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Blu-ray licensing cartel starts operation
AFTER HAVING LAUNCHED exclusively by a few companies, Blu-ray is about to be licensed to the world plus dog but don't expect prices to drop.
The BD4C Licensing Group, which is made up of Mitsubishi, Thomson, Toshiba and Warner Bros, has announced that it has commenced a worldwide joint licensing program for Blu-ray and the patents needed for Blu-ray Disc (BD) decoders, encoders, recorders, players, read-only discs, recordable discs, drives and BD/DVD hybrid discs.
Basically it means that anyone who wants to make a Blu-ray bit of kit can go to one place and get all the patents they need.
License royalties under the BD4C portfolio include four cents per Blu-ray Disc, eight cents per Blu-ray/DVD hybrid disc, and $4.50 per Blu-ray player, among others.
Like most cartels it does not seem to want to drop the price. Some blogs have been warning that this is actually a price hike. To make matters worse, the BD4C has said that prices could go up if more people join its consortium.
Interested parties are also free to negotiate separate license agreements, rather than taking a single portfolio license, with each of the four companies, which have committed to provide such licenses for their respective essential patents under fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions., the outfit said.
Ironically the companies have authorised Toshiba to act as licensor for the BD4C Licensing Group. Toshiba was the champion of the rival standard HD-DVD but is now a very enthusiastic member of the BD4C consortium. µ
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Will this have any effect on the crappy authoring of some blurays, or does it mean more royalties and still no quality control?
A couple of thoughts:
(1) DVDs were more expensive when they were shiney and new. Now they're $30, but at one time cheap ones cost $100 and that was when $100 was a lot money.
(1a) Many companies will negotiate their own licensing deals, just like the article mentions. If you're going to bung a DVD burner into a $15,000 piece of high-end professional kit and only expect to sell 100 of them, $4.50 doesn't matter much.
(2) Methinks JJ was talking about buying movies/games, not blank media. An article headline like 'Blue Ray Sales Were Up 5% in February' usually doesn't mean blanks. Of course I've been wrong before.
I still would not care. You know why? Because BD is not needed, its obsolete.
I have not bought one and I wont be buying one either, especially with the prices of HDDs and SSDs dropping and with the cheap high definition Ethernet enabled media players available across the board. I can consume my HD content without BD, thank you very much, and so can the great unwashed through DRMd pay-per-view systems such as appleTV and such. I don't see a bright future for this one.
How dare people want to be paid for their research and development. Everything should always be free!
Sydney, NSW, Australia.
AU$8.00 per 50 bundle special from one of the shops near me.
That makes it AU$0.16 or around US$0.145
Does the licensing include a guarantee that, if someone else comes along who is not a part of this consortium, but who claims to have a patent that Blu-Ray is infringing, you will not have to pay up yet again?
I often by my DVD's for $14 for a pack of 50 or about $0.28 per DVD (all funds in Canadian)..
I am assuming the $0.08 in license fees per Bluray disc is in US $ so we'll say $0.09 CAD... That's about 30% of the entire cost of a DVD in licensing fees alone.
It's no wonder Bluray is taking SO long to take over...
That $5 is for the companies making the units. It would be more like $50 to the end buyer.
Here we go again, legalized price fixing. Shut your wallets, keep using dvd's and send the message to these as*holes running these companies that you won't fall in line. Take your hard earned money and spend it on something else until the as*holes figure out why their sales aren't increasing.
Where are you getting your dvd's for $0.16?
I'm just curious....doesn't Sony have something to do with this?
@ SV Guy.
A DVD costs 16c retail where I come from and you say paying 8c license fee to make a BR disk is nothing.
A DVD player comes in down to $30 ..... if there was a license fee of $5 on it then the price would increase by 17%.
You throw your money away if you like, but I have no such compulsion.
Such arrangements are typical in intellectual property pooling consortiums. They provide a mechanism for compensation of the original patent holders and simplified cross-licensing for new adoptees. Less than a dime a disc and $5 a player and you're whining about it? Grow up!