The Death of Physical Video Media?

#1

Music/audio has pretty much gone completely Digital
I personally have not bought a music CD since the soundtrack to Star wars Episode 1

In preparation for an upcoming personal relocation
I decided to take the “best” of My legally bought DVD Disc collection
and Rip them to one of My Hi-capacity Lacie Fire wire drives as I will have to travel light thus discard the DVD discs
the Digital version can be enjoyed with apple Dvd player app just as if they were a physical DVD

(Yeah I know HD failure and my movies are toast)

but there are pawn shops and the " $7 discount bin" at wall mart
if i need to repurchase LOTR in the future.

MY point is I think it possible that whomever wins the BlueRay VS HDDVD
battle may find more and more consumers demanding there content as digital Data
and not want/need to have all these physical Discs piling up.

Sort of like what Tivo is doing to TV.
Buy the Data version watch till you get bored and Delete to make room for new content.

#2

I don’t think physical media will disappear for a while, but disc based media is going to go the way of the dodo next. Solid state media is where it will go to next. There’s just something to be said about having a tangeable piece of media that people like. That may change with future generations though, but that’s gone back to the record player so it’s been with us for a while.

#3

Yea, Bill Gates talked about this in an interview back at the end of 2005. Said that Blueray and HDDVD will be the last physical media format and they are probably both doomed. Digital distribution is the next big thing which will eclipse the two disk formats in a few years.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051017-5445.html
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=12398

#4

I can attest to this. I don’t have a bank account, I absolutely hate that I couldn’t order a boxed copy of Mudbox, and all my Steam games have their physical counterparts on their disks in their boxes. While I realize that digtal media are much more stable these days than they have ever been, I still dislike the idea of having my only copy of a song or game or having all my money stored on a hard drive or something.

#5

That’s what backups are for. At $99 for a 500 gig hard drive, it isn’t exactly that hard or expensive to do.

#6

I think that it is definately happening. However I don’t think it is going to happen quite that quickly. A large part of the problem with video content is that the uptake of super fast broadband isn’t as universal as it needs to be. However that will change as telecos upgrade their networks.

I think people are becoming less attached to physical media. I know I am. My first thing I do when I buy a CD is to rip it. Then I throw away the jewel case and put it plus the little book in a big cd binder. The only reason I don’t buy digital downloads instead is the quality / drm issues thata lot of online files have. This too will probably change in the future.

#8

And yet they’re still making vinyl records. :smiley:

#9

And still selling 1.4 Mb floppy Discs

but neither is a viable/practicle medium for distributing content
these days.
and for those old die hards who cling to the past it only becomes
more frustrating and expensive trying to maintain really old systems
for entertainment etc .

I, for one, welcome this emerging paradigm
it makes ones Digital life more “Portable”

#11

…Unless you are on a long 4 hour train ride up the coast

#12

Some reasons I think why physical media aren’t going anywhere.

  1. The lack of bandwidth and speed to download movies, specially HD movies.
  2. The filesize of those films, specially HD. Some people like my sister have up to 50+ DVDs. If they were HD format, how much HDD space would you need for them and the backup.
  3. Backup nightmare. With DVD/blu ray, if one disc got damaged, you lose one movie. With HDD, if it’s damaged, you lose all of them.
  4. DRM. We all know it’s more of an inconvenience than protection.
#13

I think one of the main reasons people like physical media is because its what they grew up with so they understand it and have a connect to it, i think people are creatures of habit.

You know have an entire generation growing up who may have never walked into a record store to buy music.

These people will be the ones that end phyiscal media.

#14

[left]it will stick around for christmas presents. Its fun to open something up and look at the label and check it out. [/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]In the future kids will check their virtual stocking on their computer, not the actually sock hanging by the tree.[/left]

#15

The film industry was lucky to be able to watch the record industry IMPLODE. Basically the internet, and digital distribution WON’T sneak up on us. Basically, the model has been written, i-tunes + Pay-Per-Veiw + Netflix = The Next Film Distrubution Format.

I think you are simply a couple years ahead of the game to want to have a home digital media server of some sort.

Christopher Watson

#16

I think blu-ray/hd-dvd will be fine (well, one of them at least). I don’t think digital distribution of full bitrate HD movies will be feasable for a good long time.

#17

You’ve obviously never listened to music on anything better than a Logitech sound system or you would realize the complete and utter nonsense of this statement heh.

Vinyl on a real sound system BLOWS away anything digital, CD’s included. Because you are pumping out your music through a shit system of course you can’t discern the difference. Any audiophile would laugh in your face if you said that to them.

#18

except that xbox already offers them and itunes has started offering 480p versions. Ill bet you anything that within a year we will see full 720p movies everywhere and 1080p a year later.

#19

I would have thought digital music would have been the greater sound considering you can have up to xx amount of channels and all that nonsense. ?

#21

More channels doesn’t mean better sound. I’m talking sonic purity, not Dolby vs THX.

Not anymore? Just because you don’t know what you are talking about doesn’t make it so. I’m not a huge audiophile but DVD-Audio/CD’s aren’t even comaprable to vinyl. There’s something to be said that gets lost in the translation, the purity of the sound is quite different and not in a good way. And yes there is a HUGE difference, go on any audiophile site and ask that question, see how much you get flamed.

It’s not about having ultra sensitive ears, it’s about knowing what you are talking about, something you obviously don’t. HK, Bose and Sennheiser are all low end manufacturers just so you know.

My uncle proved this point to me many years ago. He has a pretty high end system, sterio mind you, and a vinyl setup along with at the time CD’s. He put a vinyl on of ajazz band while everyone was in the room hanging out talking. Everyone started moving, swinging to the music, getting up to dance. He then put the same song on and played it through a CD. Almost immediately everyone stopped, sat down and became stiff.

Just because there’s 7.1 channels of sound with High Def processing doesn’t mean jack squat when it comes to sonic fidelity.

#22

I think that is because people like the feel of vinyl. A pure digital sound could easily be tuned to sound like exactly like vinyl. At cd is still compressed and it is only in stereo. Most music hasn’t been recorded in 7.1, let alone more then 2 channels.

#23

CDs aren’t compressed - they’re limited to bitrate and sample rate, but the data, is essentially raw.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2205254/microsoft-accused-causing-blu

Some people are suggesting that MS is only propping up HD-DVD just to bolster their online video stuff.

It’s working too - I’m personally holding off either format because I can’t buy all the content I want on either format, buying on DVD and just enjoying streaming to my 360.