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The Future of Digital Video?
An Anonymous Coward, in name only asks: "I've been asked to write about the Future of DVD technology for a newsletter and I've been doing some thinking and research regarding this. It seems pretty clear that DVD is a dead-end technology, due to be replaced by Video On Demand. Already Disney is launching a VOD service, albeit through traditional broadcasting. It's to be a brief piece, and I plan to touch on how VOD will affect viewers as well as professionals. What is a realistic timeframe for beefing up broadband (such as Powerline Broadband?) and smartening compression (On2's VP5 , MPEG7?) to create a workable VOD system that will replace DVDs? Is delivery more likely to be based on an open or proprietary standard? What do you see as the future of Digital Video? Any input is greatly appreciated." While I don't think that Video on Demand will spell the end of DVDs, it would be interesting to know how far the technology has progressed, and how much further it would need to be developed before you could can pick-and-choose your movie-of-the-night from your own living room.
Working in the video industry for 7 years-- from my experience things will never go the way of VOD. The Video industry believes they have found a sweet spot with DVD's at sell through price.
There are those in the industry that have been dipping in the VOD technology pot for some time with no success (blockbuster). And there are also those that want the industry to adopt the VHS rental model with DVDs released exclusively to rental (at a much higher cost to the rental store) and eventually releasing the disc for sale at a devalued price. This is unlikely because the cost to produce DVDs is next to nothing and the studios want to capitalize on high volume sales, which is exactly what has happened. It has been the revenue sharing companies pushing that model--cheap DVD's hurt their business.
Also there has been talk in the past of a business model where Theater, Video, and VOD are all released at once, and there is always talk of shrinking windows between sell-through and theater releases.
DVD's will continue to evolve, in the next couple years you'll have High Definition DVDs-- which are the next big thing (HD-VHS already exists for those with the cash, but its still very pricey).
The fact is studios are paranoid about piracy, they've seen what's happened to the music industry and will continue to try to pump out encrypted product at as high a bit-rate as possible- in turn, making it more difficult to pirate high quality movies.
Video on demand is just not going to happen like some people think, it will really just become the next incarnation of Pay Per View and really only eat into that customer base. The technology exists, and there have been tests of services from different companies all over the U.S. but it still isn't a business anyone is interested in.
It all comes down to corporate interest, Sony wants to sell high priced HD-DVD players, so then they can also sell the HD-DVDs to go with it. How will Sony, for example, make money from a VOD service when they are able to make more selling DVD players. You also have Panasonic/Matsushita, JVC-- and all the other major electronics companies foaming at the mouth for the missed financial opportunities on DVD player sales (due to some cheap players coming out of the south pacific). In the end it all comes down to how to make the most amount of money.
I personally think that if the movie studios didn't tie everything down with their endless squabbling about DRM, we could and would have been enjoying VOD right now for a few years.
The technology is already there -- codecs like DiVX and its MPEG-4 based counsins can deliver near DVD quality video at bitrates around 1.5 Mbit/s, within range of most residential broadband technology. Server infrastructure, on the hardware and the OS side, has matured as well. With IP multicast, this could be even made more efficent. And all you really need on the client is a inexpensive box -- a current game console or TiVO could handle the decoding.
Sadly, it seems like the studios are holding it up, with their iron grip on content, not technology itself.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
MPEG-7, incidentally, is not a compression standar, it's a standard for video meta-data (allowing content-based video retrieval).
I run a software company called Onion Networks that provides peer-to-peer content delivery technology to movie studios building VOD systems.
With fast P2P content delivery technology, MPEG-4 compression, and PVR-like time shifting devices - the speed, storage, and economics are there today to provide DVD-quality VOD.
The only problem is that it is taking the studios a long time to roll out there VOD solutions, but trust me, they'll be upon us in the near future.
For more information on the protocols that underly these P2P content delivery systems, please check out the Open Content Network Specs
When I first read Stallman's story The Right to Read, I thought it was quite far-fetched, but considering events of the six years since it was published, it now seems like a legitimate concern.
It should be noted that we're not responsible for loss of data or network downtime that prevents you from accessing your data. We have no privacy clause. If you want something kept absolutely secret, encrypt it before storing on our network. We aren't going to go around looking at your data, but we aren't going to tiptoe around it making filesystem adjustments. You're allowed to have one connection to our servers at one time. Multiple connections will be charged by the minute. This is to prevent extreme network load by multithreaded uploading/downloading. We will report any child pornography to the proper authorities. Payment is by Visa or Mastercard, and we need a valid street address and valid phone number as well. We reserve the right to eliminate your account with no prior notice for any reason. Upon account elimination, all data will be deleted, and a refund for the unused portion of the monthly billing period will be returned to you. We will report apparent copyright infringements to the proper authorities. We use Microsoft Windows Server technologies to give you cutting edge data storage anywhere in the world.
Then why didn't North America get the NES disk drive ("Famicom Disk System") or the N64 disk drive ("64DD") that came out in Japan? Simple: after Nintendo test-marketed those formats in Japan, the company decided that they were too easy to pirate.
He wouldn't know, considering that he's a fraud.
Except that few ISPs implement multicast because they don't know of a fair revenue model.
I think one of the biggest obstacles is the fact that there aren't any services that use multicast. The reason for there not being any services is that no ISPs support multicast. This is very similar to IPv6, where there's very little implementation due to the lack of demand. The lack of demand is because no one else uses IPv6 (hey, why should I upgrade my systems, when it'd make me unable to talk to almost anyone else?).
See the description from the MPEG group's page for more information.
To quote:
It was assigned the number 7 under the assumption that MPEG-5 and MPEG-6 would be used for future video compression technologies.
For additional information about MPEG-7, see the MPEG-7 home page
I work for a large telco company in Europe, and we have a VOD trial that looks pretty good. You have to assume that the Internet is never (which means 5-7 years) going to give you the bandwith and QoS needed for Video On Demand.
Some tests tell that you need 3 *constant* Mbps in order to get TV quality. The trial is a service in which you get 5Mbps or so (I don't have the figures) via DSL. You get a set top box, liek the ones used in satellite TV. The telco deploys in the exchange offices video boxes loaded with MPEG2 movies. You get TV channels and you can rent movies. Access to the specified movie is granted whenever you want during 2 or three days.
Basically, it's what you get at your blockbuster, but without going out to return back the movie. If the price is right, I think it will be a hit!!!
Adittionally, you get Internet access for your browsing pleasure and your Xbox.
The future of VOD now depends more on marketing than on technology (which is advanced enough).
I've already got a VOD service - homechoice - delivered over ADSL and no way is it going to replace DVD. For a start, it doesn't support widescreen tvs, the compression method they use means the video doesn't look anywhere near as good, they don't have all the extra features you get on dvd and most of all you only get the film for 24 hours. Even if they changed over to mpeg 4 and started supporting widescreen tvs it still wouldn't replace DVD's - at least with a DVD I can play it whenever I want and I don't have to worry about the film not being on thier server in 6 months time. However, homechoice also comes with a selection of tv programmes and music videos that come 'free' with the service, which is nice when the Tivo hasn't got much on it.
What VOD is usefull for is that it helps to eliminate any need for going to video rental shops - the back catalogue on homechoice is cheap and if I really want to see a film right now I can. With that and Blockbuster UK's dvd rental by post I need never darken the doorway of my local video shop again.
I think DVD's will be around for a long time - or at least 5cm shiny discs holding video will be around a long time. My bet is that some 'superDVD' will come out at some point to support High Definition (though the apperent lack of take up of HD in most of the world will probably slow down it's arrival), and after that another super-superDVD for super definition TV when that eventually comes out.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It's not a video codec, is it?
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
Consumers look to DVDs as the CD-equivalent for home video. That's not entirely correct. Unlike CDs, certain dual-layer and double-sided DVDs can suffer from corrosion-by-air called "DVD rot" (basically, air gets in side the layers through micro holes created when the layers were slapped together at the factory).
If DVD rot begins to appear in large numbers in a few years, some consumers will begin to distrust DVDs, feeling betrayed that the one-thought infallable format is potentially self-destructive.
In large numbers, this could either spell the end of the DVD or spur the creation of a better disc format.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Have you even done any reading about it before mentioning it? MPEG1 is a compression scheme. MPEG2 is a compression scheme. MPEG4 is a compression scheme. MPEG7 and MPEG 21 are not. If my memory serves me correctly, MPEG7 is a Metadata description language and MPEG21 is a more holisitic solution incorporating MPEG7 and compression technologies.