K
Kevin Collins
Originally Posted by Ejanss /t/322642/blu-ray-state-of-the-union-are-you-switching-to-streaming-media#post_3955194
I literally don't even remember anyone in the industry talking about the "death of physical media" until Microsoft started strategically acting sour-grapes about losing HD-DVD in the Format War--which if it'd won, would've given them the monopoly on all digital coding, hard and streaming--and hoped to surreptitiously "destroy" Blu's new hard-disk advantage in favor of getting that streaming-code monopoly anyway.
Any time the subject's come up, I've smelled a Big Fat Rat ever since.
(No, wait, think it was predated by Jeffrey Katzenberg at Dreamworks claiming "DVD disk sales are dying!" as his public excuse for why Shrek 2 didn't sell as many disks on shelves as he'd hoped. The Little Midget Rat just never missed a trick for alibis, and he ironclad believed every single one he thought up.)
And even then, you could take the sentiments back to the studios' support of pay-per-view DiVX in the DVD Wars, and their constant promotion that we should watch a movie "Now on your PPV cable system--You can fast forward and rewind!" over their hard-disk sales--
I compare it to the medieval days when the monarchy was afraid of the printing press, for fear that the peasants would learn to read and start expressing opinions, or the medieval Church's ban on letting peasants read the Bible themselves, instead of letting those in power do it for them:
In any new media, studios have always tried to retain whatever system would make us come to THEM for our movies, instead of a disk owner buying a disk once and taking it off his shelf any time he likes. For me, buying a disk is all about "A disk owner's shelf is his castle", and I don't want to rack up data charges every time I have the urge to watch something....Saving that money and effort was pretty much the reason I paid out the $24.95 in the first place.
If Warner gives me a free 2-D 480p Ultraviolet copy of Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 with the 4-DISK, 1080p 3-D SET I bought at Best Buy, I let them....It's free stuff.
I don't know if I'll ever use it, since I don't have any mobile devices, and I probably wouldn't be allowed to use them on an airline flight nowadays if I did (those I save for hard iTunes digital copies on my iPod Classic), but if it makes Warner feel better to have some illusion of corporate control over my life, who am I to spoil their dream?
Hulu was in the "death of physical media" business way before the format war ended and there were three studios that funded (still do) Hulu. That was the real beginning of the "death of physical media". I sure don't know where Microsoft played any role in the death of physical media outside of fighting for rights around managed copy with AACS, but that was to support physical media and to allow legitimate and legal sharing of the content.
If anyone was moving on the "death of physical media" it was and is Apple and Amazon. Microsoft doesn't even have single digit percentages in audio or video digital distribution.
So, nice to dream about Microsoft wanting to talk about the "death of physical media", but that would be giving them way too much credit. Talk to Apple and Amazon about that, they are the ones that are actually making it happen. And if Apple really does come out with a HD Apple TV, then it will be real interesting to see how it goes.