DS9 on blu ray?

[Lance]

^ Yeah, more or less what I was saying earlier.

It may not completely feel like it, but the home video landscape has changed remarkably quickly in the space of time between when TNG season one got released on blu ray and now. Three years ago the video streaming as a reliable entertainment medium was still in relatively infancy, now it has basically taken hold. The TNG Blu-Ray boxset sales figures dropping over that time isn't necessarily relative to 'the fans' failing to buy them, but more to the misfortune of them being released over a period of time where there is almost no longer a casual audience for physical media. And, after a six month cooling period, those people can access the episodes their prefered way, via streaming rather than physical boxsets.

It's simply unfortunate that they chose to release them when they did, and perhaps more importantly that they placed so much expectation into the projected sales figures that they were disappointed by the results. In the future those things will even out, but Blu Ray boxset sales may not even be a part of that equation.....

 

[Chareth]

Burnett isn't blaming fans, or calling them stupid for not understanding the project. As he says in other tweets in those recent conversations, he's blaming CBS for not educating enough fans about the magnitude of the restoration.

Plenty of Trek fans don't follow the latest franchise news and/or aren't savvy about the technical aspects of TV production and home video presentation. They're the fans Burnett is referring to, and not derisively. When seeing it on the shelves, on Amazon, or referred to online, they may have understandably assumed it offered the same degree of improvement as a current show's Blu-ray does over its DVD rather than a quantum leap that they may consider re-purchasing for. Not enough was done to overcome that.

Because yes, CBS could ostensibly have done a lot more to promote this release. Where was the dedicated and updated website with comparison videos and interviews explaining the release? Why was it left to Trekcore to pick up that slack? They put a lot more effort into promoting the Twin Peaks Gold Box and Blu-ray online, and I don't think any event was held for TNG remotely like that premiere for the Fire Walk with Me deleted scenes. And why indeed confuse things by re-releasing cheap DVD sets? The price was steep too, agreed, and possibly unnecessary given how cheaply they're sold for in Australia.

As for the Bad Robot issue, despite his objections to the content of the new films, here Burnett's referring to the speculation that Bad Robot and Paramount sought to limit CBS's promotion of the franchise to date, as The Wrap claimed last year. Granted, that piece suggests it was Paramount that was hamstrung by CBS, but in promoting its own films. Perhaps CBS has been similarly constrained in promoting its Trek shows. Maybe in the split, CBS was limited in how much it could market them, albeit not in merchandising.

I've no idea whether that's possible, but Burnett seems to think it's a factor, saying Bad Robot made 'shameful' demands on merchandising. And comparing the promotion of Twin Peaks to their multi-million dollar seven-season restoration project, something does seem off-balance. I'm not making any assumptions though.

That said, it's premature to call the project a failure. Despite publicly encouraging us to support the Blu-rays, the syndication and streaming revenues had to be a huge incentive and they may not all be in yet. Certain venues may have wanted to wait until the whole series was available to them in HD before licensing any of it, and if CBS set an embargo to protect Blu-ray sales, it may not be available for a few months yet. Syfy UK may have been the exception in being willing to take what was available and intersperse it with SD. Netflix surely wouldn't bother until the whole series was available.

That said, there are reports that Australia's forthcoming streaming service Stan will have TNG in HD, but it's not yet confirmed.

 

[dub]

Burnett isn't blaming fans, or calling them stupid for not understanding the project. As he says in other tweets in those recent conversations, he's blaming CBS for not educating enough fans about the magnitude of the restoration.

Not to be repetitive, but they can educate themselves at no charge these days by getting a free trial of Amazon - where available - and sampling TNG HD at their whim (or use their existing amazon account that they're already paying for). I don't know. Perhaps they should have waited a year or more before releasing TNG HD to streaming services? I'm not saying that's the root problem, but it must be at least part of the problem for BD sales. Fans are TOO SMART and have more/cheaper/easier/faster/lazier ways to view the awesome restoration other than BD.

 

[MikeS]

he's blaming CBS for not educating enough fans about the magnitude of the restoration.

Plenty of Trek fans don't follow the latest franchise news and/or aren't savvy about the technical aspects of TV production and home video presentation. They're the fans Burnett is referring to, and not derisively. When seeing it on the shelves, on Amazon, or referred to online, they may have understandably assumed it offered the same degree of improvement as a current show's Blu-ray does over its DVD rather than a quantum leap that they may consider re-purchasing for. Not enough was done to overcome that.

I agree with your post. TPTB could have emphasised how much different these sets were to the original release by simply adding one word. "Remastered". As this is basically what these are.

 

[Lance]

One thing is for certain: there are clearly a multitude of factors for why the BD sales may have suffered. Most of them beyond the control of anyone.

 

[Admiral Bear]

One thing is for certain: there are clearly a multitude of factors for why the BD sales may have suffered. Most of them beyond the control of anyone.

I'd have said the only factors beyond anyone's control were:

The cost of the doing the whole TNG project to the best possible standard given the constraints of things like missing footage. You either do it properly or not at all. Most of us will probably say that CBS got to within sight of the finish line of "best possible", but didn't quite get there. The picture quality of season two still sucks unless CBS go back and remaster it themselves.

The fact that despite putting out the best marketing and information campaign for a product, you cannot make people buy it. Burnett complains that CBS did little to no promotion for the remastered sets. True. But all of us here knew about them, and those that wanted the sets and who could afford them, took the plunge. The question you need to ask is how many Trek fans, many who will be fair weather watchers, who don't read the major Star Trek websites, would've jumped for joy and ran around waving their wallets in the air at the thought of a combined price of $400+ for all 7 separate seasons?

Probably not many. So, CBS spending even more money for advertising on top of the 20 million already spent, would likely have been wasted money.

All the other issues that contributed to the failure of sales were entirely at the control of CBS.

 

[BillJ]

It really sucks because now I'm used to the picture quality on Blu-Ray for Star Trek TOS and Next Gen and can't even bring myself to watch how horrible the DVDs and streaming on Netflix looks for DS9 and Voyager.

Same here.

The supply issue is one of them. Bricks and mortar retail (we keep being told) is a dying industry, and I too found it impossible to buy them from a store -- I had to order them from Amazon. This isn't a bad business decision, but it was a bad time for them to be doing this project if the aim was to sell boxsets.

Retailers have to want to order them. CBS can't make them do that.

 

[ATimson]

Yeah, the lighting in the first two seasons was fantastic. I've seen it refered to as noir-ish, and I can totally see that. It's a real shame they fired the first guy and made the decision to flood-light so much of the ship instead.

It's all a matter of taste. The later seasons' lighting may be less "cinematic", but it certainly felt more realistic to me.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

The fact that despite putting out the best marketing and information campaign for a product, you cannot make people buy it. Burnett complains that CBS did little to no promotion for the remastered sets. True. But all of us here knew about them, and those that wanted the sets and who could afford them, took the plunge. The question you need to ask is how many Trek fans, many who will be fair weather watchers, who don't read the major Star Trek websites, would've jumped for joy and ran around waving their wallets in the air at the thought of a combined price of $400+ for all 7 separate seasons?

Probably not many. So, CBS spending even more money for advertising on top of the 20 million already spent, would likely have been wasted money.

All the other issues that contributed to the failure of sales were entirely at the control of CBS.

I was thinking the same thing. Sure, CBS didn't market the Blu-Rays at all, but the fans that were going to buy the show are already on the internet and knew about it. Granted, the $129.99 MSRP is ridiculous, but Amazon offers them at $79 and sometimes even cheaper. So, the means were definitely there for said fans to purchase them.

Some people say they were waiting for the boxset to come out. Why would they release a boxset if people are too cheap to buy the single season sets? These same people bitching the individual season sets were too high would've done the same for the boxset. Nobody would buy the boxset because people know if they wait long enough, the price will drop. Saying you MIGHT buy something if and when it goes down in price is the same as the sets flopping. And if CBS can't make money on something as popular as Next Gen, there's no way they can justify remastering DS9 and Voyager, which would be an even costlier endeavor.

Gone are the days when Trek fans can just sit around with the mindset that CBS/Paramount will keep cranking out Trek. If we want new Trek (or even remastered Trek), it's going to take some elbow grease in the form of actually spending money. I know a lot of fans feel entitled that CBS MUST remaster DS9, but if the sales aren't there, it's not going to happen.

 

[BillJ]

Yeah, the lighting in the first two seasons was fantastic. I've seen it refered to as noir-ish, and I can totally see that. It's a real shame they fired the first guy and made the decision to flood-light so much of the ship instead.

It's all a matter of taste. The later seasons' lighting may be less "cinematic", but it certainly felt more realistic to me.

Problem being, Star Trek is a TV show not a hospital or business. The lighting, just like the music, can help sell the drama. Both the lighting and music became flat on Berman's watch.

 

[MacLeod]

The fact that despite putting out the best marketing and information campaign for a product, you cannot make people buy it. Burnett complains that CBS did little to no promotion for the remastered sets. True. But all of us here knew about them, and those that wanted the sets and who could afford them, took the plunge. The question you need to ask is how many Trek fans, many who will be fair weather watchers, who don't read the major Star Trek websites, would've jumped for joy and ran around waving their wallets in the air at the thought of a combined price of $400+ for all 7 separate seasons?

Probably not many. So, CBS spending even more money for advertising on top of the 20 million already spent, would likely have been wasted money.

All the other issues that contributed to the failure of sales were entirely at the control of CBS.

I was thinking the same thing. Sure, CBS didn't market the Blu-Rays at all, but the fans that were going to buy the show are already on the internet and knew about it. Granted, the $129.99 MSRP is ridiculous, but Amazon offers them at $79 and sometimes even cheaper. So, the means were definitely there for said fans to purchase them.

Some people say they were waiting for the boxset to come out. Why would they release a boxset if people are too cheap to buy the single season sets? These same people bitching the individual season sets were too high would've done the same for the boxset. Nobody would buy the boxset because people know if they wait long enough, the price will drop. Saying you MIGHT buy something if and when it goes down in price is the same as the sets flopping. And if CBS can't make money on something as popular as Next Gen, there's no way they can justify remastering DS9 and Voyager, which would be an even costlier endeavor.

Gone are the days when Trek fans can just sit around with the mindset that CBS/Paramount will keep cranking out Trek. If we want new Trek (or even remastered Trek), it's going to take some elbow grease in the form of actually spending money. I know a lot of fans feel entitled that CBS MUST remaster DS9, but if the sales aren't there, it's not going to happen.

Well to put it in context. In the UK the season sets retailed at something like £50 each. The complete box set retails at something like £155. Doing the maths 7*50 = 350. So the complete box set is less than half the cost of buying them individually.

And given the recession that was only a few years ago, we are now just reaching the point where people have more discretionary spending to spend on things like BR's.

 

[BillJ]

Well to put it in context. In the UK the season sets retailed at something like £50 each. The complete box set retails at something like £155. Doing the maths 7*50 = 350. So the complete box set is less than half the cost of buying them individually.

The reason the box sets are probably so cheap is because so few people were buying the season sets and CBS has inventory to move. I doubt them being that cheap was the original plan.

 

[MacLeod]

Well as CBS no doubt set the cost to the retailer, did they over price it initially? Sure they want to make a return on investment. But Lets say they went lower and the retail price worked out to be £40/US$60 instead of £50/US$80. Could they have shifted more at that price to make up for reduced revenue each set had.

 

[BillJ]

Well as CBS no doubt set the cost to the retailer, did they over price it initially? Sure they want to make a return on investment. But Lets say they went lower and the retail price worked out to be £40/US$60 instead of £50/US$80. Could they have shifted more at that price to make up for reduced revenue each set had.

Probably would've had to have come in under $40/season to interest casual fans.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Doing some quick math (not my strong suit), I believe the figure thrown around was $9 million to remaster all seven seasons (correct me if I'm wrong). For the sake of simplicity, let's not include taxes and assume all sets sold are using US dollars. For a $9 million production to break even at $80 a pop per set, they'd need to move 112,500 units, or 16,072 people would have to buy all seven seasons. Let's also assume CBS considers (low-balling here) double return on investment to be successful. Then, they need to sell 225,000 units, or get 32,143 to buy all seven seasons combined.

At a $60 price point, they'd only need to move 150,000 units of all seven seasons combined to break even, or 300,000 to get double return. For a show that, at minimum had 7 million viewers in 1994 to its high of over 11 million in spring of 1992 and with 1,500,000 likes on Facebook, not counting message boards like this one, they could have easily made their sales projections.

 

[BillJ]

Doing some quick math (not my strong suit), I believe the figure thrown around was $9 million to remaster all seven seasons (correct me if I'm wrong). For the sake of simplicity, let's not include taxes and assume all sets sold are using US dollars. For a $9 million production to break even at $80 a pop per set, they'd need to move 112,500 units, or 16,072 people would have to buy all seven seasons. Let's also assume CBS considers (low-balling here) double return on investment to be successful. Then, they need to sell 225,000 units, or get 32,143 to buy all seven seasons combined.

At a $60 price point, they'd only need to move 150,000 units of all seven seasons combined to break even, or 300,000 to get double return. For a show that, at minimum had 7 million viewers in 1994 to its high of over 11 million in spring of 1992 and with 1,500,000 likes on Facebook, not counting message boards like this one, they could have easily made their sales projections.

Problem being, I believe that $9 million is for the remastering. Then you have to figure in production of the sets, residuals to creators/actors/directors/writers and so on. There is probably a lot of expenses that $9 million doesn't cover.

 

[Admiral Bear]

Eons ago, around the time season one was due to come out, I said here that my price point was £30 per season given the huge amount I spent on the DVD sets 15 years ago.

Somehow, I've managed to get all 7 seasons for £210, give or take a pound. I have an exact record of what I paid for seasons 2-6 (£178.45), and I know I got season one for no more than mid £30s. My average price per season is spot on £30.

Just out of interest, I'd be interested to know how many people on here on both sides of the pond bought the Italian/Nordic sets for relative peanuts, as opposed to the English ones at double the price which CBS would've much preferred we'd all bought. I know from reading posts here that I'm not the only person in the UK who fancied a nice Italian.

 

[BillJ]

Eons ago, around the time season one was due to come out, I said here that my price point was £30 per season given the huge amount I spent on the DVD sets 15 years ago.

Somehow, I've managed to get all 7 seasons for £210, give or take a pound. I have an exact record of what I paid for seasons 2-6 (£178.45), and I know I got season one for no more than mid £30s. My average price per season is spot on £30.

Just out of interest, I'd be interested to know how many people on here on both sides of the pond bought the Italian/Nordic sets for relative peanuts, as opposed to the English ones at double the price which CBS would've much preferred we'd all bought. I know from reading posts here that I'm not the only person in the UK who fancied a nice Italian.

I bought all my sets here in the States from Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Amazon. I've probably paid about $55 a season.

 

[Reeborg]

Eons ago, around the time season one was due to come out, I said here that my price point was £30 per season given the huge amount I spent on the DVD sets 15 years ago.

Somehow, I've managed to get all 7 seasons for £210, give or take a pound. I have an exact record of what I paid for seasons 2-6 (£178.45), and I know I got season one for no more than mid £30s. My average price per season is spot on £30.

Just out of interest, I'd be interested to know how many people on here on both sides of the pond bought the Italian/Nordic sets for relative peanuts, as opposed to the English ones at double the price which CBS would've much preferred we'd all bought. I know from reading posts here that I'm not the only person in the UK who fancied a nice Italian.

There is some problem in your calculation.

At amazon.it, there where often offers 3 for 2 so you could get three box sets for ca. 60 EUR. Furthermore I got the VAT reduction. I ordered there all my seasons 1-5 spending around 110 EUR at that time ca. £90. Hopefully having soon all 7 together for ca. £125.

 

[Cap.T]

Problem being, I believe that $9 million is for the remastering. Then you have to figure in production of the sets, residuals to creators/actors/directors/writers and so on. There is probably a lot of expenses that $9 million doesn't cover.

Robert Meyer Burnett posted on his Twitter-Feed a few days ago, that the TNG-Remastering project was a lot more expansive than the $9 million that was assumed so far.

TrekCore ‏@TrekCore
@vtdweller @BurnettRM @BittrScrptReadr TNG was around $9 Million.


Robert Meyer Burnett ‏@BurnettRM 2
@TrekCore @vtdweller @BittrScrptReadr It was A LOT more expensive than that!

--------------

And this:

Bitter Script Reader ‏@BittrScrptReadr Jan 4
DEEP SPACE NINE is 22 years old this week? That can't be right. That would make me-- oh shit.

Zack Stentz ‏@MuseZack Jan 4
@BittrScrptReadr Still the best of the Star Trek shows.

Bitter Script Reader ‏@BittrScrptReadr Jan 4
@MuseZack Totally agree with that. I have all the DVDs, hoping for the blus to be produced some day

Robert Meyer Burnett ‏@BurnettRM Jan 4
@BittrScrptReadr @MuseZack Don't hold your breath.

Zack Stentz ‏@MuseZack Jan 4
@BurnettRM @BittrScrptReadr No plans to after the magisterial TNG remasters?


Robert Meyer Burnett ‏@BurnettRM Jan 4
@MuseZack @BittrScrptReadr The Blu Ray sales were EXTREMELY disappointing. Unfortunately, the fan base didn't really understand the upgrade.