Has the Internet killed the DVD?

[66Crush]

I like the idea of collecting my favorite movies and TV shows on DVD. I like the packaging and special features. I will often watch the special features more than the movie itself. I joined Netflix because every single video store in my town closed down. I like the conveniece of streaming but I really miss video stores. I hate Redbox. I hate having to stand behind a loud white trash family, who can't make up they're minds about what to get. At least in the video store I didn't have to wait in line just to browse. I could browse while others were being waited on. Plus the video store had more variety as far as old and obscure movies. The biggest disadvantage of Netflix is that you have to get most new releases by mail and you can only get one out at a time if your on a budget and have the 8 bucks a month package.

[Kaseykockroach]

No, the internet just makes it easier for me to get DVD's. =p

[Archivist]

I'd love to see a three tier model.  At the first level you can watch anything you want for a low price.  For a higher price you get to download a high quality copy.  And if you really like it, or you just want it, you can order a DVD or Blu-ray on demand.  It would require high quality transfers to cover the possibility of someone wanting a physical product, but for me it already works this way.

I hear about a movie: maybe it's here, maybe I read about it somewhere else.  I immediately go to youtube and see if there is a trailer or someone has uploaded a scene or two.  If I like the looks of it, then it's off to Amazon and into the basket it goes, assuming I can find it.  What I'd love is a much more well stocked streaming site that offers discs on demand.

The last thing I'd want is all media to be streamed out of some cloud with no option for physical media.  Files can be corrupted, deleted, or some moral do-gooders can get things banned.  A number of years back there was the ezboard.com forum group.  Ezboard was hacked and dozens of discussion groups lost years worth of posts overnight.  The same thing could happen to media stored online.  And as Flick James said, it's another opportunity for a third party to monitor what we buy and what we do.

[Mofo Rising]

I'd love to see a three tier model.  At the first level you can watch anything you want for a low price.  For a higher price you get to download a high quality copy.  And if you really like it, or you just want it, you can order a DVD or Blu-ray on demand.  It would require high quality transfers to cover the possibility of someone wanting a physical product, but for me it already works this way.

I hear about a movie: maybe it's here, maybe I read about it somewhere else.  I immediately go to youtube and see if there is a trailer or someone has uploaded a scene or two.  If I like the looks of it, then it's off to Amazon and into the basket it goes, assuming I can find it.  What I'd love is a much more well stocked streaming site that offers discs on demand.

The last thing I'd want is all media to be streamed out of some cloud with no option for physical media.  Files can be corrupted, deleted, or some moral do-gooders can get things banned.  A number of years back there was the ezboard.com forum group.  Ezboard was hacked and dozens of discussion groups lost years worth of posts overnight.  The same thing could happen to media stored online.  And as Flick James said, it's another opportunity for a third party to monitor what we buy and what we do.

In large part I agree with the Archivist.

It's really all about storage packages. DVD's and Blu-ray's are essentially disc-based hard drives. Once essential, even Blu-ray is now eclipsed by hard drives which can easily and cheaply go up to terabytes. A wall of DVD's can now easily be replaced by something small enough to fit into your personal computer.

There will always be the collectable option. Many like the package a DVD comes in, but many DVD's these days are sold packaged with a "digital copy." There a lot of bands who now release their albums in a variety of pricing tiers. Cheap digital only versions, somewhat slightly higher priced physical copies with the digital copy, and collector copies which come with a bundle of extras like artwork and vinyl copies. This is probably the future of "hard" movie releases.

Streaming movies are more of an update of the cable model. Eventually, if the prevailing plan succeeds, we will be paying for different content packages. Netflix and Hulu have already carved out this model, and we will only be seeing more of these companies in the future. There are still technological limitations to this model taking over. For one, bandwidth is still not able to reproduce the fidelity of image and, more importantly, sound that Blu-ray offers. It's close, but not quite there. While that road block will eventually be overcome, it is still the case that high-speed internet is not cheap enough to be available to everybody. Tack on the price of a content provider, and cheap DVD's will still remain alive and kicking.

But streaming a movie is not the same as "owning" a movie. The movies available for streaming over Netflix are always in constant flux. There are some movies I just want to be able to watch at any time. Ideally, there should be an option where I can download a movie to a personal hard drive and enjoy it in perpetuity. But not every option available leaves me with complete control of my catalog/collection. Many providers package their content with built-in DRM that allows it to be remotely disabled through a central source. I love the functionality of the Kindle book reader, but I will not buy one for the reason that the DRM allows Amazon to disable my ability to read the books I bought at their whim, and this has happened. Many games available on the PlayStation Network only function when there is an active connection at work. When the PlayStation Network went down, my ability to play the games I had purchased was taken away.

And since entertainment is such a big industry, the politics behind this issue is horrendous. Some of the most draconian anti-"open internet" laws are put into place in the name of anti-piracy. The Obama and Bush administrations have both been terrible offenders in this regard. Right now, the idea is seriously being entertained in many of our elected officials heads that your connection to the internet should be severed forever if you have the temerity to attempt to view a free movie or listen to a song you kind of like. As if that's the only thing the internet is good for. (Hey, it's good for porn, too.)

I don't mind paying for entertainment. I like paying for entertainment. But I want it to go the content creators (i.e. artists), not the middleman. There should always be a variety of options. "Hard" copies, be it DVD, Blu-ray, or digital copies I own in perpetuity. Also, streaming content houses, like Netflix or whatever new competition arrives. But make it something the consumer has control over, not the business people.

[skuts]

The "cloud" is just another data-mining scheme. Anybody who entrusts their data to some remote server "out there somewhere", deserves to get their stuff stolen.

[Jim H]

*The "cloud" is coming: in future digital distribution models you'll buy rights to access a copy of a movie stored on a server somewhere, and you'll be able to access it from any Internet-ready device.

Yeah, and I have to admit I just don't like it.  I've now bought a couple of digital only PC games, but I don't think I'll EVER buy a purely digital single copy of a movie - and the games I bought only because they were very cheap.  I look at Netflix as renting, DVDs/Blurays as buying. 

If purchasing movies on physical media becomes impossible, I will simply stop buying movies.  Considering how cheap optical media becomes though, I don't think this is likely to be an issue for a loooong time.  Probably more than ten years.

[JaseSF]

I fear the day they perhaps try and eliminate all real books in favor of digital ones (or the same with movies) because there are flaws in storing stuff solely on a computer (I really truly believe one must have hard copies as well) - viruses, hackers, spyware, computer problems, etc.

[Hammock Rider]

I fear the day they perhaps try and eliminate all real books in favor of digital ones (or the same with movies) because there are flaws in storing stuff solely on a computer (I really truly believe one must have hard copies as well) - viruses, hackers, spyware, computer problems, etc.

It's why I'm not a fan of ebooks.

[Flick James]

There is an interesting correlation I'm seeing here.

The more immobile we become as a society, the more "mobile" our information becomes, and vice versa. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only is my PII (personally identifiable information) floating around out there, but my tastes as well. What I like or dislike is being monitored, tracked, stored, etc. There is good and bad about this. The bad tends to stem from my paranoia and lack of trust in my governmental agencies.

I've never watched Birth of a Nation. What if I wanted to watch it from a purely historical perspective? If I find it digitally somewhere, now it's out there that I accessed the movie. Am I now being identified and tracked as a white supremacist?

Or how about a more likely scenario? What if I'm watching documentaries on Netflix? Am I now being tracked for certain political views?

Perhaps it's paranoia, but I think about things like this.

[Archivist]

I've never watched Birth of a Nation. What if I wanted to watch it from a purely historical perspective? If I find it digitally somewhere, now it's out there that I accessed the movie. Am I now being identified and tracked as a white supremacist?

Or how about a more likely scenario? What if I'm watching documentaries on Netflix? Am I now being tracked for certain political views?

Perhaps it's paranoia, but I think about things like this.

I do, too, and it shapes the things I click online.

On rare occasions, a Google search for something innocuous turns up a result in something nasty like stormfront.  Knowing that all ip traffic is monitored on both sides, not to mention that I find that kind of thing abhorrent, I actively avoid places like that.

I also wonder how deeply other site browsing habits are tracked.  If I start looking up all kinds of conspiracy type websites, does that flag me somewhere as a potential conspiracy nut?  If I look up extraordinary rendition in wikipedia and follow related links, does that raise flags?  What if I stumbled across some kiddie porn (never have, thank god), what would happen then?

Movies like the Bourne trilogy show a fictionalized idea of how intelligence agencies can monitor online traffic and other telecommunications.  I have little doubt that such technology exists.  I put it into perspective, though, that I'm just another curious joe in a few billion people who are already looking at various websites.  We're nobody.

[Flick James]

I've never watched Birth of a Nation. What if I wanted to watch it from a purely historical perspective? If I find it digitally somewhere, now it's out there that I accessed the movie. Am I now being identified and tracked as a white supremacist?

Or how about a more likely scenario? What if I'm watching documentaries on Netflix? Am I now being tracked for certain political views?

Perhaps it's paranoia, but I think about things like this.

I do, too, and it shapes the things I click online.

On rare occasions, a Google search for something innocuous turns up a result in something nasty like stormfront.  Knowing that all ip traffic is monitored on both sides, not to mention that I find that kind of thing abhorrent, I actively avoid places like that.

I also wonder how deeply other site browsing habits are tracked.  If I start looking up all kinds of conspiracy type websites, does that flag me somewhere as a potential conspiracy nut?  If I look up extraordinary rendition in wikipedia and follow related links, does that raise flags?  What if I stumbled across some kiddie porn (never have, thank god), what would happen then?

Movies like the Bourne trilogy show a fictionalized idea of how intelligence agencies can monitor online traffic and other telecommunications.  I have little doubt that such technology exists.  I put it into perspective, though, that I'm just another curious joe in a few billion people who are already looking at various websites.  We're nobody.

It's extremely easy to monitor Internet activity. Federal don't have carte blanche access to Google's records at this time, but they can easily access this information on a case-by-case basis with a simple warrant. And Google keeps track of EVERYTHING. I have complete virus and intrusion protection on my computer and it detects tracking cookies placed on my computer on a daily basis. It's nice to know that it also removes them. However, most people don't have that kind of protection and things can very easily be traced to the individual.

Again, I'm not doing anything illegal or nefarious, but I don't like that. Ultimately it's my choice to either use the Internet or not, but I still don't like it. There are very talented hackers out there, and some of them get hired by government agencies and contractors. I have a fried who was in IT in the Navy who got out and took a job for a DOD contractor. Most of the time he would tell me that he can't tell me a lot of what he did, but enough drinks and prying and what little he would tell me was scary enough, and probably just the tip of the iceberg. You might be surprised what the government's capabilities are. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if I tried to get a clearance for a government job, which I've had before, but now would have problems getting because of some stuff I've looked up online and some statement posted regarding my views. I wouldn't be one little bit surprised.