To further clarify my earlier post, let's use music as an example.

Until recently, you had to have physical copies of everything. A 1,000 CD collection took up an entire bookcase or three and was very difficult to transport.

Now, all 1,000 of those CDs are with me 24/7 on my iphone, either thru free streaming from my home computer, or physically copied onto the device. Technology is only going to improve, and someday our entire collection will be able to be streamed to our car or wherever we happen to be, no need for a device or a collection taking up space at home.

The exact same thing is happening with movies.

I'm more of a packrat and physical media fan that any of you, really. But times are changing.

I love physical media. I'm sticking with it, until:

1) there's something I really want that I can download
2) it is at a reasonable price
3) there's no plans for a physical media version...

At that point, I'm gonna consider it. It's all about the movies for me. What difference does it matter how it is delivered. I'd strongly prefer a physical product. But I see the writing on wall with this stuff. It's only a matter of time.

-beebs

It's best not to make rash assumptions about what people have or have not considered, before casting aspersions.

My hatred of going to a download-only purchase model has nothing to do with any love of any particular physical format. It has to do with not having any interest in purchasing a movie that does not come with a tangible copy that I can keep, hold, view on any TV of my choosing, loan to a friend or family member, all without having to incur any unusual expense or odious DRM compliance steps.

Further, I refuse to participate in a model that removes that much control from me, while adding the risk of losing an entire collection in one fell swoop of a damaged or failed hard drive. Yes, DVDs and BDs can fail, but when/if they do, that costs me one movie. A failed hard drive could cost me dozens, or even hundreds. Even if they are freely replaceable (which is still a hotly debatable issue, based on past experience people have had with some other DRM-based download services), how much time will it take to rebuild the library on a replacement drive or STB?

No, that level of INconvenience is not for me. If it floats your boat, that's great for you. But if the day comes when I can no longer buy movies on a physical medium, I'll simply stop buying movies.

And to further use your analogy (which we have done numerous times on this forum) the book-business is even less restrictive and easier to manipulate than music is. There are practically very few restrictions that apply to online distribution. Aside from CETA everything is streamlined in a manner that makes it utterly convenient for the consumer to avoid physical copies of the latest bestsellers. Yet, downloading is a mere fraction of the market.

As noted earlier, if at some point you feel that downloading (films) will be satisfying enough for you and you don't need to own a physical copy of your "property" then by all means this is the model for you. But I would go a step farther than RoboDad and make the following very clear: I am convinced that there is a substantially larger segment of "owners"/customers that want to own a physical product (read disc format) than there are people that are willing to switch to downloading completely. With other words, physical media will be here for many generations, certainly as far as mine is concerned and beyond.

Pro-B

FWIW, I was not directing my comments at you in any way. As I said, our views are pretty meshed on this topic. I was mainly responding to the disqualification of everything the guy says because he took a dunk at HD DVD.

But what if the scheme allowed you to portabilize the content? Does having a 1:1 disc:film ratio make or break it? If you carry a flash drive to your friend's house or a read-only disc is it that big of a difference?

I am in total agreement. If your drive goes poof, then you need to pay nothing for the replacement files. However, as an IT manager, I have seen WAY more bad media discs than I have hard drives or flash memory.

That's fine. For me, if they came up with a way that combined the portability of current ROM based media with the convenience of VOD, I would be all over it. I don't see a system like this as an inconvenience, much like it is very difficult to say an iPod is not more convenient than a CD collection.

BDs are bits on a disc. Who cares whether those bits sit on a memory device or in a plastic disc that sits on a shelf in a plastic box?

The other upside I see to this is that there would be no room-consuming collection, and there would be no waste generated by manufacturing and packaging media.

Print is not an apt comparison. To completely counter this argument, look at what the internet has done to print magazines and newspapers. How many hundreds of magaznes and newspapers have folded because there is an easy alternative to reading the content, without the lead time?

I think convenience wins out in the end. Books are sort of different. I do still think that if they made an ereader that was easy on the eyes, and was very simple to use (sort of like an iPod) that it could take off, and take a chunk of printed book's business. Fiction is really the only area that has not gone electronic. Almost any printed reference manual is outdated by the time it is done printing.

It is as generic of an analogy as is music to film. A music CD could be sold in portions (selected songs, etc). A film cannot be sold in the same manner Itunes captures music. Yet, there are plenty of comparisons on this forum between the two.

In any event, it is pointless to argue any further. Time will tell where the market heads. If there is one thing that is absolutely certain it is the fact that the studios will have just as much control over your downloaded "property" as they do now, with physical media. In my opinion, in that regard they will do even better with severe repercussions for the end consumer.

Pro-B

Just because YOU say a topic is done does not make it so. The only one "arguing" here is you. You can never ever seem to have any discussion if it at all involves the end of BD be it tomorrow, or 10 years from now. Jesus. News flash: BD WILL NOT LAST UNTIL THE END OF TIME. HD DVD would not have either. Or HDVHS or DVD. The format du jour is irrelevant to the current discussion.

Just so you know that right now, when you buy any DVD or BD you own nothing except a license to view the content. The only "property" is your license.

So you are saying that HTPCs are not more convenient to use than disc based set-ups? I don't have a HTPC, but I will unequivocally say you are wrong. It is far more convenient to find a title in a list and click on it to start playing than it is to find the disc in your collection, open it up, power on the player, put it in, and let it start playing. This applies whether the deliverable is a song on a CD or a movie on a DVD or a BD.

So I want to get you on record:

You are saying that if a system evolved where you could store digital copies of your films, with little hassle in case of a disaster, that allowed portability, but that was not on a disc based media that you would balk at it? Because it is not on a disc you'd say no?

There is no need for you to lose your temper. You quoted my post earlier which implies that you were "talking" to me. I responded in a manner I believe sums up my thoughts on the issue very well, hence, I also concluded that there is no need for us to argue any further. Should have been obvious that this does not address your participation further in this thread.

Thanks.

Pro-B

This raises an ethical question with regard to resale -- especially if the seller profits from the sale. Essentially, this arrangement would imply that when Buyer 1 purchases a disc, the "license to view" is effectively paid to the property/content owner (ie, the studio). But when Buyer 1 sells the disc to Buyer 2, no "license to view" is purchased from the content owner -- if, indeed, the studio is still to be considered the owner of the disc. I suppose one could argue that Buyer 1 "transfers" his license to Buyer 2, but by accepting payment for the disc Buyer 1 has essentially caused the content "owner" to lose potential income, in that two people have held control of a license for which said "owner" only received a single payment.

Let's take this a step further and identify Buyer 2 as a second-hand video reseller such as Hastings or The Wherehouse. After making the purchase from Buyer 1, Buyer 2 will resell the disc/"illegitimately obtained license to view" to Buyer 3 at a profit to Buyer 2. The "license to view" has now been held by three parties, while the content's owner received payment only for the original license transfer.

Having said all that, studios selling downloads only could effectively kill the second-hand video sales market. Everyone would be forced to pay the same amount for a given title, and resale (or license transferral) would presumably be impossible.

Surely it's much more convoluted than that, but that seems to be the gist of it, right?

Sorry, my bad. I need to pay more attention to who said what sometimes.


It is a big difference for me, for two reasons.

First and foremost, because of the fragility of the media. You mention that you have seen more failed media discs (by which I assume you mean CDs and DVDs) than hard drives or flash, and that is true. However, my experience is that the overwhelming majority of failed media discs is due to abuse and/or mishandling, whereas hard drives and flash drives can and do fail during normal use. A stray static discharge, even during what should be a "safe" hot swap, can fry such a device beyond recovery. Add to that manufacturing defects, other power surges, AND mishandling/abuse, and the chance for failure increases significantly.

And second, because of the obvious amount of control such media gives the studios over how and where I can access such "portability". They do NOT want you or me to be able to take movies to a friends house free of charge. They really want that friend (or us) to pay an additional fee for the privilege. With DVD and Blu-ray, they have no such leverage. With DRM-controlled bits on a RAM drive, they DO have that leverage, and more.

I agree, but my take is that it will be the rental option that reduces the room-consuming collection. Give me a decent VOD rental mechanism (as I described earlier in the thread), and I'll be all over it, and the size of my disc-based collection will decrease by as much as an order of magnitude, maybe even more. The resulting 100-200 disc collection will not be room-consuming.

I think the book analogy works better than you may be giving it credit for. In fact, it is nearly perfect. A convenient and affordable ereader would/will most likely kill the paperback book market (as well as most user/reference manuals), but it will do almost nothing the the hardbound book market. Paperbacks are very analogous to video rentals, where hardbound books are analogous to "collector edition" DVDs and BDs.

Give me a good ereader that can accept downloads from any source (unlike the kindle, which is tied ONLY to Amazon), and I'll buy one, and that will be my new paperback reader. But it won't stop me from buying hardbound editions of books that I love for my library.

I agree. In a perfect world, we could have a new system like this that will have the best of both worlds, but we all know that greed will set in, and the controls will be too restrictive. Hopefully they learned something when DVD destroyed DiVX. Make it reliable and user-friendly, and offer something that hasn't been offered before and you could have a hit.

OK, I'm with you here. You actually said what I couldn't really put into words. I think most people view books and DVDs and CD as disposable, especially paperback books.

If I read between the lines of your comments correctly, and correct me if I am not, you, like me, are now looking at this huge media collection you have and going "now what?" I have tons of paperbacks that I am ready to part with, and have whittled myself down to a couple dozen hardcovers that I want to keep. I think the DVD collection will be next. I have hundreds of movies that have only been watched once. Fortunately, I am a cheapskate and the price of that one viewing is not much more than a rental so I won't be taking an astronomical hit when I sell these movies off.

You are dead on here. I think that corporate greed will be the deciding factor on a lot of this stuff. The same corporate greed who brought us two different hi-def formats (from two companies, I might add, who are partners in the PS3). To me this is the biggest thing I have against digital distribution.

Like I said, I was vehemently opposed to this last year, but some aspects of this are starting to make sense to me.

Of course this isn't the first time they've (corporate studios) tried to kill second-hand media sales, either. You probably remember about 15 years ago or so when there was a big stink raised over stores selling used CDs. Check out this from an article on the subject:

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/compa...y-History.html

Yep, I think we are pretty much on the same page, except that I have way more than a couple dozen hardcover books. More like a several hundred. And, I think my DVD/BD collection would end up being similar in size, in a world where I could rent the run-of-the-mill fare through an STB.

But I will never, ever trade my hardcover collectors editions for an ereader version, just as I will never, ever buy into download-only versions of the films that fall into that same category. I want to hold 'em in my hands. It's just the way I am.

However, just as a data point, I'm already in the process of thinning out many of the DVDs that fall into the "fluff" category (nice to watch, but not an essential part of my collection). I've cut out about 150 so far, and more will be on the chopping block this weekend. It's actually kind of liberating. Of course it helps to have a friend who runs a video rental store who gladly takes my DVDs, and pays top dollar.

I'm a big collector of physical media (I can't say huge after reading about people's collections in these forums). I just don't get purchasing something that I can't physically hold in my hands. I love mp3's and love having my mp3 player or ipod (now that my mp3 player is broken). I finally broke down and purchased a car stereo with an ipod connection to make it easier. But I still purchase all my music on CDs then convert them to mp3's. However, I have seen how teenagers and many 20-somethings are embracing the downloadable media when it comes to music. Granted it does make it easier to purchase the songs you want, but many of them are purchasing the entire album at a time. My point is that even though many of us prefer our physical media, the younger crowd would rather have downloadable media. Though they don't make up the entire market, they make up a huge amount of the market and as they grow older and another generation of people come in, they will make up more and more of the market. That's one of the big rasons why it will take 10-15 years for this to become a popular way of distribution.

As for books, I believe that is a totally different thing. I can see the e-reader idea putting a little dent into the market (especially the paperback market), but books are better in print. My main reasoning behind that is how hard it is to read from a screen. I've always hated reading a lot of information on a computer screen. The reason newspapers and magazines are losing to the internet is because the information is much shorter and easier to handle. Now that may be a personal thing, but I believe there's probably a little science behind reading a lot of text on a lit screen instead of reading from print. The other issue is that music and movies have always been distributed in some sort of way where the form it takes doesn't matter. Books have, for centuries, been on some sort of paper. We can hold it, read it, flip through the pages. There's something about holding a book, reading the words, and flipping through the book one page at a time that immerses yourself into it. It's almost interactive, though not really.

Music and movies, however, have constantly changed forms without affecting our enjoyment of it (though newer technology may have heightened our enjoyment of it). Music was on records and 8-tracks, then cassettes, CDs, and now through online distribution. The point is that we were able to hear it in either of those forms, and the technology has only made it better. Movies are the same way. All we have to do is relax and enjoy, no matter the method of distribution. There's no actual involvement. But when it comes to books, nothing has ever been better than the actual print. No matter how many forms companies have tried over the years (audiobooks or online versions), the print version has always been the best. Maybe they'll come out with a better e-reader that won't hurt my eyes as much as most screens do, now, and I can see that becoming a profitable business, but no where near as huge as downloadable movies and music can be. Maybe pushing a button to go to the next page will replace that feeling of turning the page. But I think books in print are here to stay. Physical forms of music and movies won't be around forever. They'll last a long time, for sure, but downloadable media will one day become the norm.