Is burn-on-demand the future? (1 Viewer)

after reading the article on tvshowsondvd.com about the 'Create Space' burn on demand made me wonder if this was the future and if the titles listed will ever receive a mainstream release or not

Site News DVD news: Amazon and Nickelodeon/Paramount Strike Deal for Burn-on-Demand Titles | TVShowsOnDVD.com

My most requested show South Of Nowhere is on the list of shows and makes me wonder if this will get a mainstream release now or only be burn-on-demand

what does everyone else think, is this the future of TV-on-DVD?

I'm also curious if some of the titles will be given a mainstream release.

I think this is quite a neat idea and a good way to get many obscure titles that may not get released out on DVD. I personally would love to see many Canadian shows such as "Edison Twins", "The Little Vampire", "An American in Canada" "The 5th Quadrant", "Student Bodies", "Seeing Things" and "Puttnam's Prairie Emporium" go this route as the likelihood of any of these being released at this point is slim.

Other then those shows such as "Pirate Islands", "Sightings", "Kid Nation", "Brat Camp", "Mighty Max", "Mad Jack the Pirate", "Phenom" and the game show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" plus the dozens of short lived shows that would get a chance to be released with this method.

I'm actually quite excited entertaining the idea of this and hope more comes out of it or is developed further provided that good hands are in place as well.

I also didn't mean to turn this into another wish list thread but wanted to use examples of shows that I want but don't think they stand a chance at this point.

This may be the only way that some of the 'forgotten' shows will ever see a release.

I've been wanting the 2 seasons of "Angie" to get released for years, and unfortunately, an on-demand deal is probably the only way it will. I think the show is owned by Paramount, so maybe there's hope.

I'm not sure if it's the future - But perhaps something in tandom with ipod downloads and streaming video.

it'll be interesting how this is done. It's easy to see that kid shows would be the one that receive the In-Store burning. You need to have that "gimme factor" and a burning center with ads for those shows will work best.

But for the most part, it seems like studios would prefer to go via on-line downloads simply to control the money stream. They don't want to wait for their revenue.

Even though I am not interested in the list of shows available so far, I like this idea and hope other studios follow. It sounds similar to the deal Sony struck with HP that was reported a while back. If it gets rare shows available, I'm all for it.

Since tvshowsondvd will not be keeping track of this, if anyone finds out about more shows available this way, please share.

Why isn't TV Shows on DVD covering this again? They are official releases of TV shows to DVD by a reputable company. How is this any different than the Time Life exclusive offerings for Get Smart & Odd Couple and the Voltron pre-retail release coverage? For the most part, this is the only way that a lot of the remaining TV Shows on DVD will ever see a release legally.

Is there any way to find listings of these kinds of titles on Amazon at all? They don't seem to be classified on Amazon as something else so it is nearly impossible to find them.

Yeah, same here. I checked amazon but there is no separate category for these kinds of releases.

I agree. This is the only way that a lot of shows may be released. Not sure why they aren't covering. It's a new kind of release. It's of interest to tv-on-dvd collectors. I'll be looking for these kinds of releases if they become more apparent in the dvd market.

I think this is, in theory, a great way to get obscure/less popular titles out on dvd. However, the problem with DVD-R is that it may or may NOT play on your machine(s), and also I am told that burned DVDs only last for 4-5 years. There goes the collectors' market.

For a well written article on DVD-R, see...

digitalFAQ.com | Blank DVD Media Quality Guide

I have burned stuff here from six years ago that's still just fine. All depends on the quality of media you use. GIGO. (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

I am all for this if it gets shows i am waiting on out there. I could care less if a studio officially presses them or amazon or anyone else burns them on demand. Heck i think it is in studios best interest to have a burn on demand setup themselves. Offer everything and only press what one needs. I dont even think many people will complain if you do not even clean them up. Alot of us just want to be able to see some of the gems we grew up with again.

Paul: Aryn's thoughts are actually part of the problem Gord and I have with the whole concept. If "burn on demand" became the norm, then one of the problems we think we could see is that there would be little or no clean-up of the episodes...along with little or no bonus material, and obviously no special packaging (to the point where maybe we would just get 'em in a plain white envelope, or a cardboard sleeve at maximum). Why should the studios go to any trouble? It's almost TOO easy a solution.

It's like the idea of books on demand (which was actually being floated around quite a bit when I worked at a B. Dalton Bookseller about 20 years ago, and remains a concept even to this day): why fill up store shelves with books people may or may not buy? Just let someone order them from a catalog and they'll get it delivered in 4-to-6 weeks, as it is made special just for them. Heck, these days it would be a lot quicker than that, even cheaper than it would have been two decades ago, and now you could even just e-mail the customer a PDF file and let them laser-print it themselves at home. Why bother with bound books sold in stores at all?

You see what I mean, I hope. It cheapens the industry, and weakens it significantly.

Which brings me to another problem we have with it: it could ruin the experience of walking into a store and buying something. The whole "burn on demand" thing hasn't come up with a good enough arrangement yet that it could be do-able in a standard retail store. You pretty much have to get it from an online company at this time, like Amazon. While to some people that would be just fine, you also have to remember that NOT EVERY consumer is A) internet-connected, and B) credit-card-usable. People still like to, or could be restricted to, walking into a store and paying cash for this stuff. So if the product isn't available in a brick-and-mortar store, that's a problem for what is still a sizable segment of the population! Besides, I like to walk into a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart and shop around and see stuff I never thought of, pick up the back of a box and read it and decide if I want to do an impulse buy, etc. That experience would be gone with just about any type of indoctrinated burn-on-demand system.

Then we also come back to something I brought up in a thread that asked why TSoD doesn't cover sports releases, since they are shown on TV. Well, we gotta draw a line somewhere. Right now the place where this line is drawn will exclude burn-on-demand releases. Part of that reason is because of the vast amount of troubles consumers had with the early burn-on-demand releases (discs arriving empty, or with the wrong stuff on them, or not being compatible with their players/drives, etc.) and the whole thing just wasn't very reliable.

Now, if someone convinces us that the issues are all resolved, and this category is worth us reporting about, then we would have to figure out where we would re-draw the line. We still wouldn't cover sports, or news (including "newsmagazine" stuff like 60 Minutes or Nightline)...some of which are the most consistent sources of burn-on-demand releases. What about iTunes-type stuff (which we don't cover) if it's possible for the end-user to burn it to DVD-R's themselves. Should we cover THAT? I would say "no", but then we would certainly get an argument about it from some unhappy reader somewhere.

And studios that are presented with an opportunity to participate in burn-on-demand, and find the idea attractive, would probably find it even MORE attractive to go the "iTunes" type route of just presenting those un-cleaned-up episodes as digital downloads, and lower overhead costs even further. I mean, why bother with the physical media at all?

Why? Because the overwhelming majority of consumers still want physical media, not downloads. And they want it in nice packaging that they can show to (or "show off to") friends. So burn-on-demand doesn't present the best possible option, especially if the inserts LOOK like they were printed off at the last second rather than going through a professional printing process on glossy paper.

Some of you say, "Sure, TSoD should cover burn-on-demand!" But it's just not as simple as it sounds, is it?

I used to and to some extent still do care about packaging, extras.. But it has reached the point for me and i can only speak for myself. Where a plain white envelope is fine, just offer me the chance to buy the shows that are not going to be released anyway. That is all i can ask.. I don't see Blu-Ray as a place where classic TV can go and thrive. I think as the years go by now we are going to see less and less of it. I dunno, i just think there is way of doing this that benefits everyone involved.

I think the future may be studios selling their shows direct over the net to the customer, cutting out the middleman, they wouldn't have to sell that many copies to make a profit. I would have thought that the big record companies would be doing that already. But these large companies are so slow on the uptake.

yet at the same time you have ISPs attempting to limit Bandwidth.

Thank you David Lambert! Somebody out there recognizes that not everone has broadband -- Me, for example. Sure, I'd like to have it, but Verizon has not installed whatever is necessary for DSL here, so there's nothing available on that venue. FIOS? Forget it! Cable? Not coming here. Satellite? Not reliable and very expensive. Wi-Fi? Not here.

So what's left? Why, dial-up at a rousing 26.4kbs!

Even if I did have broadband, I'm also one of those who won't buy "burn on demand" anyway. I want the full deal: DVDs that will last, in packaging that looks professional.

If burns on low-rent disks -- and you know the cheapest possible is what they'll be -- in plain white (brown?) wrappers is going to be the future, then my DVD-buying days will be over.

While I like that experience, the problem is, with TV on DVD in regards to the shows that some of us like, we can not find them. This experience is already ruined. They are not on the shelves even if they are released and because of this they sell badly and future releases of them and similar shows via genre, period or obscurity also go unreleased. I shifted to online purchases, I can see myself doing this for the right shows. I do want them cleaned up, uncut and special featured on real DVDs in nice but not gimicky packaging but it has gotten to the point that some of these will almost certainly not come out under current conditions. I would rather buy burn on demand than an ipod download, to me, this is a step up from that. Relativity speaking the quality of this has got to be better than that, it has to stand up to viewing on actual televisions. As for box art, They should be able to offer some cover art, perhaps the disc top might not have anything, I don't know. It would be helpful if one of these releases were reviewed to serve as an example of what people would be getting. Unfortunately none of these shows interest me. Anyone purchasing one of these, please give us some details.

I'm very interested in the Doug and Hey Arnold releases, but $30+ seems a little expensive for three DVD-Rs of material that could fit on one single regular DVD. I also hope the packaging isn't too cheap-looking. My birthday's coming up in a month so I may ask for one of the Doug releases although hopefully someone else will get a copy before that and let us know the details.

I understand why TVShowsOnDVD.com doesn't want to cover these and appreciate Dave's explanation, although I wouldn't mind seeing brief news items once a week/month simply listing whichever new titles are available even if they aren't listed in the database.