hoyalawya

IIRC, the studios stopped releasing titles on VHS because it was no longer profitable. I can see DVD continue being profitable for a long time.

cardaway

It's funny because I was thinking the same thing. Glad the feeling is mutual. The only difference is a didn't know there was an ignore function.

What's also intersting is the number of other posts I've seen from you going at it with other people. Yeah... it's just me. LOL

cardaway

Covered.

SMB-IL

This is exactly right -- I deal with a network of only 25 nodes and 35 users, but the percentages you mention are exactly the same -- about 95% don't, won't or can't update their computers even though it's made stupid easy to do.

MrDs10e

OK, well someone who understands financial matters better than me, help me out here: I feel 100% certain that there will not be a single piece of SDDVD media released for sale by major studios or distributors after Decemebr 31, 2017. I'm surprised that it seems 99% percent of people disagree with me. If this idea seems like such a longshot to everyone else, there must be a way I can profit from this if I do indeed turn out to be correct. A free, lightly used copy of Feeling Minnesota on DVD, with a broken disc holder inside the snapper case, to the first person to come up with a viable answer!

Chaka

If studios can still find it cost effective to release DVD titles in fullscreen like 3:10 to Yuma then its gonna be a while for high def media to overtake standard. So standard dvds will prob last for years to come unless they just give away free bluray players and high def tv sets to anyone that wants one.

ToddSm66

The problem with the idea that Blu Ray will eventually kill off standard DVD is that Blu Ray, by default is a niche format. Do we really believe that at some point EVERY movie is going to be available on Blu Ray the way they are available on standard DVD now? Does every movie NEED to be on Blu Ray or seen in High Definition? Would you ever feel the need to upgrade ALL of your DVDs to Blu Ray?

The two formats have to coexist. Standard DVD will always dominate Blu Ray, or any other high definition disc - until something better comes along and kills them both at the same time...and something will eventually.

kakihara1

You're never going to see that go away, people just love that the screen is completely filled I used to spend a huge amount of time explaining aspect ratios to people but they just don't care.

DVDs whether they will be produced in the same numbers as High Def media five or ten years in the future or not will still be around simply because people will not spend money to replace thier entire collection of SD disks. Hell you'd be hard pressed to find a player that doesn't still play Video CDs and that was a format that never caught on here at all. It's so easy to include DVD functionality in a player that there is no reason not to include it.

And I remember clearly when DVD was taking over shelf space at B&M stores, the dwindling VHS sections were pretty amusing. The big difference this time around is that DVDs are so cheap to produce that so long as there are people willing to pay for them majority or minority they will continue to produce them. VHS, much like cassette tapes for music were expensive to produce and I'm sure companies were chomping at the bit to stop making them.

nateman

That's probably another big reason why HDM will never kill the SD DVD format.

You can explain the differences between WS and FF all day, but that fact of the matter is, you'll always get the "but it doesn't fill the whole screen!" answer. Even people with WS HDTV's, still by FF DVDs. It doesn't matter (they're not going to remember what you said) if you get more of the film in WS, it doesn't fill the whole screen. People are ignorant when it comes to films original aspect ratio.

I think J6P is wasting his money by buying a FF DVD, but he thinks the other way.

cardaway

I agree that the foolscreen folks will have an impact, but as each eventually gets a 16x9 set, their idea of foolscreen changes as well. The downfall of course is we might see a new kind of foolscreen on BD. Movies that were originally wider than 16x9.

joliom

Another aspect to this is that most people will accept the lower audio quality of compressed mp3's because they're primarily listening to music on small portable devices with earbud headphones, crappy computer speakers and car stereos where the degradation is less jarring than with an expensive home stereo system. The era of the expensive home stereo system for serious music listening is mostly dead. But it's a little different with video. Even though there's a lot of portable viewing going on in the modern world, most people still consider their living room setup to be their primary viewing area and will not accept low-res downloads that fall below the standard of DVD. Because of that any download paradigm that attempts to get around the bandwidth/storage problem by opting for heavily compressed lower res files isn't going to suceed to the extent of completely replacing current physical mediums. So you are right; there are still significant technological hurdles to clear both in terms of streamlining the necessary technologies and in terms of marketing them in a way that gets them into the hands of the general public. That won't happen for at least 10 years. Probably more like 20.

Drexl

It's not just ignorance. There are people (even on AVS) who know full well why the black bars are there; they just want their screens filled anyway. It also doesn't help that a lot of 2.35:1 movies these days are shot in Super-35, and those same people are aware that a 16x9 version will show MORE image on the top and bottom.

These aren't just guys with 32" TVs. Some of them have front projection, so "go buy a bigger TV" isn't an answer either. I think we could see 16x9 editions of 2.35:1 films at some point. If we're lucky, the OAR version will always be available.

The availability of image zooming and stretching in today's sets might help stem the tide though. If they can manipulate it on their end, maybe there won't be much demand to do it on the other end.

namja

So you're telling me that in 10 years, the U.S. still won't have speeds that Japan and Korea already have? As of May 2007, the average broadband speed in Japan was 61.0 mpbs while it was 45.6 mbps in Korea. I'm sure it's even faster now.

Source:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...s-1-9mbps.html

At those speeds, it'll take just a few minutes download several gigs.

rdclark

Five years.

At that point, all physical-media new releases and releases of catalog titles will be on Blu-Ray only. Anybody who has any interest in buying and collecting discs will have a Blu-Ray player by then anyway.

J6P buys relatively few DVDs. He's not a collector. Five years from now his primary desire -- to see recent movies once on the cheap at home -- will be served by the various streaming and on-demand services, which will replace SD-DVD rentals, and will have become so ubiquitous and immense that anybody will be able to see nearly any available mainstream title anytime, for a buck or two, on their primary TV.

Cheap SD DVD-recorders (or DVD-R/Blu-Ray combo units) will become ubiquitous the way VCRs used to be. People will be able to copy downloaded SD content to these units (or even download/copy in one operation) for playback on their portables. This will be industry-supported functionality, when they understand that it has no effect on sales of HD content.

SD-DVD will be with us for a long time as a home-recordable format, like CDR and even VHS was. But it will be aggressively phased out as a distribution medium by studios that want to eliminate dual inventories as rapidly as possible, and move on to a world where cheap and disposable content is distributed electronically, while more expensive, harder-to bootleg, premium content is packaged and sold at retail.

I agree that Blu-Ray will never achieve the numbers that SD-DVD has, but that's because part of the market will be replaced by electronic distribution, just as is currently happening in the music industry.

joliom

Those speeds still aren't sufficient, and you're talking about the high end of the curve - people with the best consumer speeds available. And it's not just a question of bandwidth. You also need a pretty massive hard drive if you're going to store 500-1000 HD quality files (not to mention a backup drive). And then you need those drives to be reasonably priced so the average guy can afford them. And you'll need websites running off of some seriously high-capacity servers if millions of people are going to be downloading millions of files like that all around the world simultaneously (try to imagine the traffic of iTunes only with files that run 10-20GB). Or else they need to come up with a really cutting edge compression algorithm and encoding format that allows you to drastically shrink the size of the file without being overly lossy.

I'm not saying that all of that is unfeasible, just that it won't come together in a way that's suitable to revolutionize the mass market and displace DVD/BRD within the next few years. It goes beyond the question of simply perfecting the technological elements, and enters into the realm of consumer dissemination. It will be awhile before all the necessary hardware and software are available in the mass market and for a price that people can afford. And it will be awhile longer still before the mainstream public jumps in with both feet and says sayonara to physical media. I think your idea that the digital download revolution will coalesce in the next few years is wildly optimistic.

joliom

Well, I'm not sure I agree with your assertions that SD-DVD will be aggressively phased out within 5 years, mainly because the corporations selling the media are not concerned with formats, they're concerned with profits. And as long as J6P keeps on buying more DVD's than BRD's, they'll never shoot the golden cow. If they see 2 or 3 times as many sales on SD-DVD than on BRD, they'll never pull the plug on it. Why would they? Why gamble that J6P's desire to own Transformers or whatever other big new release will compel him to throw all in for Blu-ray? What if he doesn't? Then they just effectively killed off half of their consumer base. They're not that stupid. They'll run the dual release platform until it's obvious that everyone and their grandmother has made the switch and DVD profit percentages have been rendered insignificant. But that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Even assuming BR was given free reign to grow without the specter of downloads looming in the near horizon (and let's not kid ourselves, we all know it's gonna happen eventually), it would still take the better part of 10 years to gain that type of advantage over DVD - and that's best case scenario.

I do agree with you on the other point, however. While I don't see the download model overtaking DVD's & BRD's in the next few years, I do think the download model is going to coalesce and completely take over the rental market in that time frame. If more than 30% of the country is still renting from B&M's like Blockbuster or through the mail in 5 year's time, I'll be shocked. That's happening and it's happening now. It just may be awhile before its all HD quality and instantly accessible at the push of a button.

namja

Actually those are AVERAGE speeds.
Yes, Japan's average broadband speed is 61.0 mpbs.
Korea's average broadband speed is 41.6 mbps.

In 10 years, don't you think we'll have TB storage like we do GB storage? I think 50TB drives will be common, maybe even 100TB.


Anyway, I can easily picture people downloading 3-4GB movies and not complain about quality. I've seen plenty of 1GB/hour movies, and they look pretty damn good. When you can download these in 5 minutes, don't you think that people will just do this instead of pay $$$ for them? Just a thought.

chanster

People complain about download times, but they have no time wasting 15-20 minutes at least going to Best Buy to pick up a physical media. Or waiting an extra 2-3 days for something to come via mail.

I guess I am having a good time with Comcast's On Demand Service. I watched Robocop HD the other day, took me all of 2-3 seconds for the movie to get started. I like that. Obviously its probably more compressed than Blu Ray, but its better than upconverted DVD and just a notch below true HD discs.

joliom

It's the high end of the curve internationally. Those aren't the average speeds in the U.S. or Canada - many people are still using dial-up.


Perhaps. Perhaps they'll even be cheap. But they also need to be reliable. If they're just like current HD's but with higher storage capacities, then I for one would be very nervous housing my entire 700+ title collection there. Even a backup drive isn't a foolproof safeguard. If they're both plugged in you run the risk of encountering a bad power surge, and assuming you'd be periodically connecting your secondary drive to your main in order to perform backups, you run the risk of exposing both to viruses. And then there's crashes, component failures, general product erosion, etc. There are some developments that need to be made beyond just storage capacity is my point.


That's true, but I was talking about the fully-realized download model, one where you can dl a 16GB full HD movie in no more than a few minutes time, with artifacts and data errors being extremely rare, and able to be stored on a drive that can easily hold thousands of similar files. I never said that the partially-realized download model (files that aren't full HD or are heavily compressed; dl times that run several hours instead of several minutes; streaming movies but not downloadable ones, etc.) couldn't or wouldn't happen in the near future. That's already starting to happen.

darkside

For those speeds to happen we have to start running fiber to the curb and so far that is not happening in this country in anything other than a couple of minor test markets. None of the ISPs want to foot the bill even though they have received huge subsidies from the government to do just that.

Outside of that we need a technological breakthrough to get more speed out of the existing networks. I just don't see American's averaging over 10mbps without major changes that don't seem to be coming. We need more bandwith, but they just want to be greedy and tier the internet and charge more money for the existing bandwith.

AT&T recently added their big IPTV network Uverse here in my neighborhood that is a fiber and copper combination. All of their efforts have given me 3mbps broadband and HDTV channels so compressed they are nearly unwatchable. Yeah TV and movies over the internet. Oh, and I'm also only able to watch HD on one TV at a time due to the limited bandwith. I'll stick with my disc formats thank you.

aynrandgirl

That's why purchasing physical media will still be important. It serves as your backup (stored safely offsite I hope). It's immune to magnetic fields, accidental erasure, and viruses. This all assumes, of course, that the studios don't make copying Blu-Ray discs to your home media server impossible or unworkable by mucking things up with DRM.

Qui Gon Jim

I agree on both points. Companies will not forgo the profits from DVD to push them to BD or any other format for that matter. I doubt even Sony would try to kll the golden calf that is DVD profits to further BD as a format. DVD will go away when it is no longer turning a profit, and those $1 DVDs we see all over make me wonder if it will ever get to that point.

Qui Gon Jim

I too have been using the VOD services from Comcast, and I think that is why my opinion is shifting on all this stuff. I can literally start watching a VOD HD film faster than my HD DVD player boots up. AND I don't even have to leave the couch. It is quite powerful.

The Bus

The people who say they won't have VOD usually haven't experienced it. I still like physical media more than VOD, but VOD is catching up. It happened to music. Yes, I still buy CDs, but before I listen to it, I rip it on my computer and put the CD away.

Once something like Kaleidescape makes it to a reasonable price range, you won't want to look at physical media. You may still have it, but that's not how you will interact with it. It's only a matter of time.

Ten years ago most hard drives were in the 10GB to 20GB range. Now, an $899 Dell machine ships with a 320GB hard drive and 16GB is stored on a keychain or a tiny music player.

namja

Ditto on that.

Imagine having dozens/hundreds/thousands of movies on your fingertips, and being able to watch them within seconds. Some people already have that, and for others, that can be a reality within a matter of months. As more people experience the convenience of VOD, then we'll see how people's perception changes.

Directv is launching their form of VOD (they call it DoD: Directv on Demand) as we speak. Some people already have it. Others will get it soon, depending on their equipment.