DVD is DEAD??

[ulthar]

I learned about this one over at Slashdot and thought I'd post it here.

DVD Is Dead, But What's Coming Next?

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; one of my favorites was "[Industry], YOU don't say when it's dead, WE [the consumers] do).

[Menard]

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.

[LilCerberus]

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?

[trekgeezer]

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.

[daveblackeye15]

It can't be. It feels like I've just gotten into DVD's.

[ulthar]

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."

[LilCerberus]

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?

[ulthar]

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.

[trekgeezer]

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


You will notice that the original date for the switch was the end of 2006, but congress recently extended it .

[dean]

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.

[trekgeezer]

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.

[Just Plain Horse]

High Definition isn't going to make the crap they shovel at us every day and night any more palletable.

[odinn7]

DVD is dead! Long live Betamax!

[AndyC]

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.

[Mr_Vindictive]

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.