Improving BD-Live Tools - Is It All That?

This article over at Myblurayplanet.com discusses the efforts of Sonic Solutions and Sony to "reduce costs" and "make BD-Live more available."

Is this Fantasyland? Blu-ray authoring is still mighty expensive and out of the reach of most content producers. Here's what Neil Wilkes of Opus Productions had to say about authoring on the Blu format (the context being the possibility of Blu-ray being the next surround music format):

"Authoring is brutally expensive, requiring either Sony's Blu Print or Sonic Scenarist. Both these are $50,000 plus mandatory extras - Blu Print has a $7k to $10k 'service agreement' that is also mandatory. No other application can deliver replicable content. It's BD-R and BD-RE straight down the line. Costs per title are serious. You are looking at over $30,000 per title - before replication costs & authoring costs - just for the mandated licenses alone."

One of the reasons DVD took off around Y2K is because authoring became affordable and available to the masses. Forget VHS - everyone wanted their wedding on DVD. Now hi-def is upon us. It's cost effective and within everyone's reach to originate and view content in HD, but not cost effective to distribute it. Once that changes, the paradigm shift from standard def to hi-def will be complete.

I'm waiting...