How Often Will There Be a New Format Generation? (1 Viewer)

I was just thinking. I am about to celebrate my 26th birthday. Ive been collecting DVDs now for about 5 years. I have replaced many VHS tapes that my parents bought when I was younger, so we can reasonably say I am on my 2nd generation of home video.

Lets say I replaced my entire library (or at least the good movies ) each time a new format came out.

How many times do you think I will have bought the same movie by the time I am 75 or something?

Once every 5 years, 10..20? What do you all think?

I have some tapes that are older than you

I think it will be a long time between HD-DVD and the next format. Much longer than DVD has been around. I would say at least 15-20 years before the next one. That puts it around 2025.

Well, hd-dvd will be starting. I think that will be around for quite a few years 10-20. what ever is after that will probably be so close to real life PQ that it will be the last format that provides substantial PQ diffenences. there will probably be several different formats but all will yeild roughly the same results. after that who knows? Can you say holodeck?

HOLODECK! HOLODECK! HOLODECK! HOLODECK!

alright... calming down...

Seriously though I would be VERY HAPPY to upgrade my entire collection every 10 to 15 years. I'm a freak. If it can be made better, do it. I will buy.

I almost hope HD-DVD will be a niche market with movies costing $50 each. Should cut down on Pan and Crap releases, and any error gets fixed because 90% of the buyers will notice and complain.

Don't get me wrong, at that price I can barely afford one a month but it would be so worth it...

I think that the time between HD-DVD and the next format will be a lot less than most of you think. If you remember, in Japan (or maybe China) someone invented ULTRA High Definition as is trying to get it released. So, I'd guess that HD-DVD will come out perhaps early 2006, and Ultra HD will come out around 2008.

No way. Two years after DVD had been released your average customer hadn't even heard of them. The same thing will happen with HD-DVD. Even if it's physically possible to to make a superior format in 2008 they wouldn't do it. HD-DVD will hold such a small fraction of movie sales that it wouldn't make sense to split the marketplace by releasing something even better.

I can't see another format being released within the next 15 years.

HD-DVD will be it for a while.

Oh I am sure another format will exist before 15 years. Heck I am sure something is being develloped now even. But before it is completed, tested, marketed and really accepted, I am sure it will be at least 7 to 10 years AFTER the first Hi Def DVD hits the stands.

It will be a long time before HD-DVD catches on... it will be lucky if it gets beyond a LD type niche by 2008, IMHO (that's about when I see HD TV's getting VERY commonplace, if things go well). As such, I think it'll be a while before regular DVD goes away, and then many years before HDDVD goes away (HD-DVD may even get passed over as a mainstream medium, if something else comes out before HD takes off.)

I feel like I'm repeating myself from other threads (I probably am) but DVD is already a great format. What else do people want, short of implanting computer chips in our brains so we can watch 1,000 films as we sleep?

I loved going from Super 8mm digests to home video on VHS when I was 20. Luckily I skipped laserdisc all together so I saved some big bucks there. Then when I was 35 in 1997 I eagerly embraced DVD as the most vibrant and convenient format and replaced the VHS tapes which had replaced the Super 8 films. And now that I'm in my 40s I'm supposed to upgrade AGAIN?

I say let's spend more of our time watching what we already have instead of constantly up-up-up-grading the same things again and again and again due to super-duper ultra-intense resolution that wasn't even present in the films themselves when they were originally released in their time!

Seriously, there has to be a line drawn sometime. DVD is a pretty perfect home movie format as it is.

I'm satisfied with DVD for 95% of my movies. When a new format does come along I'll make all my new purchases in that format and replace a few 'beloved' movies that I purchased on DVD. But I won't repurchase my entire collection.

The reasons I upgraded from VHS to DVD were primarily 1) tape degrades 2) having to rewind.

Video and audio quality improvements are great, but it will take much more than that for me to repurchase all of my movies. VHS to DVD was much more than improvements in video and audio. DVD made watching movies more convenient. It brought conveniences to movies what we had been enjoying with CD music for years.

HD-DVD will simply be an improvement in audio and video. So no wholesale repurchasing for me.

I believe that Blu-ray will remain for around 20 years before any greatly improved format comes out. I can also safely guess that it will take 6 to 8 years for Blu-ray to start outselling DVD in the US. One of the reasons DVD will have a bit of a shorter life than VHS is the fact that it was released the same year HDTV (ATSC) was released.

UHDV (Ultra High Definition Video) is being tested in Japan by NHK which about 10 years ago had released Muse. When digital HDTV was invented by ATSC it destroyed any chance of Muse becoming the international HDTV system (to be fair Muse was the best analog HDTV system made). NHK is Japan's national broadcasting channel and since Muse's death they have wanted to prove themselves as world leaders. So they created UHDV which has a resolution of 4320 by 7680 pixels at 60 fps (frames per second). It also has 20.2 channels of sound and is currently being shown in Japan. Though impressive it will take at least 40 years before it even has a chance of being commercially released. Also I have serious doubts about 20.2 speakers ever becoming common in the home unless they can shrink the non-subwoofer speakers into 2" cubes with great sound quality.

I really do think that the current DVD format will remain the standard for another 6-10 years. I dont see the average consumer jumping on the HD DVD bandwagon. Ask your average customer at best buy, and they still regard DVD as a "new" format, just now hitting its stride. HD DVD will be nich for a while. As soon as HD players drop to the sub $300 price point, and their is a large library of titles, it may start to make a dent... wich I dont see happening for another 6-10 years. But...I could be wrong.

Eh, I think that there might not be a format after DVD.

I believe that the future of home video will be on demand services. For like $5 you can permanently buy a movie and watch it on demand whenever you want. Extra features could easily come with. Or it could be a rental only system, but the rental fee could be a monthly flat fee. So $20 a month to have instant access to 3000 movies.

While there is no doubt that the Hollywood will try to get us to keep rebuying movies, most Americans will prefer the convenience of an on demand service over owning a physical copy of a film. This will drive HD-DVD into being a niche market.

The technology is here for it, so it will probably happen once studios feel their losing money to cable channels' own on demand services.

I think current DVDs will be the "it" thing for the next 20 years. HD-DVD will be like LD.

For online demand: where's all the bandwidth to download this HD stuff going to come from? We have a long way to go before that infrastructure will exist, and can compete with owning a portable and cheap DVD. But it'll likely happen, eventually.

My personal opinion, based on watching what's happened over the past 35 years since I became media-aware and a media consumer (the past can't predict the future, but it does give a good indication of how humans behave in similar circumstances): any new format must be *physically* different from the format it wishes to displace. Thus any new format that looks like a DVD/disc is doomed to nichehood. It will not succeed, and will go away. SACD and DVD-A were doomed from the start, because they look like CDs.

The next video format that will succeed, if it is to be owned, will probably look something like a flash memory card, though it may not *be* a flash card, just look like one. Not only must it *be* different and better, the media must physically *look* different and better.

This is the minimal requirement to succeed. Just because this requirement is met doesn't guarantee success, but not meeting it guarantees failure.

Who says it's going to be HD? The vast majority of Americans care more about convenience than A/V quality. I guarantee that if you went and did a poll of your neighbors or random people on the street, asking them which they would rather have, movies in HD on a disc or movies on demand, they'll overwhelming want on demand. Which is why I said that HD-DVD will become a niche format for those people who want the best possible A/V, like LD.

I don't know what's available in Canada, but we already have HD cable in the States. Seth-L may very well be correct in his prediction. OAR is even being subtley pushed on some basic cable channels (STARZ has it's wide-screen night and OAR Saturday premiers). My provider has been offering not only film on-demand, but HBO series and anime as well (none of the titles interest me personally as of yet). Whether it beats out another hard copy format or not I have no idea, but on-demand will eventually win over many nay-sayers.

I'm still waiting for my eXistenZ console to arrive....