on Thursday and Friday) of the Space disc, but we will wait and see. If it does, we'll give customers who ordered Journey Through Space the option of receiving it in a separate package, or we'll offer some other kind of makegood.
Nov 11, 2009 - 8:30 PM
First of all, and thanks for stopping by our site. We are super-excited that you stopped by! The first 3 discs in our BluScenes series are in replication now and they will be shipped soon. In the meantime, all of our discs are on sale. Pre-order now!
Thanks again for visiting, and we will be posting more news soon. In the meantime, here are some of the things that we're trying to accomplish with BluScenes.
| Author Biography |
| Welcome to BluScenes By Jason Rosenfeld |
| Jason Rosenfeld is the Executive Producer of the BluScenes line of Blu-ray discs and the Director of Technology for Scenic Labs, LLC. |
