Comments on: Digital downloads will be Blu-ray's downfall
DVD was the king of packaged media for a decade, but next-generation format successor Blu-ray Disc won't enjoy nearly as long a reign.
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Books where suppose to be a thing of the past a long time ago. Gee how did the media get THAT wrong.
This is exactly the same. Sure Digital download will reduce the 23 billion per year figure. but hell ITS GOT A LONG WAY TO REDUCE before its not a very profitable business.
Then, there will always those people who like to take it with them, and Blu-ray is the way to do it (At the moment and likely for a ong time to come).
Finally, Blue-Ray is not likely to be the last storage media to be introduced. We are likely to see an even bigger one as Digital memories become larger files, more important and we realise that current digital backup systems have un-proven longevity issues. (How many businesses have lasted 100 years (Online storage is a business). Who keeps track of the media, passwords. Nothing beats an old box in the attic full of pictures... Or long life media)
Please be more responsible in your reporting,
James
That said, media will be delivered in the manner studios desire to do so. If they stop pressing optical media and switch to a much more secure flash based format, you can bet you're going to need a player for that.
I don't think so.
We've already gone from records, to 8 tracks and cassettes, then to CDs and now to MP3 players.
Well, sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but I am not repurchasing all these movies to satisfy the fantasies of movie studios.
The DVDs I have now look fine. Although a lot of people might find "video on demand" or streaming movies to be a handy thing, I will always prefer to own a physical device over only having movies stored on a hard drive or some type of solid state media storage.
I MIGHT be persuaded to buy a PS3 so I can purchase some movies I don't currently own on Blueray, and I might be convinced to buy a movie or two on some kind of USB drive I can plug into the PS3 or some other gadget to view the movie directly on the TV.
Sorry, don't hold your breath waiting for me to go out and repurchase 300 movies. Ain't going to happen.
Oh ya, way to just assume everyone has a high speed internet connection. I bet you actually believe for every DVD player out there there is also a corrosponding high speed internet connection. I rather doubt that. You DO know that dial-up companies are still around right?
They will want those discs, and the with the storage capacity and kin-ship to CD's they'll be backing up everything; from that last business deal to Aunt Maude's final picture!
Of course it's not going to happen overnight and not everyone is geek-inspired to wirelessly (or wired) setup an entire multimedia collection, but it will happen for the bulk of consumers as soon as a well-designed appliance comes out that makes the whole process simple for the average consumer to use without having to call a help center in India.
Ultimately, it is the appliance designers that will be a part of determining how soon we get from DVD media to download media, as well as the damned idiot studios that are too scared to move their content forward.
Even Fios doesn't have the bandwidth to handle you and all your neighbors watching Blu-ray quality videos on demand in real time.
I think we all would agree that there is a general trend towards digital distribution, versus physical distribution (of audio and video content)... the question is "How soon will digital distribution of movies be the dominant method?" This article suggests it will be sooner, rather than later (let's say 5-10 years from now). I would guess it will be 15 or 20 years before most of us buy or rent our movies through a network, versus DVDs or Blu-ray discs.
You are....well....ignorant of the entire situation...
Suppose you pay $40 per month for high speed internet.
Then read the fine print. Your monthly plan includes 60 gigabytes of data, okay if you at most a couple of movies per month in high-def. But you are charged in Canada $2 per extra gigabyte of data uploaded thereafter. A 15GB movie could cost you $30 by digital download. So, high quality movie fans that watch several movies each month may actually pay less renting Blu-ray movies from the local video store than buying digital downloads from the internet.
;)
j/k
In many areas of Canada there is no additional charge for download/upload usage and the same holds true in many other countries ... Please be aware of this fact before spreading information not based on reality.
What's missing in this "analysis" is a thoughtful understanding of the economics and the motivation of all of the major players in the video content marketplace. Yes, physical media sales have tapered off... but why? Could it be that the younger generation has been weaned on BitTorrent? Could preference for digital downloading be explained by their preference to "share" video content, instead of paying for it?
Everyone seems to be treating bandwidth as cheap and plentiful. On average, it is. To provide the kind of bandwidth you need for today's internet surfing is fairly cheap. To provide bandwidth for you AND ALL YOUR NEIGHBORs to simultaneously watch shows in real-time 1080P (let's say... 40 Mbits/sec)... that's another matter entirely.
Sure... we have "appliances" which can store terabytes of movies in our homes. Windows Home Server is a good example of such an appliance... I have one and I love it. It even provides redundancy in case a hard drive fails. But it isn't so convenient to take it with me in the car, or on a plane, or to a vacation home. Physical media has a convenience that digital downloads don't have. Physical media is easier to transfer from place to place, or device to device than digital downloads.
But the bottom line in what will happen and when is economics. It always comes down to money. Will the economics of digital downloading (...servers... bandwidth... storage and devices in your home) surpass Blu-ray in the coming years? At 50 Gigabytes per movie, it will take a while.
I'm not getting it. Just google the cost of a terabyte drive, and that baby has plummeted faster than a speeding bullet. C'mon dude, the marketplace for DVDs is dying...did you not read the stats for combined sales?
If the studios don't get on board soon, then yeah, kids are going to grow up thinking that free movies are an entitlement, despite what the MPAA does...actually, it already IS free,...ad-supported of course. Look at Hulu...free, albeit limited and not 1080i/p.
enable Gb per second. This will likely take 10 years or more to
show up in the US. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-
pacific/7260673.stm
That's faster than Fios' current speed (50+ Mb/s).
Now that's fast...and wireless!
Admittedly, the cost of a download is tiny for the company selling a "download" vs. "the real product", though.
People that blog don't know anything more about tech stuff than anyone else, but they, for whatever reason, are given more credibility. What religous purpose does it serve to keep repeating "downloads are the future" to everyone? The consumer out there will be the final judge of what to buy.
companies will scuttle bandwidth - imagine getting 20mbps at a
reasonable price - I will go and get a BD disk for $10 - $15
anyday - already comcast stops downloads from torrents -
wonder what they will do to a competitive rental source - while
we beat our drums about consumer being the king - honestly -
we are way behind several asian countries like korea - we still
wallow in bribing politicians in the form of campaign
contributions and lobby to hell the importance of having only
one ********* operator - why does Massachusetts have only
Comcast with no choice to the consumer - and hence high
prices and anachronisms like bittorrent restrictions - because
the political party has eaten money from them so they can't do
much.
Increasingly, as we look to the internet to provide our telephone
services, television services etc. - there does not seem to be any
law coming forth about bandwidth regulations, no boost to
bandwidth improvements, nobody cares about infrastructure
required to provide a 100mbps bandwidth - WiMax is not going
to take off as long as we have the cable companies providing
internet solutions.
Increasingly I feel we are in the third world !!
As long as the model for downloads is a rental model, which is the sole reason the studios are so incredibly excited about downloads, it's a concept that won't take off. No family wants to pay even $1 each and every time their little kid wants to watch Cars again -- they'd rather spend $15-30 for the disc, and let them play it tell the thing wears out, because it SAVES MONEY to do so. If you don't believe me, go ask Circuit City how those DIVX disc sales went, in the early days of DVD.
Take away the rental model for downloads, and suddenly physical media looks a lot better to the studios. They don't want you to OWN the downloaded content, because if you OWN it you'll want it to be portable, and if it's portable then you might make a million pirated copies and cut them out of the picture entirely. There's no way they're going to support download SALES, only download RENTALS. That means all the questions about bandwidth, quality, download storage, and so on are worthless -- nobody wants to rent Ratatouille.
press. You'd think CNET would be the exception, but not in this
case. This article by Ogg is nonsense. Here's why:
1) All the ISPs are itching to charge clients on a per GB download
basis. Evil Time Warner are already doing it in Texas in a test
area to see if they can pull it off without customer backlash.
2) Bandwidth is very well known to be drying up fast. I read last
week that the time to a bottleneck is now predicted to be as
little as two years, taking into account the expected increase in
downloading with the arrival of the IPTV/IPMovie age. Witness
the fact that universities around the country are separating
themselves physically from the rest of the Internet, creating
their own completely separate 'Internet 2' so they don't have to
put up with the 'Internet 1' bottlenecks. It is the only way they
can get the bandwidth they want and require.
3) This story neglects the fact that most people like to KEEP
media in a collection. No way are people going to rent and say
so long the next day. One way or another, legal or illegal,
people are going to KEEP media. That means discs are required.
Blu-Ray has a terrific future path laid out for increasing disc
capacity, presented over at their website. And IMHO this is a
brilliant idea because the public is going to demand it. No way is
disc recording going away. Once the recorders and media come
down to mere mortal prices then they will be very popular until
an even higher capacity and easy to use recording method is
created.
Folks, all you need to do is read the technology news to keep up
with this stuff and make common sense conclusions. If Bill
Gates, the least insightful technologist I can think of, can
comprehend this stuff, I'm willing to bet you can too. In fact, you
might even do better than him, considering that he was dopey
enough to bet on HD-DVD, the blatantly inferior and now dead
disc format.
:-Derek
For people that enjoy buying movies AND enjoy them in HD... there is only one viable choice moving forward, and that is blu ray, period.
For many many years the prices of merchandice depended on competition, supply and demand. Because the demand for BluRay is higher now with no competition, the price will be higher until the market is flooded with them and then the competition becomes a factor again and then prices will fall to what will become "Industry Standard"
- No way!
- by Trung Tong February 24, 2008 6:48 AM PST
- There are so many reason this will not happen in the nearest future.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 3 of 6 pages (236 Comments)a) Gift - Imagine how original it would be to give a dear friend a present. Downloadable movie or a real BD?
"My Dear, I have a special gift for you this year. Since it's our 10th wedding anniversary I've bought you this download..."
I wonder why there are so many divorces... FYI my love preferred flowers over download or BD ;-)
b) Download Bandwidtch - Up to today it is not possible to sustain that kind of download.
"My love, I am back from work. Let's make it a special evening and watch a movie (how original, we preferred dining out anyway). It will only take us 4 hours to download one."
3 hours later... "Downloading on PC Screen"
and we "zzzz zzzz zzzz"
c) Collectors - No single movie lover/collector will place a piece of downloaded movie in his/her shelf instead of a real BD.
I can imagine my Dad guiding out guests.
"Friends, I will show you my precious music and movie collection."
"This LP is only one of the few signed by Elvis; it is still playing on our Philips LP-player, remember with a real diamond needle! This CD was signed by Madonna, this is her real lip stick!
And I got this Lord of the Ring SEE DVD collection, signed by all the cast from the Fellowship, there are only 100 known!
But let me show you my top-piece ~ Movie name barely readable with my father's own hand writing scratched ~ : True uncompressed audio, 1080p video Hi-Def Movie. Downloaded from Amazon and signed with Digital Watermark.... hmmmm, unboxed edition, hmmm... the good thing is it is portable (but not very useful since he is in a wheel chair!)"
d) Storage Media - Storage Media (i.e. HDD) are getting cheaper and cheaper for sure and in fact it would be cheaper than storing data in current DVDs.
But imagine a crash! Why do you think people backup their treasurous data on a CD/DVD (and in the future may be on BDR?). There is no sane human that would rely fully on their HD.
e) Usability - In order to play movies from your HDD you need a computer with an OS, with all the possible incompatibilities.
At a friend:
"Wait... Let's google first for a DRM Crack before be able to play it. And Screw Windows Media Player crap, let 's use VLC Player. **** I forgot you used Vista bull ****. Get real and use Ubuntu."
Was this the end of a friendship? ;-(
f) DRM & Region Codes - How long did it take to crack the DVD? I admit BDs are harder to crack and till now there is no universal crack available (correct me if I am wrong here, some people claimed it is already cracked). But nothing is eternal and it is an illusion that the BD security system is uncrackable! Remember this pirate motto: There are no closed doors for us!
g) Time - Imagine how long you will be on the move?
I> 6-8 hours sleep a day
II> At least 8 hours work (unless you are unemployed which mean you cannot afford either BD or download anyway)
III> 1 to 2 hours cooking and eating a day
IV> The left-over time would be 8 hours a day. I guess you won't spend those on watching movies.
So tell me. How many hours will you really spending a day on watching TV?
h) Availability of money - Anyone who has money, could spend it on either download or BD. Everybody has money, but not everybody has a credit card (required for download).
If you have enough money for a BD-player you'll have enough money for BD Movies.
i) Portabilty - Tell me what good it is to have portable media is if ...
I> you are disabled and using a wheel chair? (Like my Dad)
II> you are a member of a working class and have few time a day left for watching TV?
III> you are a member of a working class and have 15 days a year to spend on travelling instead of watching TV?
IV> you prefer pristine quality over cheap download? If you don't see the quality difference between HiDef Movie and download, I could recommend you a priceless ophthalmologist.
V> you are recovering from your heart operation at home.
I could go on writing but I guess each one of us need to think for him/herself what he would do in the future.
Download Media will NEVER win over optical media storage in my case!