As much fun as I have ridiculing some of the horrible real estate videos I see on YouTube, there are videos at the other end of the scale that are actually worth watching and will, no doubt achieve their desired goal. i.e. to sell whichever property they feature and increase the reputation of both the real estate agent and the company producing the work

One interesting company I came across recently, Luxury WalkThru, capture all their video content in High Definition, using solid state recording.

They believe Blu-ray discs will soon be the industry standard, and offer the option of full quality Blu-ray discs alongside the lesser quality DVDs.

This is an example of their work:

I haven’t yet seen this on a wide screen plasma TV, but I understand there is no loss of picture quality using the Blu-ray version. It sure beats the typical YouTube slideshow into submission.

The real question for the real estate agent, of course, is how to deal with an affluent client’s expectations of the type of quality one might expect from a real estate video. Clearly, it is possible to offer the highest definition (without breaking the bank) and as Hi-Definition TV becomes more widespread, it is not unrealistic that clients will expect Hi-Definition videos of their property for sale.

Luxury walkthrough are one of a number of emerging companies offering the highest quality available and according to their marketing:

HD video has arrived. With the HD format war officially over Blu-Ray content is becoming ubiquitous. The luxury crowd expect High Definition content. Each and every one of our productions is filmed in full raster 1920×1080 HD.

Blu-ray is not the same as HD-DVD and there are some major differences between the two. Because Blu-ray utilizes a lens with a greater numerical aperture (NA) than HD-DVD, the laser spot can be focused with greater precision to fit more data on the same size disc. This allows Blu-ray to hold 25GB per layer (50GB on a dual-layer disc), whereas HD-DVD can only hold 15GB per layer (30GB on a dual-layer disc). Blu-ray has also adopted a higher data transfer rate for video and audio (54Mbps vs 36.55Mbps). The greater capacity and data transfer rates for Blu-ray will allow the movie studios to release their movies with higher quality video and audio than the HD-DVD format.

I am not sure I agree that Blu-ray will ultimately be the dominant format – I lived through the 80’s and watched the clearly superior Betamax lose out to the VHS format, so there are other factors other than straight-out quality that will determine which format emerges supreme. But now go take a look at some of the horrible real estate videos I am collecting from YouTube and see which one your next client is likely to want.

If you are interested in more information regarding the technical specifications of Blu-ray, the official website is here.

There are real estate videos and then there are luxury real estate videos

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This particular video was produced for Alsop architects in London. If you want to use the word “surreal,” go right ahead – I already did. Not limited by the constraint of actually having to sell anything, Alsop apparently let squint/opera, the production company that made the film, go ahead and make something just plain interesting instead.

William Alsop himself has come in for a degree of criticism over some of his designs and he himself estimates that only 10% of them have ever been built. Those that have been built are in locations ranging from Singapore to Toronto to Manchester. He has been nominated several times for the Sterling prize, which he won in 2000 for his Peckham library design.

Squint/opera are closely associated with Alsop’s and have produced a number of videos for the company. Much has been written about Mr. Alsop, and his wikipedia page is here. My personal favorite quote is from the British newspaper, the Observer, which described him as “obviously not a man familiar with gyms.” I could say the same myself.

Squint/opera

Alsop architects