Sloth911

link

Bushdog

Unless piracy can figure a way to work into the system he envisions, people will not abandon media.

RoyalTea

what about flying cars? weren't we supposed to have flying cars like, four years ago?

someone needs to be fired.

B.A.

I'm still waiting for my hover-board.

TexasGuy

dick_grayson

they will be.....for the super-rich, maybe. Even so, I'll be living on the moon by then, so I won't need dvds.

RoyalTea

Do you think that hoverboards will be a precursor, or an offshoot of the flying car industry? or are they completely different technologies altogether?

Bandoman

I'd settle for anti-grav boots.

fryinpan1

I think Gates' comments are ridiculous, but here they are:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...s_040713172320

FRANKFURT (AFP) - DVDs will be obsolete in 10 years at the latest, Microsoft boss and founder Bill Gates (news - web sites) predicted.

Asked what home entertainment would like in the future, Gates said that DVD technology would be "obsolete in 10 years at the latest. If you consider that nowadays we have to carry around film and music on little silver discs and stick them in the computer, it's ridiculous," Gates said in comments reproduced in German in the mass-circulation daily Bild.


"These things can scratch or simply get lost."


Gates' vision of television of the future was: "TV that will simply show what we want to see, when we want to see it. When we get home, the home computer will know who we are from our voice or our face. It will know what we want to watch, our favourite programmes, or what the kids shouldn't be allowed to see."

Barings

He's right, but he's wrong about the timeline. I think they will be about 25 to 40 years, but closer to shorter end of that estimate.

Everyone has been envisioning the all-in-one entertainment centre for decades where people can use the computer, television, music, and later the world wide web through a single source.

I'm sure the merging of media sources will take place, especially as internet cable gets faster and hard drives get bigger (and lower in cost). However, it will occur at a much slower pace than what he expects.

Josh Z

Isn't that called TiVo right now?

Galileo01

That is exactly what I thought!

Zodiac_Speaking

Who's Bill Gates to tell what the future holds. I see dvd lasting as long as the consumers want it to, not a monoply business telling us when it will end.

mverleg1

They will develop in parallel. Once hover converstion technology has been developed, there will be 2 tracks, one group that makes the setup smaller, and one group that works to lift more weight. They will be based on the same technology, and most likely, the hoverboard group will get to market quicker, but the flying car market won't be far behind.



MV

TexasGuy

Didn't Gates also predict that by now we wouldn't have hard drives and would "lease" all our software rather than buy it?

DVD Polizei

Bill said this 10 years ago. He needs to get out of his house more.

jtorres138

If I'm remembering correctly, a FOX late 80's/early 90's tv show called "Beyond 2000" said that "flying cars" would be available in 2014. I don't know why I remember this, I watched this show when I was 12 or so.

B.A.

I was going to say the same thing, but w/ a little more eloquence.

Tsar Chasm

Much like I find CD players to be obsolete, I think Gates is right on the money with respect to psychotic DVD collectors like me.

10 years ago, I drooled when I installed a 120MB hard drive in my 486dx66.

TexasGuy, we lease all of our software at the company I work at. It's called Software Assurance. As a corporation, we need to protect ourselves against upgrades etc... so we pay a maintenance fee (usually 25-40% of the actual license) each year. Sounds like another word for lease to me.

eXcentris

So my computer will know that I'm in the mood to watch a Korean film over a Japanese film? How about if I'm in the mood for twin Swedish supermodels, is it going to provide that as well?

pilot

This is from the man who said "640k should be enough for anybody." ...who cares what he thinks!

ScandalUMD

I think he's right. Once all that content can be available over the internet, there is no reason for people to collect the physical discs, unless you just want to put them on your shelf.

His vision of things sounds good to me. You pay once, and no more double dipping, no more DVD rot, no more losing the discs, and if you want to watch a movie someplace other than your home you enter a password and your whole library is available to you. What's more, since the distribution method is cheaper, and retailers would be cut out of the chain, consumer prices would be cheaper.

This also provides better piracy protection to content holders. They want the purchase of a movie to just be a license to use content anyway, with limited permitted uses of the disc I bought, so I don't see why my use of the license I paid for should be connected to the durability of the DVD disc.

bboisvert

I don't know...

For one thing, it's going to take a hell of a lot longer than a decade to get the tremendous amount of home video material available on the Internet or elsewhere (in a format/delivery method that protects the rights of the copyright holders).

And then, people have to get plugged into whatever theoretical technology "knows what we want to watch". And then there's the costs involved. There are still quite a few people out there watching analog cable TV in mono on a 20" TV. This, in a world that was supposed to have fully embraced HDTV a long time ago.

What Gates is talking about may happen, but it is much further away than he's talking about. I'd be shocked if this became the norm within my lifetime.

Shannon Nutt

Gates comments remind me of those who said VHS and pay Cable would mark the end of the movie theaters.

Yes, DVD may be replaced with a better format, but it isn't going to be VOD. People still like owning a physical product and things like extras, commentaries and interactive options are a HUGE reason for DVD's success.

Gates will be obsolete before DVDs are...

ThatGuamGuy

Bill Gates, and others, have been predicting for *years* that television would be obsolete and computers would be the *only* place to watch stuff.

Seems like that's taken quite a bit of time. If I had to guess, I'd paraphrase 'singles' ... People *like* their televisions. (especially compared to their computers.)

I also like the Trey Parker quote, regarding when they were working on the Internet cartoon "Princess", "Nobody we know watches anything on the Internet except porn." While there are definite exceptions to this, I still think we're a long way away from actually getting rid of TV, DVDs, etc., in favor of *just* computers.

*Especially* considering the massive copyright problems that storing them exclusively on computers would be likely to cause.