PopcornTreeCt

You can download to your PC and stream it to your PS3. It's quite easy actually.

The only DVDs I buy are Criterions. Blu-rays are pretty much it.

MovieExchange

Good god, I guess I'm old. I remember when you pretty much had to hook your computer up to your TV.

Anyone else remember the TRS-80?

TheDuke

The future of movie rentals is here, it isn't downloads. It's NETFLIX, baby!

visitor Q

Me Me Me. Good ol' Radioshack computing. The $500 Brother word processor that I took to college has more computing power.

MrDs10e

The transition from physical media will take a lot longer than people think. Humans like to shop and hold things in their hands. If that wasn't the case, all the B&M stores would have closed by now since you can buy almost anything on the internet, and usually at a better price than in any store. Going to stores and owning physical things that they can hold in their hand is a social experience, and a psychological experience for people. You can argue various partisan viewpoints on WHY that is ("people are brainwashed by capitalism!", "it's our animal nature to want trinkets", etc.), but it is a reality regardless of why.

If humans were perfect robot decision makers as consumers, then yes, physical media would be phased out fairly soon. But if humans were perfect robot decision makers as consumers, there wouldn't be tobacco or fast food industries.

With that said, non-physical media still has a lot of hurdles to climb before it can match certain aspects of physical media:

1. Hard disk failures and other failures of soft media are still all too common compared to DVD failures. DVD as a physical media has a reliability people can trust, and also isn't keeping "all the eggs in one basket"- it takes a lot more destructive force to wipe out an entire physical media movie collection, whereas one simple coffee spill on laptop can wipe out all you've downloaded for years.

2. The internet connections that most people have in their home are far too low in bandwidth for downloading movies to be speedy and practical. Not to mention the fact that most people don't know how. We're mostly techie types here. The average guy on the street doesn't know how to use bittorrent or IRC to download his favorite show, if he even has an internet connection fast enough for it to be practical.

3. While I do feel that we may not be far away from cable/satellite providers being able to have practically everything available on demand, there is a portability that DVDs/physical media have that we are a long way away from anything non-physical being able to match. There is not yet anything close to a proposal that will allow you to take your cable/satellite service along with you anywhere you go. If you're going over a friend's house, and you want to watch Alien, you grab the DVD and go. If you're going on a long car ride and the kids want to watch Wall-E, you grab the DVD and go. Want to show your boss Disclosure at work? You get the point. Transferring huge electronic files cannot yet match the portability of picking up a DVD and taking it wherever you are going, and knowing that pretty much any place you will go has the needed equipment to play it.

Eventually, physical media will die or change form dramatically. But I believe that in 20 years, there will be movies in physical media formats on shelves in stores.

calhoun07

Vinyl is starting to make a bit of a comeback, so I wouldn't count DVD out of the game for a good long time.

All I'm saying is what goes around comes around.

And if sales aren't as strong as they once were, perhaps the studios should investigate WHY? Maybe because of cheap cost cutting measures, such as not securing the best source for the transfer, cutting costs in the music department, putting out shoddy releases right away and then double dipping with bigger and better releases later on...and pointless releases over all? I mean, I was at Target the other day and they had a whole wall full of those "I Love the 80's" DVDs. Pathetic. The fill the market with needless crap when what we demand isn't even on DVD yet.

Hokeyboy

Ah yes, the TRaSh-80 Good times!!!

(I was more of an Apple ][ / Commodore 64 kid, meself... 300 baud modems, baby!)

Hokeyboy

You know, I got thousands of DVDs, the majority of which I simply don't watch. I pretty much stopped buying DVDs UNLESS it's a must-own (Pixar movie / some Criterions or Eclipse sets / Deluxe editions of movies I love / etc) and I Netflix the rest. I'm much happier that way; less clutter, saves a few bucks, easier on the groin.

To put it in perspective, I rather enjoyed, say, "The Other Boleyn Sister" and rented it sight-unseen. If I had bought it, it would have been a waste as I don't plan on re-watching it anytime soon at all.

Extras are nice but have very little re-watch (or re-listen) value at this stage of the game, unless they are something REALLY extraordinary.

joliom

Exactly. I think the more likely scenario is that eventually everyone will have TV's that have certain services like Netflix accessible via internet connectivity, but everyday browsing, blogging, etc. will remain a desk-based operation. And I don't think if you access Netflix or iTunes TV or whatever from your TV, it will be something that you have to fire up Internet Explorer and navigate through their normal webpages to access. More likely they will setup some sort of "direct portal" type deal where you can access the site like it was just some other channel and select a film or TV show (or video game) with simple on-screen searches, not unlike scrolling through your TIVO or digital cable guides now. I envision a system that looks a lot more like pay-per-view or HBO On-Demand, only with a much smarter platform and far more choices. But I don't see us all crowded around our living room TV's with little remote keyboards, checking our email and reading blogs. I know you can do that, I just don't think that's going to become the norm.

sracer

Yes.. but the TRS-80 Model I and II required their own monochrome monitor.
A TRS-80 Model I w/Level I Basic and 4KB RAM was my first computer.

The TI-99/4A, Vic-20, and Commodore-64 could connect to a TV.

MovieExchange

So could the TRS-80, as that's the comp I had and I never owned a monitor.

Aragorn84

Sorry, that did come off a bit silly. All I meant was younger kids who perhaps didn't start collecting until recent years, as opposed to the late '90s.

BrIaNMeRcY

Couldn't have said any better. If the movie industry wants to increase sales, relese movies that have yet to be released on DVD. Take No Holds Barred for example. I am shocked it has yet to be relesed on DVD.

As for double dipping, the studios do that to have us buy a movie that we already own. I am probably one of the few people out there who understands why they do it. Since I'm a Wrestling DVD collector, take the Royal Rumble Anthology as an example. The 2007 edition was released as a stand alone two weeks prior to its release. The only difference is the Anthology version does not contain any extras.

calhoun07

Oh, we totally understand that. A lot of us may not like it as much, but we understand it. They fear that people won't need to buy copies of a certain title because of the longevity of DVD. In the past, a fan of a movie would eventually have to replace the VHS copy as it wore out. Now I can pop in any DVD I want and it looks as great as it did the first day I bought it. So to counter that, they just put out new editions hoping we bite the bait.

Hey, if it makes them money...but all I am saying is if they are whining about sales, then stop focusing so much on that stuff and get other stuff out on DVD that we are waiting for.

joliom

I have a huge list of '80s films that haven't found their way to DVD yet, and there are probably hundreds more old classics from the pre-1960's era. Hell, how about they just finish releasing the King of the Hill season sets, that would open up my wallet. Or they could get the lead out and start upgrading all the fullscreen and non-anamorphic titles that still abound. We're 11 years into the DVD format and I still don't have The Abyss or 2010 in anamorphic widescreen or Spies Like Us in its OAR.

bboisvert

Agreed. Even 'hit' shows like NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Simpsons, St. Elsewhere, Hill St. Blues, etc. haven't even come close to releasing their full runs.

And one of the joys of being 10+ years into a format is stuff like Phase IV, The Ultimate Warrior, ZPG, and other obscure things start coming out. When studios are forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel, sometimes gems float to the top.


Major recent hits I'll skip and wait for high def... but there's still plenty of DVD purchases going on for me -- TV shows, silents, obscure/B-films.

clckworang

I don't know. I have my computer hooked up to my 46" TV and I absolutely love it. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and I do all my surfing and computer tasks right from my couch. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm comfortable; I have a nice big screen to look at; and I've had very little problems reading text. Hey, that's what those accessibility options are for. And if for some reason I'm really having problems with something being too small, then I just open it in Opera and use the zoom function. Hell, I had problems with things on web pages being too small or not readable before I hooked my computer to the TV.

I will grant you that depending on the wireless mouse that you get, the sensitivity may not allow you full mobility on any surface. But most of the time, I use my couch to roll the mouse on and never have any problems. And if we're talking about the future here, don't you think we might end up getting more motion-controlled type of mouses that don't require having to be on a flat surface to use? I can see something like the Wii remotes being used as a mouse.

Travis McClain

My grandmother turned 71 in May. She just retired last year from our family owned business, and to help stem off the boredom that goes with retirement, she has become an eBay and Netflix junkie. To her credit, on eBay she's a seller, not a buyer. With Netflix, she has an unlimited, 3-at-a-time plan. She goes through a group of three probably each week, plus she takes full advantage of the titles available to watch instantly. Does it bother her to use a monitor? Not at all, since she's using a 19" HDTV! She's even looking into the new Netflix box to have in the living room. She's hoping that Netflix will get enough titles made available for streaming that soon she won't have to bother with discs at all.

Libby

even with all the options movie downloads and PPV. I still find it satisfying to build my collection and have something to show off. I mean yeah eventually DVDs will go the way of VHS but Im not prepared to shell out cash right away.

Tarantinoholic

As someone who has avidly collected DVDs for years, when I first heard about the whole physical media thing becoming obsolete, it was terrifying stuff. After sinking this much money into my DVD collection, the last thing I wanted was to start buying Blu-Rays for them to die off in a few years and be replaced by downloaded media. Then, I had something of an epiphany and realized how much waste we could save ourselves by completely cutting out the production of DVDs and CDs.

I don't want to sound like too much of a hippie, but I think that on the cusp of us making the full transition from DVD to Blu-Ray, this is a great opportunity to throw our support behind downloaded media in a bid to do something to help out the environment. I love movies as much as the next guy (the thousands of dollars I've invested in DVDs so far is enough proof of this) - but I think we're at a time where there are bigger issues to ponder. With the huge amount of DVDs, Blu-Rays and CDs that are produced each year, it's insane to think of how much we could diminish the size of our carbon footprint on the earth by downloading more and more. Or I could be crazy.

Travis McClain

Tarantinoholic, I agree entirely. My wife and I aren't exactly the greenest people on Earth, but recently we switched over to energy saving lightbulbs and reusable shopping bags. We would recycle, except the people in our county decided they didn't want to spend tax money to operate a recycling center. You know, so the tree-huggers don't tax and spend with their money or whatever the reasoning was.

sracer

I think that the "green angle" to downloads is silly. VHS tapes were perishable. If taken care of, DVDs will last a lifetime (minus manufacturing defects). Downloads are temporary. So it is unfair to compare a durable medium with a temporary virtual copy.

Those "green" low energy lightbulbs contain mercury that is far more dangerous to the environment than current incandescent bulbs.

toddly6666

Downloading a movie makes no sense to a person in the dvd talk forum - we "collect" and "buy" movies..not watch them!

Tarantinoholic

I understand that DVDs last a lifetime, and sure they're perishable, but I still think we could cut down on a lot of waste by converting to digital media. And while DVDs could potentially last a lifetime, as long as physical media is in, we're going to be rebuying movies over and over again in every physical medium that will follow. First DVD, now Blu-Ray, who knows what's next? If downloaded media *is* the next big thing, we should just cut out the middle man and jump right from DVD to that, rather than blowing more cash and time on Blu-Ray discs.

One of the biggest concerns people have is that downloads are temporary, but I don't necessarily think this would be a big problem. If people converted to a system where they could access old movies they've downloaded and had to delete, and have the option of downloading them again for free, I don't think it would be a huge deal. It's potentially a lot faster to get the films that you want, and for rare titles, it would be a lot easier than scouring the net to find a copy of what you're looking for. I don't know, I just think it's worth a shot.

joliom

I think your green angle is a bit short-sighted. The world of downloads also means we'll be taxing the hell out of bandwidth. That means increases in energy and material costs in other areas. A lot more hard drives and backup devices will get manufactured and consumed at least, that's for sure.

Oh, and those compact fluorescent light bulbs, besides containing mercury and coming complete with a whole host of new and unnecessary government regulations, also hurt my eyes and give me headaches. I don't care what the government regulates - if I have to, I'll buy incandescent bulbs on the black market.