In your hand, or on Hard drive: Question (1 Viewer)

[Steve K.H.]

It will happen... mainstream movie purchase being electronic. Everyone seems to overlook the advent of wireless technology. Wireless broadband overcomes the concerns we currently have with pipeline restrictions.

It took Napster to create a vision of people accepting ripping or downloading digital media as a primary source of maintaining their audio collection.

Despite the RIAA's attempts to stop people from owning digital music, the natural progression continued. We now see vehicles with MP3 players, the resurrection of Steve Job's corporation based on an iPod, and sites selling the songs we want instead of people sharing them.

Funny thing is, now people are PAYING for what was (and is) available for free. Why? Convenience. Quality. Many would rather pay $1 for one song instead of searching and downloading that song only to find it inferior. Time is money. Others would rather pay $1 for one song than $10 for a crap CD that has that one song on it.

As it stands right now, the broadband marketplace was pushed forward. In the space of 3 years it jumped 400% in the U.S. Canada was the leading broadband nation in the world 3 years ago (per capita) so they didn't spike another 400% obviously.

Bittorrents take up fully ONE-THIRD of the current traffic on the internet. To explain, that doesn't mean if you aren't downloading, either your neighbour on one side or the other is. It means that of all the people online, the select few who have Bittorrents running are chewing up pipelines.

Eventually, people are going to tire of stealing movies. This is again due to the time involved, and also because the consumer doesn't want to spend all that time getting an inferior product for free. An analogy I could use is if someone gave you an option to own a free P/S copy of the original Good Bad and Ugly DVD release, you would still rather pay for the W/S remastered version.

I predict we'll see the same transitional change through an evolution of movie media as we see with MP3's.

You'll have a media player with perhaps a small visual display on the player. The visual display will be just like you looking through your iPod but much more refined. It'll hold say 10,000 GB of data.

Your media will be downloadable of the internet, or you will receive a memory stick with the entire film on it that you upload onto the media player... no restrictions from the media capacity that we have with DVD, just carry a bigger stick (who said that!) The memory stick or download will carry the license with it.

20 years ago we oohed and ahhed about computers with a Hard Drive of 20 MB. 20 years from now our children (or their children) will look at our DVD's as we look at 8 Tracks... "that person is afraid of staying current!"

What we say we will do now is commendable, and this will assist in shaping the final details on our picture of the future. The future will happen as conveniences become realistic and cost-effective, despite what we say we will or will not do.

 

[Kevin M]

I'm surprised that a certain individual hasn't come into this thread yet and preached about the oncoming "fiber-optic pipeline" that will provide lightspeed downloads at reasonable costs and eliminate the need for any of us to leave the house ever again.
....oops...too late!

Seriously, IMO physical media will not go away anytime soon even with the onslaught of this "super-pipeline" because no matter how "cheap" it will seem to certain people many will not be able to afford it as many cannot afford cable now...but they can afford a DVD and that is a large percentage of the population. As other have said in this thread and as I have said in other similar discussions, the studios will not throw away that large of a percentage of their consumer base, physical media and VOD will need to go hand in hand until this shocking societal changing utopia of high paying jobs for the entire planet comes into being in order for the mass population (and therefore highest paying consumer group by percentage) to be able to afford to "jack-in" to the super-pipeline....until then there will be no loss of little shiny discs (or some other affordable portable media) for the long foreseeable future IMO.


And I didn't even get into the human phycological need for tactile ownership...to be able to feel and hold the thing you own in your hand......VOD can never replace that either...

 

[CRyan]

I guess so far I am the only one that would rather have the download. However, I fear that DRM and other online content securities will make it a miserable experience that will continue to make me a felon in my own home. I enjoy movies, but I want to enjoy them as I see fit. I want my media server, but I want to make hard copies for backup as well.

Currently, I am not so intersted in HD-DVD for the simple fact they are going to make it very difficult to enjoy movies how I like to use them. DVD's are easy to use illegally (i.e. ripping them for point and click ease for house distribution).

I love my media server. They will have to pry it from my cold dead hands. Until I can rip my movies to my personal video server, my buy-in to HD media will be limited.


Thanks

........waiting for the first HD-DVD crack.

 

[Kevin M]

We had this very same discussion in the "A Few Words About...Blu-Ray" thread back in October, Here is the page it began on.

 

[JackKay]

Here is an interesting link to a CBS story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in664022.shtml

"Everyone's watching Toshiba's test of high-speed downloads of movies to the home. The goal: a two-hour movie delivered in ten minutes. Test results premiere in March."

I wonder what kind of compression they are using and how it effects P.Q.?

 

[CRyan]

I would not call that the same exact discussion. And besides, if we did not discuss the same thing at least 10 times before putting it to bed, there would be no need for the HTF.

C. Ryan

 

[Kevin M]

...not the same discussion? Looks pretty damn close to me.

 

[CRyan]

I'm relaxed.

 

[Kevin M]

I'm absolutely fine with this proper location rather then in the other thread that totally went into off topic discussion for pages. It is a very important topic and deserves it's own dedicated thread.

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

Absolutely in physical form in my hand. Then it's a collection vs. a bunch of files (at least to me).

 

[Jeff_HR]

The same for me. :frowning:

 

[dannyCraigs]

It's a case of how your sentimentality works. For me with music, I really don't care about owning any CDs whatsoever. Could never see the point of CD singles and have been saying so for years before the decline of single sales in the UK & elsewhere. Why would anyone want to go out and buy one song (ok maybe a b side as well) on a CD? I'd choose mp3 & other file formats, any time. Same with software or games, i dont need them or have any desire to hold them on any form of physical media. The music industry blames the internet piracy for lower single sales, when really the public have just wised up.
Like many of us here though, I do like owning movies on physical media. It doesnt make any sence to get over sentimental over a load of plastic discs that will be landfill one day though.

 

[Chris Will]

I do not think that comparing music downloads to movie downloads is fair. I pay $50/month for Bellsouth's fastest DSL connection (don't remember the rated connection speed) and it is not anywhere fast enough for movie downloads as an alternative to buying DVDs. Ever since I got my iPOD last year all of my music purchases have been from itunes, but it only takes seconds to download a song. I'll shamefully admit that I illegally downloaded SW: ANH and TESB dvds when they were leaked online before the actual DVD release date (I have bought them since). It took about 3 hours to download each file and the movies were divided into 2 files each. So that is about 6 hours per movie. My point is that a lot people I know still think that $50 is too much for internet service and the fast connection still take 6 hours to download a high quality movie file. There is not an affordable technology that will make this happen. Music is different, the current technology works for music. Files are small and take no time to download and once paid for it is mine and I can burn it to a disc if I want. If a technology comes out that can download full length movies in minutes and cost $50 or less/month then I'll jump on board only if your license never runs out and you can back it up on a physical format. I'll never buy into a pay-per-play system, I don't even rent movies know (maybe 2 a year) b/c I hate giving them back. I just don't see this happening anytime soon and if it does, like others have said, it will not replace physical formats. They will co-exist just like iTunes and CDs. I hope some of this makes since, I'm kinda out of it today.

 

[Joel Fontenot]

And what happens when the drive crashes, or lightning blows out the whole system your stuff is stored on?

That's the *poof* that I meant.

I know it's a difference in philosophy, but there is an advantage to physical media that makes it a little harder to lose the stuff. Yes the physical media can break too, but it takes a bit more effort to go out of your way to do that.

I've still got LP's from over 35 years ago. Are the files stored on your system and only on that system still going to be there 30 years from now? Sorry, I likes my music too much to rely on storage that might be replaced every 4-6 months because of the next gen processor.

 

[dannyCraigs]

On a 1 megabit connection, you can download 4500 megabytes in around 10 hours (5 hours on a 2megabit connection). Currently, these are considered the higher offerings of broadband in most areas of europe & america. So, still not a massive problems for the movie studios, as the bulk of people will be put off by this. There are a few areas offering 10megabit connections or higher for under $60, and this will get more and more common over time. Which is when the real problem (or opportunity for the studios?) will start for the studios, since that 10 hours drops to a very reasonable 1 hour or 2 hours for 8 gigabytes.

 

[WillardK]

Agreed.

It's interesting to note how on a lesser scale, attitudes towards renting have changed even here on HTF. As dvd's became less special as objects and rental pricing/policies/methods changed, people adjusted their habits of consumption. Blockbuster's much ridiculed ad campaign some time ago of 'how many times will you REALLY watch that movie' is a question more people apparently ask themselves even as retail prices have dropped. Years ago, the ranting and raving against renting was part of a somewhat bizarre atmosphere here and at DVDTalk of extreme irrational consumerism. Remember those 'how many unwatched dvd's do you have' polls? Judging from a number of threads I've seen, the mood is definitely tempered nowadays by comparison. This is due to a number of factors no doubt, but nonetheless.

 

[Steve K.H.]

Go way outside the box before discussing the current limitations.

Certainly the current infrastructure makes it more ideal to have physical media.

Once wireless downloads transfer at rates of GB per second, and that will happen one day, it hardly seems worthwhile driving all the way to BB for something you just load on to a googlebyte hardrive.

Costs? Broadband will become (even) more affordable as infrastructure is built and paid for.

Today - Physical Media
Immediate future - same
5 years from now - If I could predict this, I wouldn't be working anymore.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

1. No matter how fat the pipeline to your home, you will not get downloads that fast. Even on a dialup service the factor limiting download speed is the remote server's bandwidth, and even if you have the same link capacity as it does, when that server is working on a large number of requests you won't get anything like the bandwidth you pay for. This is one reason for the success of the Bittorrent system by the way -- the ceiling on transfer rates is not so hard-and-fast -- but I can't see the studios/content providers setting up any such thing!

2. Gbps wireless networks?! Insecure and unstable in the extreme, plus likely to fall afoul of EMF regulations. Enough said.

I don't like anyone trying to tell me what to do with my copy of a programme. Hence my unwillingness to buy into DVD. Laserdisc Forever!

 

[Joel Fontenot]

The bane of the existance of audiophiles. New versions almost always sound worse than older versions thanks to hyper-limited, over-eq'ed, super-pumped and dynamic-less remasters that are then made available in (usually) a lossy-compressed format that makes it all sound even that much more harsh.

But, I guess it gives you the chance to weed out the songs that you might not want anymore as you try to remember all the songs you had to download all over again.

 

[Ted_Polzin]

One thing I have learned over the years is to never under estimate computer technology and how fast it will evolve. 15 years ago the internet as we know it hardly existed, those on it used slow modems and 14,400 seemed pretty fast, cable internet came out in around '97 and that felt like endless speed and has been improved upon a lot over the years. I remember my first cable modem got maybe 50k/sec download. Now I usually get in the neighborhood of 400-500k when I have a good connection to the likes of Microsoft .... that’s a 10 fold increase in just 7 years.

I actually see this going in a different direction. I can foresee the day when not only older movies that have already been watched in the theater are distributed by broadband technology but first run movies. With movie theaters becoming much more personalized and smaller over the years, 25 years ago how big was the average movie theater ... a lot of them held 300 - 400 people and had 1 or 2 theaters. Now a big theater holds 200 and is in a 15 theater multiplex.

How many of us has said how much better their home theater was than the local multiplex ... sound even picture. I do not think the public theaters will disappear .. and certainly not within the next 15 - 20 years .. but I do believe they will become smaller and maybe even to the point where they are really just public HT's that you can rent.

I am one of those who live at closer to the forefront of technology. I've had a HTPC serving my home for a couple of years now and just wired my whole home and now can distribute my entire collection of shows and movies to any TV at any time. I have over 4 TB of HDD space and have my entire collection on my system. Microsoft (not what I use) media center now offers the ability to rent movies .. a little less than DVD quality from my understanding ... but the fact that one can do it shows that it will move forward.

I do believe we will see convergence over the next 10-15 years .... It has already started and can only grow.

Ted