I learned about this one over at Slashdot and thought I'd post it here.
DVD Is Dead, But What's Coming Next? (http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/dvd-is-dead-but-whats-coming-next/2006/01/06/1136387620776.html)
Well, in the last six months or so, we've bought two DVD players (a 5-disk and a DVD-VHS combo recorder) and given the one we had previous to those two to my wife's sister. We've bought a few DVD's and of course rented both Blockbuster and Netflix.
Personally, I think this is "industry hype." Especially if they cannot name a specific technology that is replacing it.
(There are some pretty good comments in the Slashdot thread (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/06/2320242&tid=188&tid=97&tid=137); one of my favorites was "[Industry], YOU don't say when it's dead, WE [the consumers] do).
IT seems as though the consumer has lost the power of the 'demand' part of supply and demand. With retailers having become more corporate, we now are faced with having to buy what they make available. If the manufacturers want to push a new format, provided they have one, they will, and the consumer will comply.
Best Buy did this with DVDs when they were among the first to completely phase out VHS. Their message to the customer was that their choice had already been made, and that choice was made by the seller.
They both sound fascinating. Still, I don't wanna have to get me some hunard dollar doohickey too soon.
And what's this gonna do for the market for those $1.00 double features they got down at the DollarTree?
Y'know, I'm still a little miffed that I missed out on those Video disk things that they came out with back in the late 70's or early 80's, and those teensie little whatchamaholics that Sony came out with back in the early 90's. I got one of those things glued to the front a copy of Rolling Stone when they first came out with them, but I could never afford one of those $800.00 doohickies to play it on.
Say, while I gotcha here, has anybody ever seen one of those V2000 format video cassettes?
Don't be panicking yet. This is one of those things that has to shake itself out. As cheap as DVD players are getting, you can buy three or four for about $100 and stash them away for a rainy day.
It can't be. It feels like I've just gotten into DVD's.
daveblackeye15 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It can't be. It feels like I've just gotten into
> DVD's.
The point is that it is some industry jokers saying this..probably to push their new ideal tech. I personally think it is an absurd statement to say any prolific medium like DVD is "dead."
The thing that really worries me, is how I keep hearing that the government is trying to force everyone to buy an HDTV by 2008 or 2009.
But what about people who don't have cable? What about people like me who are strictly rabbit ears?
And how is this going to affect those cheap black & white portables that you can get down at the drug store for about fifty bucks?
Well, just for clarification, the gov't is not forcing everyone to buy HDTV. You can do without.
:)
As I understand it, the talk about is about the end of regular broadcast TV. And yeah, that stinks. I'm another without cable and just have a rabbit ear antenna. But isn't there a provision for a 'converter' to attach to existing sets that allow watching the signal? It's like the rf converter for hooking up a DVD player, iirc.
In the end, I don't care. I just don't really care if I lose TV. I've got my DVD players and my VCR. My TV will be for watching movies if they end the broadcast TV signal. I have the stupid thing on too much now; getting rid of that annoyance would be a plus, in my book.
There needs to be a clarification about this. The government is not mandating HDTV, they are mandating digital signal broadcasting for which there is a set top box for conversion.
Here's the scoop from the FCC: Digital TV Facts (http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html)
You will notice that the original date for the switch was the end of 2006, but congress recently extended it .
The government here also extended our similar date [we're doing the same sort of thing] due to dissappointing digital sales. A friend of mine recently got it, and whilst it's a slight improvement, with a few more channels, for the most part it's fairly crap, with the major broadcast networks having a couple extra channels each, and generally they all play the same channel over and over again until they put more shows on to fill these empty channels.
A lot of people here get confused thinking that everything is going HD. A lot of broadcasters here are already broadcasting digital along with the analog.
This can be compared back to when I was a little kid and everybody broadcast in black and white until 1966, when they were mandated to start broadcasting in color. I think back then they estimated it took 15 years for every household to finally have a color tv. Back in the 60's color tv's were very expensive compared to the throw away models we have now.
High Definition isn't going to make the crap they shovel at us every day and night any more palletable.
DVD is dead! Long live Betamax!
ulthar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The point is that it is some industry jokers
> saying this..probably to push their new ideal
> tech. I personally think it is an absurd
> statement to say any prolific medium like DVD is
> "dead."
I can see a lot of would-be technophiles parroting it around, so they can sound like they're on the cutting edge of something.
My biggest problem with it is that to my knowledge, they will not be backwards compatible with current DVDs. That, and the Blu-Ray players will cost upwards of 1,500 at release.
I'll probably be tricked into switching over when I buy a Playstation 3. It only supports Blu-Ray, which is understandable when it comes to the size of the games.
odinn7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> DVD is dead! Long live Betamax!
>
As I think I've mentioned a few times, we still have a Sony Betamax, and some beta movies. It is at my Mom's house, probably under a pile of old blankets or something.
My neighbor was selling 2 Beta machines and 2 boxes of Beta tapes last May at a yard sale. All this stuff for $20 and nobody wanted it. He tried to give it over to me for free but I just had no room for any of it here. Basically, he couldn't give it away.
I'm still cautious about DVD's. I've said it before and I'll say it again, DVD's are a passing fad. In time, they will become obsolete, going the way that VHS is going now or that 16mm went for home movies. Yes, there will be some capabilities in the new format players that will allow for older technology to be played, such as the VHS/DVD players of today, but sooner than later, the industry will try to push a new format on us. How long did the VHS have its run? It was invented in 1976, and about 20 years later, it started to succumb to the superior technology of DVD's, which became a market item in 1998 with "the first pressed DVD [being] the movie Twister in 1996." (Wikipedia). Twenty-Two years? DVD's have been around for 8 years now, and they're already going out of style with the introduction of Blu-ray. How long will it be before Blu-ray overtakes DVD's in production and sales? Or is Blu-ray even the one to take off next? What about HD DVD?
What 'law' states that technology will increase by a multiple of two every ten years, or something like that? It's a dangerous thing to keep on making new stuff and tossing the old stuff away. All that crap will build up and eventually we'll have piles and piles of machine stuff that's been forgotten and/or outdated.
Here's what I see happening, and this is speculation. In time, most, if not all information will be sent via the internet through ever increasingly faster connections. This means movies and music too. I see the demise of the hard copy for consumer needs. I don't like it, no sir.
That is why I buy DVD's cheap $1 or only rent DVD's cheap with coupons. To costly to purchase DVD's at $10.00 to $25.00 only to have them be outdated. At least those rare films are preserved now with DVD for future advances..
Scottie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> What 'law' states that technology will increase by
> a multiple of two every ten years, or something
> like that? It's a dangerous thing to keep on
> making new stuff and tossing the old stuff away.
> All that crap will build up and eventually we'll
> have piles and piles of machine stuff that's been
> forgotten and/or outdated.
>
You may be thinking of Moore's Law, and in a way that is often misunderstood. Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a processor chip will double about every 18 months. This has been extrapolated in all sorts of ways. For example, many people think it means that processor speeds will double every 18 months (for a while, this was true, but it was fortuitous). There may be another law that is more applicable to what you described, but that's the one I thought of when I read your post.
> Here's what I see happening, and this is
> speculation. In time, most, if not all information
> will be sent via the internet through ever
> increasingly faster connections. This means movies
> and music too. I see the demise of the hard copy
> for consumer needs. I don't like it, no sir.
There was an interesting and related article out today or yesterday about the "short" lifetime of data on 'burned' CD's. The study claimed that the data life was about 5 years or less. That's pretty short, but if you think about it, it's not a whole lot out of kilter with other "recent" forms of data storage.
One commenter mentioned maybe we should return to stone tables. You know, those hieroglyphs have been around a while.
Regarding the demise of hard copy for personal use, an alternative view might go something like this: why should we ALL store many copies of the SAME DATA? If the data can be centralized, a grand library if you will, and we access it when we need/want it, a very efficient system of data storage would exist.
(You many insert comments about centrally stored data being easier to modify clandestinely here).
Robert Anton Wilson referred to it as the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon: where technology advances at an interval which is half of the interval for the previous advancement. It has not been passed into law yet. (http://www.smileys.ws/smls/action/00000042.gif)
Like I said, if you have a lot of money invested in DVDs, just stock pile some cheap players.
Menard read a couple used books of Robert Anton Wilson books in the late 80's.
Are we talking about the future again? Then as B-movie people we must first contact THE AMAZING CRISWELL for help................................
(http://www.evil-pumpkin.com/jake/criswell/iamcriswellsmall.jpg)
Criswell: Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?
(http://www.tompiccirilli.com/criswell.JPG)
Criswell: [narrating] ... All of us on this earth know that there is a time to live, and that there is a time to die. Yet death is always a shock to those left behind. It is even more of a shock when Death, the Proud Brother, comes suddenly without warning. Just at sundown, a small group gathered in silent prayer, around the newly-opened grave of the beloved wife of an elderly man. Sundown of the day; yet also the sundown of the old man's heart, for the shadows of grief clouded his very reason... The funeral over, the saddened group left the graveside. It was when the gravediggers started their task that strange things began to take place.
(http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/images1/criswell1.jpg)