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Copy-Protected Digital VHS
DragonMagic writes: "BBC carries this story regarding the comeback, certain studios hope, of the video tape against the dominating sales of the DVD. Fox, Universal, Dreamworks SKG and Artisan Entertainment are releasing a series of blockbuster movies onto the format D-VHS, developed by JVC. DVHS offers High Definition TV technology and the possibility of copy prevention, and is able to play old VHS tapes as well."
Why would someone go out and buy a new video tape player (and let's not say VCR, do you think they'd be recordable ;-), when we already have DVD? Because you could get the Brave New World of media coporation evil in a familiar form factor?
I can see it now... "Who needs the long-livedness, nearly random access, and large amounts of storage of DVDs when you could go back to tapes?" It'll be like nostalgia for vinyl, except without the hiss and pops.
It'll be difficult to convince people to go out and buy VHS tapes now that DVD has already been billed as the 'totally better' replacement for tapes, even if D-VHS is better.
As for the media, how many people have bought a VHS player recently enough for it to have the "D-Theater" ability? People aren't going to go out and buy another VCR when they just shelled out 200$ or more on their DVD player.
remind me of the withering days of the casette where there were advanced features of seeking tracks and auto reverse play...
VHS recorders are less than $100 and I'm in serious doubt that anyone is going to pay extra for something they can already get from the DVD players and VHS recorders they already own...
The problem is that DVHS offers advantages only to people with HDTV. But right now that is a very small minority. DVD offered not only far superior picture quality to VHS, but also better sound and random access. DVHS loses that all important ability of random access and has for the regular viewer no advantage over DVD.
DVHS promises 4 hours/tape of HDTV or 50 hours/tape of regular TV.
For some people, the 50 hours/tape feature may be exciting. That's about 70 hours of TV if you cut out the commericals.
Personally, I think this will go the way of DAT. Digital audio tape was a cool idea, and is still used in niche markets, but with recordable CDs isn't terribly interesting to consumers. With consumer-grade recordable DVD just around the corner, there's no real market here for a new tape format.
Studios should be asking themselves, "who are your early adopters?"
;-)
DVD is too new for your average consumer to want to run out and buy a new player (even if it plays VHS too).
High-end videophiles will know better. Random access media has too much going for it in terms of non-linear content (think "the making of" and trailers) and fast search forward or back. They also know that tape involves more moving parts, and thus more wear.
So, they've got to be targeting the low-end videophiles who know just enough to be dangerous. Oddly enough, the vast majority of THAT market segment are college students or recent graduates, and would be the most likely to be turned off by the new copy-protection features!
Oh yeah, this is going to be lucky to go as far as DIVX (the DVD format, not the video codec) did.
I can't see exactly who their target market is:
Videophiles who already have DVD (and perhaps even LD) might buy it if they're spendy people, but would they copy their DVD or LD onto D-VHS and suffer "degredation?"
Joe Six-Pack is not going to pay $2k when he can get a normal VHS and DVD and still have enough left over to buy 600 sixes of Bud.
About the only market I can see is people who want to tape off their satellite dish and keep it all digital, instead of having to have programs littering their Tivo.
But the price is gonna have to come way down (est. 3 years) before the mass market does that. And what do you want to bet by that time there will be some sort of "copy protection" on satellite signals to prevent it?
It's an underhanded, but unmistakably capitalist, tactic. Leaving you the only option in a market driven society: vote with your dollars and they'll soon leave this intentionally crummy product for dead.
A good article regarding the concept of planned obsolescence.
Guvegrra?
So with yet another video media coming out, it occurs to me to ask what the ideal media would be? Is it DVD, or is there a need for something better? Does DVD really offer HDTV resolution?
Personally, I see several shortcomings in the current DVD format:
* NTSC/PAL-based encoding. Rubbish. The disc should be encoded with however many frames per second the original media used. The players can then convert to NTSC/PAL, or they can put out a native signal for multisync TVs. Then each frame on the disc is one original frame from the film.
* Size limitations. If we're creating a new format, we can use newer technology to get a lot more data on the discs.
* Region coding/content coding. Well, this won't go away, but it certainly belongs on a wish list.
I buy a lot of DVDs. I mainly buy them because I think they're an excellent value. For the most part I pay just under $20 for new releases, sometimes less. In fact I've bought more DVDs than CDs. And with LD and VHS I was never really motivated to buy much. But lately the studios have been releasing some great special editions of various movies such as Holy Grail, Shrek, Star Trek The Motion Picture and so on with tons of extras for really good prices. I'm happy to spend my money on things like that.
Even if I did find pirated movies, how much would I save? And what would the quality be like? In the case of some bootlegs, I've heard they're pretty poor. About the only reason I'd ever go for pirated DVDs is if its something I just can't get here legally. And if George would just release his movies on DVD, I'd never even have to think about it.
Personally I think a lot of people are more like me than the handful of pirates the studios are so worried about. The studios are making a ton of money on DVD, probably with the addition of DVD they're now making more on home video sales than ever before. If they continue to provide quality products at reasonable prices, they got nothing to worry about. Besides, those determined to steal it will find a way, they always have before.
Actually, with that much bandwidth it'd certainly be feasible to have multiple commentary tracks and low-quality alternate angle tracks all on the same 28mbps stream. As long as they figure out how to parse all the possible data into a coherent display, they've got the room for it. Still though, the lack of chapter skips and quick scanning really kills it for me. Not to mention that with the massive DVD installed base and consumer mentality that DVD >> VHS, it doesn't have a chance. The only chance it's got is to be included on new generation VCRs with far too low a price point to justify the type of extra-feature capability I talked about or to make it very high in price and aim it at the theater buff crowd. Since the studios all have hi-def copies of their movies anyway, there wouldn't be much production cost that I could see as far as data goes, and there really isn't that much investment in the technology. It's certainly possible to profit off this technology (plus everyone's happy they get 'copy-protection' - of course they got that with DVD too). That doesn't mean it'll ever replace DVD - a hi-def optical format, preferably more resistent to wear-and-tear (say a DVD type disc in some sort of caddy) would be the ultimate format as far as I'm concerned.
Whoever is thinking to bring this to the consumer market should be taken out and whipped, then relocated to the mailroom.
That is a feature.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While 2000 bucks sounds like a lot to watch videos, it sounds like a decent price for a backup medium. Depending on the cost of media, of course. This could actually do well as a dual purpose machine: HD video player and all-purpose tape backup unit.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
I just wish that companies would put at least as much effort into their new movies as they put into their failed copy protection/digital limitations systems. I mean, what is the percentage of worthwhile movies that came out in the last two years? 10% ?
--Jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Odd that they haven't noticed that copy-prevention mechanisms have been a large factor in the commercial failure of several data formats (DAT and MiniDisc come to mind).
Perhaps someday they will come to the realization that customers are more likely to buy a unit that does what the customer wants, than one that does what TimeWarnerAOLSony wants.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
They only need to come up with a bulletproof enough CSS2+supermegaextra copy prevention system first.
And then have it broken in 3 days by a kid half my age from a country with no electricity.