Reprinted from a CustomeFlix press release:
Los Gatos, CA (August 20, 2002) CustomFlix Labs, Inc. today announced a
new solution to provide video producers with a low-risk way to easily and
profitably bring new and existing content to market via DVD or VHS tapes.
Until now, self publishing a title has been difficult due to high set-up
fees, plus the need to correctly assess consumer demand and invest
significant time and effort in the process. CustomFlix removes these
barriers by offering a fully integrated “content-to-cash” service that
enables producers to easily publish their titles and maximize profits.
“An ever-increasing number of our DVD production customers are looking for
an efficient and cost-effective solution for bringing their DVD titles to
market,” said Rolf Hartley, General Manager, Professional Products Group at
Sonic Solutions. “By eliminating the barriers that often hinder video
producers from bringing their titles to market, CustomFlix provides a major
new resource for the thousands of event videographers, independent
producers and other video professionals who create DVD content using
Sonic’s authoring solutions.”
CustomFlix is ideal for those aiming to sell between a few and a few
thousand copies of any entertainment, training, educational, documentary,
sports, broadcast, or corporate video program. With CustomFlix, existing
content languishing on shelves, as well as new material just produced, can
easily be converted into revenue. Producers simply send in the program
they wish to sell (either as video tape or a DVD master), pay a low set-up
fee, and CustomFlix handles the rest, including creation of a personalized
e-store that promotes the product through descriptive text, graphics, and a
60-second streaming trailer, on-demand DVD and VHS duplication, transaction
processing, packaging, and fulfillment. For projects that need to be
optimized for DVD, CustomFlix also provides high-quality DVD transfers. The
low-fee, “pay-as-you-go” model, and the fact that producers have total
control and ownership of their title, its presentation and its price, mean
that CustomFlix has made low-risk, high-profit video publishing a reality.
“The digital revolution has made it easier than ever for producers to
create compelling content, but there simply hasn’t been a good way for them
to publish and profit from their work. CustomFlix now bridges the gap
between creating and selling content,” said CustomFlix President & CEO Dana
LoPiccolo-Giles. “Solving the real-world problems of video producers is
nothing new to the team behind CustomFlix, which is the same team that
founded Terran Interactive, Inc. Just as the award-winning Media Cleaner
Pro helped video producers deliver content over the Web, so too does
CustomFlix help them monetize and deliver content via physical media.”
In addition to minimizing the risk associated with publishing a title,
CustomFlix’s complete solution eliminates the hassles and frictional costs
normally associated with traditional self-publishing methods. This enables
producers to focus on creating and publishing more titles, instead of
wasting their time managing multiple vendors. As a result, CustomFlix
helps producers maximize their revenue while making it possible to publish
titles for which traditional methods were prohibitive.
“CustomFlix revolutionizes the market for sales of short-run video. It
isn’t just a question of cheaper and better but of being possible at all.
My book simply wouldn’t have had a DVD companion if it weren’t for
CustomFlix,” said Ben Waggoner, digital video expert and author of
“Compression for Great Digital Video” from CMP books.
Pricing & Availability
Getting started on www.CustomFlix.com is easy and inexpensive. The upfront
set-up fee is just $49.95, with a $9.95 (plus 5%) fee per unit sold.
Producers may submit their own DVDs, or, for an additional fee starting at
$249.00, CustomFlix will convert videotape content into a high-quality DVD
with custom menus and up to 18 user-defined chapters at specified time
codes. CustomFlix uses high-end professional systems to encode variable
bitrate MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital audio to deliver up to three hours of
video per disc at the highest possible quality. The final
producer-customized packaging, full-color disc art, and Mitsui Gold DVD-R
media used by CustomFlix ensure a world-class product in the hands of
customers.
