Services put your home videos on DVDs
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press
Link to Pioneer Press Article: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/7462801.htm
See a PDF of the paper from December 11, 2003.
Just because consumers can create their own movie DVDs doesn't mean they will. Using recent-model PCs to edit home video and record it onto blank DVD discs might initially seem miraculous.But for many users it soon becomes a chore. Most people never bother, partly because of the difficulty in getting tape-based footage onto hard drives.
That's where firms such as St. Paul-based DiscBurn and the Richfield-based Best Buy retail giant come in. Both recently began pushing services that take home movies and put them on DVDs that can be popped into any home player.
DiscBurn, a 4-year-old company focusing primarily on corporate disc-processing services, just opened
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a retail storefront in downtown St. Paul's Galtier Plaza to lure more consumer traffic. It says it has received many inquires, but isn't sure how lucrative such walk-ins could become.
Best Buy has tapped YesVideo, a Silicon Valley firm that offers mail order DVD-creation services, in an experimental effort to set up DVD-authoring minilabs in two local stores. Consumers who walk in with home movies can walk out with DVDs in a day or two.
DiscBurn and Best Buy are feeling their way here, but potentially stand to make a fortune with consumer DVD services. Hundreds of millions of home videotapes gather dust in closets across the country. Their contents must be moved to a more durable medium before they degrade into uselessness.
"I see a long-term opportunity here," says Brian Stone, Best Buy's program manager for digital imaging. Best Buy's six-month trial in its Richfield and Maple Grove stores is part of a broader emphasis on consumer services, Stone says.
The retailer has installed photo-finishing minilabs at its Richfield, Maple Grove, Apple Valley and Coon Rapids stores. Best Buy's 2002 acquisition of the Minneapolis-based Geek Squad computer-support firm is another example of this tech-service push, which complements tech-product sales.
Best Buy's alliance with YesVideo (www.yesvideo.com) has the potential to turbocharge what is still a niche consumer-service category. While the California firm says it does a brisk mail-order business in DVD transfer, it knows many consumers steer clear because they don't want to part with their priceless tapes for the two weeks needed to process them.
In a fraction of that time, Best Buy customers get the same service. Best Buy clients pay $20 for their discs, $5 less than YesVideo's mail-order customers.
Such cut-rate consumer pricing represents a challenge for small DiscBurn, which charges at least $40 for similar videotape transfers to DVD.
That doesn't mean DiscBurn (www.discburn.com), is going away anytime soon. The five-person firm says it does a booming business in corporate services, such as bulk disc-duplication jobs.
CEO Todd Mortenson said year-over-year gross-revenue increases were as high as 200 percent in the firm's earliest days and about 70 percent last year. The firm is on track to log a 75 percent increase this year, he said. DiscBurn's corporate customers have included local players Target, Medtronic, the Xcel Energy Center and — ironically — Best Buy.
But, with operating capacity currently at about 85 percent, Mortenson figured he could use a burst of consumer business. So he and his colleagues scared up a few display racks and moved from one of the Galtier Plaza business complex's upper floors to the far-more-visible skyway level.
When creating DVDs, they use the same kinds of tools computer hobbyists have in their homes, along with a professional-grade videotape deck with VHS and MiniDV slots for transferring footage from either commonly used format to a computer. The Sony VAIO PC with its multiple hard drives soon will be joined by a Power Mac G5 and Apple Computer's DVD Studio Pro 2, a top professional software tool for creating movie discs.
Since opening the store earlier this month, DiscBurn says it has received about 200 consumer inquiries about DVD-creation services — and it has yet to vigorously promote its new location. That, says Mortenson, is a fine start.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata covers personal technology and can be reached at 651-228-5467 or jojeda@pioneerpress.com.See his personal-technology weblog at http://yourtech.typepad.com
